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.""

Comments

What about Rhapsody, aka listen.com?

[corebreech]

To my mind this is by far the superior service. I get to listen to anything I want as often as I want for ten bucks a month ('cept for the Beatles, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Elton John's Blue Moves.)

The only downside appearas to be that I can't take the music on the go, unless I pay 70(?) cents to burn a track, but since I'm a shut-in who's always sitting in front of his computer anyways, what's the diff?

And for those outside the US?

[KludgeGrrl]

Yet this discussion completely sidesteps one of the aspects of Napster (1) and the like -- that they were international. From almost anywhere in the world (assuming internet access) you could get music, that was itself from all over the world.

Re: Unfortunately...

[jjh37997]

None of them are as good as just buying the damn(hopefully non-copy protected) CD's and ripping them yourself. (Hopefully with the good, sweet, cleanness of Ogg Vorbis). Fuck DRM

Yeah because I love having to buy a whole CD when I just want one song for $12! I don't know about you but I'd prefer to spend that money on 12 individual songs that I actually want and burn those songs to a CD then buy 12 separate CD.

iTunes good, but not an unbiased source

[illumin8]

Just so you all know I'm not an Apple hater, I own a 30GB iPod and I love it. I also use iTunes for Windows and I've already bought a couple of albums. I agree with the article that iTunes is the best jukebox and music store for Windows, but isn't this the same author that gives every single Apple product a favorable review? It would be nice to see reviews from an unbiased source.

I like Apple products quite a bit and I'll probably buy a 15" G4 PowerBook in the next couple of weeks, but something that really bothers me about the Apple culture and the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is that it seems like the Apple zealots love any product that Apple releases, regardless of how good or bad it is. Steve Jobs could shit in his hand and sell it as the iShit for $999 and Mac fanatics would be lining up around the block to buy it.

Appreciation of a good or well thought out product is one thing. Blind zealotry is quite another and I see entirely too much of that in the Apple world.

Re:No open formats yet...

[laird]

"but is it *yours to copy* once bought? ...
Both the Supreme Court and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 say 'yes'"

Depends on what you mean by "yours to copy". You can copy music to another device to listen to it (e.g. RIP a CD to listen to on your PC or MP3 player). You can't (legally) make copies for friends (or strangers, come to think of it). When you buy a book, you have the right to use it any way you like; burn it, sell it, etc. But you don't have the right to make new copies of the book. The trick is that with digital media, "copying" went from being a difficult, expensive thing (set up your own printing press) to an easy, cheap thing (RIP and burn a CD, email a file, etc.). So in 1970 if you told someone "you bought that LP and you can do what you like with it" nobody would have thought that you could set up a record plant and publish copies of the record. But with a CD and a PC on the internet, you can effectively do just that. The hard part is figuring out what to do about it.

"by the AHRA we pay for those copying rights whenever we buy blank audio CDs"

In the US, no. In Canada, apparently so (for personal use only).

The poet once wrote,

[banky]

Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

You must look at this from a realistic perspective.

1. The major record labels - meaning the people who control the content - will never release their "property" without DRM. If Apple wants to provide music online, it must do so at the whim of the content "owners". Hence, DRM. Otherwise iTMS is Napster v1, and we all know how that turned out.

As a matter of opinion, I find 'Fairplay' or whatever it is Apple calls its DRM method to be quite fair, to me. I can play all my music on my computers (laptop, desktop, work desktop) and devices (rev1 iPod), burn CDs, and so forth. I've been using iTMS since its inception, and have no complaints.

2. Apple has to balance their costs and resources, and the resources of their paying customers. Sure we all want uber-high-bitrate encodings. Remember that Apple has to push out all that data, and ensure the highest-possible success rate. I also assume they pay for their bandwidth, like everyone else. Moreover, many of their customers are probably still on dialup. In order to work, the experience has to be as close to instant as technologically possible. Like all things in technology, it's a balance. Until your uber-bitrate song fits in under a meg, it went with what it had that fit its requirements and needs.

Again, as a matter of opinion: P2P blows, people lie, allow bad rips, disconnect halfway through (mom's coming! quick, disconnect!), whatever.

3. The notion that one day this will all go away is a very fair criticism. So do the smart thing: burn to audio CD. You aren't prohibited (provided you don't try to turn that shiny G5 into a duplication studio). And getting around the DRM by re-encoding isn't all that hard (google it). iTunes enforces no DRM on user-ripped material, as WMP did at one point (could be turned off, IIRC). DRM applies only to content it re-sells.