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Ummmm... Emusic isn't a player. It's a place other than iTunes to buy music. It comes as MP3 when you buy it.

This isn't iTunes, ya cranky whiner.

Ha, you made me curious!

"Asinine" is the record labels' established business plan AND profit model, you understand.

In fact, "Asinine" might actually be a record label.

It is. http://www.emusic.com/label/Asinine-Records-CD-Baby-MP3-Download/402721.html

(Admittedly, it's more of a 'label' than a label, having released one album and apparently being a self-publishing pseudonym, but still...)

Or even from iTunes Music Store. They haven't had DRM on their music since march 2009.

I buy all my music from eMusic. It's a subscription based service and they sell you music from all but the biggest labels for about half the price of iTunes's.
All music is in high quality MP3's and once you bought them, you can download them again and again on any number of computers.

Try eMusic.com. DRM free, Linux client, tons of music, and no major label garbage.

It doesn't mater if they don't make the movie available in a form that's friendly to /. readers.

The Penny Arcade had a PATV episode where they talked about the Humble Indie Bundle - pay what you want - a dollar, a penny - and people were *still* pirating the games.

I download tv shows and movies all the time, and I hope the private tracker I use will protect me, but I doubt it will. And I don't have much justification for what I do other than convenience - I have very few chances to go see a movie (or deal with the hassle of renting one), and I don't want to pay for cable for the 3 shows I watch.

I do pay for my music and I get my books legitimately, however.

If things get too hot, and I have to choose between no content and the hassle of legal content, I'll probably pick no content, for the most part. Unless movies and tv-shows get easy and cheap.

eMusic.

http://www.klicktrack.com/klicktrack/home have Memento Materia and other strangeness.
MP3s at highest bitrate. About the rates of iTunes.

http://www.emusic.com/ might or might not accept you. They seem to be doing a lot of strange things to non-American visitors, but their selection is wide enough to lie for ;)
Plain MP3 or XUL-based downloader. Cheaper than iTunes.

http://magnatune.com/ for independent artists.
FLAC, Vorbis, MP3, AAC, WAV. No iTunes comparison, but you can either buy downloads or CDs cheap for listening, or you can licence it for other uses.

Other online music stores: Google a bit for ways to get a US-registered debit card and mailbox :)
I fully support lying and cheating to get the music - we're sitting here with money in hand, but they won't take it.

There are many music download and music access services available. Just go elsewhere. Like so many "firsts" on the Net - e.g. eBay, Yahoo, etc. - iTunes seems old in the tooth. Couple that with egregious DRM policies and attempts to choke interoperability. Why bother. I like Apple products, but who really needs iTunes for music. Other than as a software platform for playback, I could care less about the iTunes music store. Try these: http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011 http://pandora.com/ http://www.emusic.com/ http://www.slacker.com/ http://www.napster.com/ http://music.myspace.com/ www.youtube.com http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html http://www.walmart.com/music http://www.last.fm/ http://social.zune.net/music/ http://www.seeqpod.com/

iTunes isn't the only online music store, you know. Amazon sells MP3s ala carte (so you don't have to download nine tracks of shite to get one good one), as do other sites like eMusic.

(obDisclaimer: I own stock in neither of those sites. I just buy a lot of music from them because they have what I like for sale.)

Yes, after years of selling you DRM-infested music, Apple was one of the first* to ask to be able to sell without DRM so that they could re-sell you the same music, thus milking you for every penny as the GP said.

*By "one of the first", I mean "third or fourth out of the six or seven large downloadable music stores". EMusic, Amazon and others all offered DRM-free music before the Apple iTunes store.

I'd suggest a slight alteration of rules 1 and 2:

1. Stop buying new music from RIAA affiliated labels
2. Stop going to shows of new acts signed up with RIAA affiliated labels

There are plenty of good artists whose music you can buy and whose shows you can attend who aren't affiliated in any way with the RIAA. Don't punish them for the RIAA's sins. In fact, let's reward them for not being part of the RIAA-mess. If artists see non-RIAA artists doing well, they'll realize that they don't need the RIAA. I recommend signing up with http://www.emusic.com/ and http://www.amiestreet.com/ and purchasing some songs from there.

Personally I mainly use Emusic and (rarely) 7digital . Both sell unencumbered mp3's and work in Europe at least.

It's also been on eMusic since November 24.

I'll tell you what's unethical: It would cost me around a million dollars to fill up an iPod, if I bought all my music from the iTMS.

Whine, whine whine...

Sooo... I guess you've never heard of legal alternatives to iTunes like Jamendo (free) or Emusic (cheap)?

But you're right, damn those unethical people for forcing you, the victim, to acquire music solely through Apple.

It's not unrealistic. It's being done.

