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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.""
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?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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.
I've purchased 134 songs so far from itunes. Every time I have purchased songs from them the download has been fast(i am on a DSL) and the quality is amazing..Selection is great but i wish they more stuff from the 80's.
Now with books and personal playlists and gift certs, they have made it even better...
the best part is that the artists get their share...whether you agree its a fair share is a different matter since apple did not write the contracts between the record companies and the artists...
I will tell you this though... whatever they are getting from itunes is way more then they are getting from Kazaa downloads...
Yes, I know the restrictions can be gotten around by burning, and then ripping that, but that's not the point. It's a matter of principle. Companies everywhere keep trying to put restrictions on what we do with things we *own*, and that's just not right - economically, morally, or socially. It saddens me so many people are willing to accept the situation without question.
But in the meantime, I'll stick with services like Magnatune which don't try to control the content once it leaves their hands.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
If you rip with AAC in iTunes it attaches no DRM to it at all. Also AAC > OGG.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Yes, the last line does say it all, which is why it was quoted in the article writeup. I can read, don't bother parroting Slashdot's writeup for me. Who modded this insightful?
I really don't dig those wonky formats. Makes it impossible for my pitiful Sony mp3 CD player to cooperate. And when you burn it to disc, and then re-rip to get it into mp3, hooboy. The sound quality is shittastic. (And while I'd very much like to buy one of those swank iPods - A geek I am, but moreso, a broke student geek)
Please enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...
Allofmp3.com beats all those mentioned so far hands down. You get to choose your format (mp3, Ogg, aac, wma) and bitrates (from 128k up to 384k) and you pay based on the number of megs you d/l. Furthermore, there's no DRM on the files you d/l.
I recall a lot of folks ((in my circle of musician friends) with apple computers) saying that the music they downloaded from iTunes (when it first was launched) was kinda 'muddled' sounding, many blamed the copy-protection as doing it.
Or is it just the encoding into an mp3 that does this? Any comparisons between the other `legal' music downloads and the end-quality of sound?
Just curious. I personally buy CDs still, except for the old blues/british invasion stuff that's out of print or never made it past vinyl.
do() || do_not();
Considering all the errors and omissions in the article, I wouldn't put too much stock in this review.
;)
iTMS lets you re-download music you've already purchased. It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install, which some may see as a drawback.
MMJB doesn't work with the iPod? Somebody better tell Apple that they shouldn't have shipped it with all the iPods up until now.
The other thing he doesn't cover is that Napster and MMJB downloads will work directly, without laborious circumvention techniques, on many different portable players and also on the computer itself on MMJB, WMP, and Winamp.
iTMS only plays on iTunes or iPod. iThink unless you have an iPod, you're better off with another service.
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.
It's open or nothing. If you want the roughly $1k per year that I spend on music, then they way to get it is to sell me standard CDs, FLAC files, wav files, aiff files, or very high bitrate Vorbis files.
This little piece of the market has spoken. Don't complain about lost revenue, if you're not selling.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What does this really do? A "special encrypted format"? This is significant limitation. Again, I understand the issues, but is it really necessary to force people to (1) install some special software in the first place (2) use this special software to make purchases (3) use this special software to play music on their computers (4) use this special software to actually burn the music to a CD?
A great deal of the music I have on CD (all 800 of them) is ripped to MP3 and sitting on my Archos jukebox. I guess these online music solutions care not about people like me.
Not to be a big baby, but I also hate the idea of having to use some catch-all piece of software, rather than choosing my own applications to browse/purchase (web browser), listen (xmms, winamp), and burn CDs (groaster) etc. Never mind that I run a Linux desktop too of course. I could understand if this was the only way they could think of to prevent unlawful activities. But once the music's on the CD, couldn't it just be ripped to MP3? So is their system not putting up secure walls but rather presenting annoying hurdles?
Please someone smack me down if I'm not thinking clearly (it wouldn't be the first time).
