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Comparing Online Music Offerings
hype7 writes "The Wall Street Journal has just posted a comparison of the three main legal music download services: Apple's iTunes Music Store, MusicMatch and Napster v2. The review covers the pros and cons of each of the services, and concludes with: "I'm sure all three services will evolve and get better, and others will enter the fray. But, for now, iTunes is the best choice on Windows.""
If you rip with AAC in iTunes it attaches no DRM to it at all. Also AAC > OGG.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Here's the deal with the burns. You can only burn the same playlist 10 times. So say you download 20 tracks from the music store. You can only burn those 20 in that exact same order 10 times, but if you switch the 1st and 2nd song you get 10 more burns and so on and so forth. I've also heard you can just delete the playlist and create a new one, but I'm not sure if that works or not. Anyhow heres how Steve Jobs puts it. Unlimited burning of individual tracks, 10 burns per playlist.
You should try the Riaa Radar
It shows you which labels are not affiliated with the RIAA, and thus are 'safe'
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
Both the Supreme Court and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 say 'yes'. And, in fact, by the AHRA we pay for those copying rights whenever we buy blank audio CDs.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Give me a break. The RIAA does not speak for the entire music industry, and there are plenty of great independant labels and pseudo labels (such as CD Baby) that whole-heartedly disagree with the RIAA on many levels. Even before the RIAA was suing its customers it was fucking over the artists, many of whom have become basically indentured servants to the 'big 5.' Personally, I haven't bought major label music in years, just because I think that in general it isn't innovative. Here's who I *do* buy from:
Beta-lactam Ring
Elevator Bath
IDEA
Wholly Other
And last but not least, the best independant distributor of anything ever... Forced Exposure
Maybe partying will help...
Ignoring the legal issues, iTunes (and the other services) do have advantages. iTMS provides a large selection of music, consistent quality, fast downloads, and 30-second previews. p2p is generally a wasteland of mislabled files, corrupted downloads, poor encoding, audio glitches, and slow download times, if you can even find what you're looking for. There are some specialized cases where p2p or binary newsgroups are better (bootlegs, studio outtakes, live recordings, etc), but for commercial music, iTunes, musicmatch, etc. offer a more user-friendly experience.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I know you're joking, but for those who don't know already: iTunes on Windows can be made to play OGGs. Just install this open source OGG component for Quicktime. Download the Windows version and stick it in your system32\QuickTime directory. (The component is a little buggy in that it will pause for a few seconds before it starts playing an OGG, but it DOES play.)
Artists don't get a penny, not a single one, from everything sold at BMG. They negotiate flat fees with the lables directly for the use of their catalog, and thats the extent of it.
A user downloading 10 gig of music over WinMX, finding two CDs they like and going out and buying those on a whim gets more money to the artists than buying $1000 worth of CDs from BMG.