I thought I had read this before so I did a search and came up with this: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/2/103735/275 This post was made in 2003 (and references a previous post on Slashdot, so it could easily be older than that.) You are simply reposting a 5 year old story word for word. I somehow doubt that you are the original author (which would, ironically, make that post copyright infringement ;-) ).

That said, there are a couple of big holes in this story.

Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame.

The author admits to not knowing why people aren't buying CDs, but then immediately jumps to the "inescapable truth" that Internet piracy is to blame. It isn't because the selection isn't to the buying public's taste, or because a Walmart opened down the block with better prices, or because people were buying more DVDs/video games/etc. Nope, it *had* to be Internet Piracy! And why?

The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate.

Not to overuse a XKCD meme, but: Citation Needed. So I did a Google search and came up with this article: http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20050623.html

Ok, the article is 3 years old, but let's let that slide for a bit. The piracy that the article speaks of is commercial CD pressing. You know, the folks who obtain one CD, burn a hundred copies, and sell them on the street corner for $1.50 each. That is a completely different form of piracy than the guy who clicks "share this folder" in LimeWire/Kazaa/etc.

On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own.

Yes, the Internet does make piracy (of the P2P sharing kind) easier than it used to be. It does also have the potential to destroy the music industry as we know it now. However, many new technologies are disruptive events. The industry either has to adapt or die. When cars first came out, it was disruptive to the people in the Horse and Buggy Industry. We don't hold technology back simply because one industry doesn't want to change how they operate. For an example of how the music industry might adapt, look to eMusic and Amiee Street. As far as local record stores go, they either find a way to adapt (perhaps kiosks selling personal mix CDs) or they die out. It's just a fact of business life.

Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.

In the years since this post was originally written, advances in book piracy have been made.

As for the National Register of Pirates idea, it is quite obviously a bad idea. The original poster of this seemed to be of the opinion that the courts were taking too long so pirates should just be added to a list without a trial. Let's put aside the question of how the RIAA would get the pirates' identities and how it would be enforced for a moment. (Big questions, mind you, but let's assume some process gets put into place.) How will the list be kept focused on pirates and kept clean of the falsely accused? We have only to look at the No Fly List for an example of how a blacklist with no oversight or clear removal process can wind up triggering many false positives. If some other Jason Levine pir

I don't know any online store without any kind of DRM that allows you to download a song or an album and [sic] infinite number of times once you've purchased it.

That's really too bad for you, since they do exist (well, okay, maybe not "infinite", but at least large). The obvious example would be eMusic. Since I personally have been pretty happy with eMusic, I haven't gone hunting for alternatives, so I don't know about whether you can download repeatedly from, say, Amazon. It makes perfect sense for an online store to let you download your stuff repeatedly, since you've got to be logged in to your account anyway.

Being able to re-download something isn't an advantage of DRM: it's an advantage of digital distribution. The only actual advantage to DRM that I've seen is that it allows the rental and Napster-style subscription business models. Frankly, I'm not interested in either one, so it isn't an advantage from my perspective, but some people like the all-you-can-eat subscription music buffet.

What the closing of Yahoo! Music does is remove the advantages of digital distribution (since you can't download your music again later) and leave your already DRM-ed music more crippled than it was before (since you can't move it from platform to platform and you're SOL whenever your current box moves on to the great landfill in the sky).

I only buy DRM-free music. Luckily, there are various sources, including:

• Jamendo
• eMusic
• Amazon MP3 (WHY can't I use this from Canada?! C'mon Amazon, get your act together.)
• Magnatune
• iTunes Plus

Or, better yet, how would a border guard be able to tell that the MP3 file on my MP3 player is illegal versus legally purchased from a shop that sells non-DRM-ed MP3s (Amie Street or eMusic for example)? Both MP3s could look exactly alike and it's not like I can whip out the source CD to prove that I bought it legally. Sure, I could check the website, print out a list of my purchases, and prove it that way, but what if the website goes out of business? If I buy a song from eMusic and then eMusic folds, can I be heavily fined and have my player taken away since now I can't prove that my non-DRM-ed MP3 is legit? Is the legitimacy of my music now going to be tied to whether or not the site I bought it from is still operating?

Emusic. The #2 US retailer of downloadable music has no DRM. It does have an annoyingly complex pricing model, but it is still amazingly cheap. Last month I discovered an artist I liked, and I downloaded every track they ever made for around 20 dollars.

Indies only, of course. Amazon.com for Mariah Carey. Emusic for The Pinker Tones and a lot of other great bands.

Some of those are availble DRM-free and CHEAPER from eMusic - http://www.emusic.com/

Side-note - "Challengers" by New Pornographers was one of the most disappointing albums of last year for me.

The only thing I buy from the iTunes Music Store are "iTunes Plus" tracks; they've got a higher bitrate, and no DRM at all.

If something I want isn't available DRM-free, I'll go buy a CD or something instead and rip it myself. Easy.