You can burn a given playlist 10 times to CD. After that, you have to mix the tracks up to get another 10 burns, and so on. Any particular song can be burned as many times as you want.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
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.
Kazaa lets you search for any bands/songs/artists and find out who has it. And they *are* going to share. Perhaps you have been under a rock. =P
[legal disclaimers]
The poster of this comment does not endorse the trading/sharing of copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent. Your milage may vary. Batteries not included. FDIC insured. EOE.]
OK. As long as I can be assured that The RIAA and the "Big Five" never sees a penny of my money. The RIAA is evil and must be put to (commercial) death.
Oh...AND I AM NOT A TROLL! This is a LEGITIMATE point to make about this news item. Just because reasonably priced download sites now exist, we still all have an obligation to do every thing we can to quash evil, lawyer flinging, corporate association associations like the RIAA and the MPAA.
.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install
An updated version (4.1.1) became available for windows yesterday and it addresses the known issues from the initial release last week. read about it here
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
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.
Are you suggesting that it even takes Microsoft a few tries to break something too?
When they're trying to do it on purpose. They then need a patch to make their bug work, because it's too buggy.
Except you just paid $17 for 1 or 2 good tracks, a couple that are so-so and nine that are garbage.
With everyone raving so much about iTunes being the "best app ever" for Windows users, it's been hard for me to see what the advantage is. I mean, iTunes is easy to use and nice and all, but it's hardly fundamentally different from a variety of services out there.
I downloaded the application the first day it came out, and so far liked it, but come on, there's nothing super-duper-extra-spectacular about it. Furthermore, there are some minor technical and technological problems that I've experienced.
1) Selection of radio genres is not that great. If all you wanted was to listen to some high-quality Internet radio, the genres and bitrates are okay, but MusicMatch and Live365 seem to be better.
2) Some radios are just silent. Listed in the app, some radios just don't have any music on the air.
3) All downloaded music is in AAC format. Great if you have iPod. Sucks for like 99% of the music players outthere that support MP3 and WMA. Yeah, there's always a way of burning a disk, then ripping that into MP3, but that's a hassle.
Other than that iTunes seems to be a nice app to have around for a music lover, but come on, it's just one of many. With Napster and Microsoft getting into the arena the competition will be heated.
Yes, you are showing the man that as long as the artists are defending their rights to have copyrighted material, you will continue to steal music from them. I don't agree with the RIAA tactics, but they have to try something to defend their rights. Maybe if the online music stores do well, then the RIAA will see that there are ways to use the Internet successfully, and therefore stop such aggresive measures. By refusing to buy music from any source, you are simply fueling their fire.
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.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
has there been any converter program written? like aac2mp3 or wmf2mp3 that will move through the encryption?
also i would be curious to know what security each of these 'stores' have in place, seeing how you are using their app to go over the network.. would be interesting to see if any concerns arose from shortcuts to meet promo deadlines..
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
The other posts are not quite correct: You can only burn a given playlist 10 times if it contains protected music. You can burn lists of MP3s or unprotected AACs as many times as you want.
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...
iTMS lets you re-download music you've already purchased.
;)
Not true. Once your download has completed, you can't download a song again unless you purchase it again. Apple recommends that you burn a backup of the downloaded song to CD or anything.
It also trashes a moderate number of computers on install, which some may see as a drawback.
As someone just said, they released a version that takes care of that.
MMJB doesn't work with the iPod? Somebody better tell Apple that they shouldn't have shipped it with all the iPods up until now.
MMJB's DRM-infected^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprotected songs are WMA's, which will not play on the iPod. Regular MP3's and such work just fine, but you can't copy the songs you purchase from their music service (which wasn't around when Apple first packaged the two together).
The other thing he doesn't cover is that Napster and MMJB downloads will work directly, without laborious circumvention techniques, on many different portable players and also on the computer itself on MMJB, WMP, and Winamp.
So they work with anything that can read protected WMA. And I wouldn't call burning and re-ripping laborious.
iTMS only plays on iTunes or iPod. iThink unless you have an iPod, you're better off with another service.