I've spent a lot more money at eMusic and Magnatune (my personal favourite; I download WAV files of the whole CD and encode them however I want) than at iTMS.

(Note: I'm not associated with any of these services, other than as a customer.)

Have you tried Amie Street.com or EMusic.com?

Worse yet, if you sign up for a subscription, you're saying that it's okay for the music service to wipe out your music collection if you cancel.

Exactly! That's why I have always avoided iTunes (which has until recently based their business around DRM-encrusted tracks) yet I love emusic. Once I pay for the download, I can listen to it in my car, at work, at the gym, all with no hassle and no extra payments, and I can use it on whatever future device I may happen to buy, without worrying if some stupid DRM method is implemented on that device. Devices come and go, but the music, if it is good, should last my lifetime.

DRM is about giving a downloaded track a short, inconvenient lifetime of its own, which might be OK for a teenybopper buying a Britney Spears track for her iPod, but it really chaps my long-term-music-fan ass!

I'm going to throw this out there, but what are people's opinions about different DRM-free retailers?

I have liked Amazon for their ease of use, but their encodings are usually only 128-bit MP3s. I just found 7music, but haven't tried them yet. AudioLunchBox has nice encoding choices, but their music selection has been greatly limited in my experience. I used to have a subscription at Emusic, but the subscription model does not feed my desires.

First off, you save your silly rant for someone else and for the right context. The article has to do with ripping CDs that you own for your own use, which the RIAA doesn't recognize as valid, but it falls squarely under Fair Use laws. It is not just my opinion that they are wrong on this issue. It is the clear law in the U.S., as confirmed by the courts in the Sony case back in 1984.

Second, I've spent (rough ballpark guess) $15,000 over the past 25 years or so to amass my entirely legal music collection, including several hundred records, about 1000 CDs and a couple hundred albums from eMusic and a couple dozen more on Mindawn and Jamendo. Musicians have made a lot of money off of me and I've gotten more than my money's worth from them.

Third, I am active in several online communities devoted to progressive rock, and am personal friends (online) with several professional musicians, managers and other people in the business. I've even provided the (modest) cover art for a CD from one of my professional friends, which you can find here. I promote (though not formally nor professionally) a few groups in particular whenever possible (Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, and The Tangent) who work for a label that is an RIAA member and I have legally purchased all the recordings available from each of those groups. These are exceptional artists who merit much more attention than they get. In fact, I've purchased roughly a third of everything this label has ever released.

And third, I have created my own music and have shared it freely with others. You can find one of my tracks here. I can provide a few more upon request and several more if I get off my duff and digitally master them, but honestly I don't think too many people would be interested.

So in summary, I think this gives me more than the right to express a simple opinion on the RIAA. All I said was that their opinion on the matter of ripping is as irrelevant as my opinion of them is, which is a objectively true and correct statement. Fair Use laws are clearly on the side of those of us who rip our legally acquired and licensed music to our own devices for our own use.

And finally despite its correctness as a statement of fact, it was clearly and obviously meant to be a joke. Someone here is being illogical and childish, but it surely isn't I. Maybe you should criticize what I am actually saying rather than your completely wrong prejudices. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Quoting their website:

eMusic is the world's largest retailer of independent music and the world's second-largest digital music retailer overall, offering more than 2 million tracks from more than 13,000 independent labels spanning every genre of music. A subscription-based service that allows consumers to own, not rent their music, eMusic is the largest service to sell tracks in the popular MP3 format--the only digital music format that is compatible with all digital music devices, including the iPod®.

Under current management, yes, they seem like they would rather bring the whole company down in a huge fireball rather than readjust themselves to fit the bottom line. However, I think that once some of those new, nimbler companies arise (and we're already seeing the beginnings of them with the likes of eMusic and Amie Street), the old companies will be forced to change course. Especially once new blood (that better understands the situation) rises into the executive ranks.

Sure they might start by trying to litigate or legislate the new-comers out of business, but that approach will only buy them a small amount of time. Then they'll create new "divisions" or "spin-off" companies which will experiment with the new model without impacting the name of the old model. Eventually, they will be forced to move completely into the new model. Or they will be forced out of business. Hopefully, if the latter happens, the copyrights to the music will revert to the artists and not to some random IP vulture that picks at the corpse. (Though the realist in me knows that the IP vultures will be feeding well when the old record companies start dying.)

Here's an example of such a contract. Here's another.

I like eMusic and all but not everything on eMusic is unaffiliated with the RIAA. Razor & Tie is one example I'm familiar with.

I started my boycott a few years ago. If I'm looking to buy a CD from an artist on an RIAA label I go to ebay or Amazon and purchase it used. For everything else, there's eMusic.

Yes, Frank Klepacki's one of the best. (Also loved the ambient tracks from Tiberian Sun.) Too bad there is no straightforward way of getting the tracks from those games. I bought the tracks from emusic. I'm also partial to the Terran tracks from Starcraft. The intro music for Broodwar can be downloaded for free from Blizzard.

One of my other favorites are the tracks from KKND2. (Krush Kill N Destroy 2). And its nice that they're already in .wav.

CBC Radio 3 is a great place to hear Canadian Indie music. A lot of the stuff they play is available to buy on http://www.zunior.com/ or, less likely, http://www.emusic.com/

eMusic, definitely. For $15 a month I get to download 50 tracks from a huge selection of independent artists. The site is full of metadata that you can use to find new stuff (similar artists, lists compiled by other users, etc.), they run a great blog about new and interesting stuff called 17 dots, and they have download clients for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

True that. Sadly, this is probably the beginning of the end of eMusic, which is currently the world's second-largest (legal) online digital music store. They carved out a nice niche for themselves by making it very easy for indie bands to get their music to the fans and bypass the labels.

Unfortunately as Apple and others start to get their act together, the real innovators such as eMusic who "did it right" from the beginning will probably suffer. (Of course eMusic's insistence on offering only subscriptions instead of per-track sales is not helping them any...)

I bought some creative-commons-licensed music directly from the artist (Jonathan Coulton).

I have also bought music through Magnatune and Emusic, but I don't know if those count.

Other than my subscription to eMusic, I pretty much only buy music direct-from-the-artist. This usually includes getting a record (on vinyl) at shows, which hopefully includes mp3 downloads that labels like Merge and Sub Pop include with their LPs. I also bought the Radiohead record (at $5) online.

I see 2 benefits to this approach:

1. (I like to think) artists get more from the sale than they would if I bought it from a shop.
2. The labels that make up the RIAA get less (if any) money from the sale. (I usually only go to shows of bands on independent labels - "safe" on the RIAA Radar).

I haven't purchased music for years because of the behavior of the labels

Geez, you've really been depriving yourself unnecessarily. One word: emusic.

It's not as hard anymore, if you avoid iTunes Music Store.

1. Set up an account - at Amazon MP3 Music Store, MP3Tunes, eMusic, others in time...
2. Hope they have a song you want (they might, they might not... probably not yet)
3. Buy the song (Just takes a click or two)
4. Put the song on any mp3 player (done, no drm at these stores!)
5. Play the song on Linux (well, need an mp3 codec but whatev, you need one in windows too)
6. Share the songs with your friends (Complaining that it's hard to share songs with your friends is the whole purpose of DRM. If you'd respect copyright and let your friends buy their own MP3's, we wouldn't need DRM. You're not legally allowed to redistribute copyrighted songs without authorization from the copyright holder - that goes way beyond fair use imho)

Wow - they changed something at eMusic and you really have to dig around to find the booster pack purchase option... it's currently at the bottom of this page.

As for the tip on using boosters to supplement the monthly subscription, I read it in a post @ the eMusic message boards... can't find the original post though.

It is actually possible to brose their selection without giving them your credit card number:
http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html

So even slashdotters are uanble to use their site successfully... It took me way too long to figure out that URL. Tried a few approaches, but every single one of them seemes to slam a huge ad and trying to make me write my credit card number to get something "for free".

Frankly, what the hell is their design goal? "Impersonate a scam site"? If I had dropped in there by chance, every single red flag I have would trigger: "SCAM! SCAM! Don't fall for this! Get out! Close the browser, scan for spyware. Phew. I'm safe again."

This is exactly the kind of site I warn my family about and tell them they should never, ever hand even their email to. Kinda sucks when you're a legit site... I'm sure they could have a huge boost in subscribers by changing their fron page to something just a little bit less scammy-looking.

Agree with parent on all points. I have been considering to purchase music from them several times, but everytime I visit their site, I just end up thinking "why bother? this site sucks" and postphone it another 3 months.

No need for the Mycroft plugin, make a Firefox search bookmark using this:
http://www.emusic.com/search.html?mode=x&QT=%25s

Go here: http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html.

You can also click on the "Login" button on eMusic.com and then a search box and all the links are there.

Or install the Firefox search.

Epic fail. For those who can't find it.

Seeing as how that's probably the most important thing anybody would want to do before signing up, seems pretty silly to hide it in such a non-obvious place.

You can, and even preview songs... just go to http://www.emusic.com/ and you get the main page where you can start browsing.

Actually, eMusic does have a $6 per month plan, covering 0-10 songs per month (i.e. averaging at $1.20 per song, or $.60 if and only if you make sure you always download exactly 10 songs in any given billing period.
Of course, even getting to see their plans without signing up is deliberately made difficult, but if you follow the links around from their legalese pages, you find a well buried link to the plans.

I have had no luck in finding out what quality the tracks are ripped with, or what software was used to rip them. Nor any other technical details.

Maybe they should let people see what's available without signing up.