At least one company (I can't remember the name) has said that if the AAC format (the one that iTunes/iPod uses) catches on, then their players will support it. So don't be too sure about the strictly-Apple requirement in the not-so-distant future.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Although [Emusic.com] just got bought out and is significantly reducing the # of songs one can download, it has been an amazing value for lovers of non-pop genres, as well as contemporary indie pop stuff. I've been using it for 5-6 months and have mined their amazing jazz/blues/world catalog to my great satisfaction. I would guess I've paid a nickel a song at most, and that's about the right price. At their new rates, it is up to 30-40 cents per song, so you need to be pickier, but I'd still rather have a timeless gem for that price than a tune that will soon seem like last weeks news for a buck.
I won't pay a penny for it until it supports Ogg Vorbis.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
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.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
I love having to buy a whole CD when I just want one song for $12!
Just to make sure, does every one know why this is a problem?
The big record lables, in conjunction with the RIAA, MTV, Clear Channel, et. al. etc, market a product which DOES NOT EXIST!
They market the one or two good songs on the CD. However, they make no product by which you can purchase the one or two good songs. It's like marketing a wheel and requiring you to purchase a car in order to get it.
I know that, technically, there are CD singles, but they're hard as crap to find, they're still $5, and most of them are import bootlegs.
~Will
sig?
BMG is now selling CDs for $6.99 apiece with free shipping. All of you that have been saying that you'll stop pirating music when it's reasonably priced, here's your chance to live up to those words.
Of course, now I expect the answer will be that $6.99 is still a rip off for a piece of plastic that costs pennies to manufacture.
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
most CDs are, in fact, only $9.99. if every track on an album is available, you'll see a "Buy Album" link with it's price.
On compilation CDs, though, it seems that tracks are often missing. I'd guess probably due to licensing issues. Ultra Lounge CDs seem to all be partial... and thus, not available to buy whole. Maybe they'll fill it out later and have it available at a more rational, reduced cost.
woof!
"What do you do in in the year 2030 when nobody makes players for your multi-gigabyte collection of AAC files?"
Hmm - 27 years in the future. All the 45s I had from 27 years ago, I could play them if I still had them, and if I still had a record player, oh and if I still listened to the same music.
What was your point again?
Right now most new releases at Best Buy are $9.99. Most if not all of these CD's have at least 10 songs on them. So for .99 (or less) a song I get a full CD with a jewel case and album art work etc. & I can rip it to my hard drive or MP3 or Ogg or IPod.
.99 for a song that has worse sound quality, will only play where they tell it to, comes with no liner notes or art and can not be converted to use on most of the audio devices I have?
.50
So why would I pay
Let me know when I can download the CD Audio file for
http://www.kubuntu.org/
"And since copyright "theft" is really just infringment, which is a civil matter, all the RIAA can possibly do is sue people."
A common misperception. Here's the portion of copyright law which deals with criminal infringement.
Additionally, Googling on "criminal copyright infringement" will deliver links to data on criminal cases where copyright infringers have done jail time.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Most JPEG implementations use a constant quantizer matrix for a given "image quality" setting. Given a constant quantizer matrix, JPEG image compression uses the same step function for repeated compression and decompression of the same image. JPEG also works with each DCT block as it finds it and doesn't overlap them; a change to one block won't affect the others. Therefore, if you always use the same quality setting, you can edit small portions of a JPEG image without damaging the rest.
MP3 and Vorbis, on the other hand, changes quantizers based on the observed characteristics of the audio after the frequencies have been convolved with a masking function. This can subtly change some frequency bands' step functions on repeated compression. In addition, MP3 and Vorbis process using an MDCT, which processes overlapping blocks of signal, and an error can spread from block to block on repeated recompression. Heck, MP3 codecs don't even seem to have a consistent idea of the encoder's delay, so blocks may not be aligned from one save to the next.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's not even worth arguing which one is better, because all of these new music services are unacceptable for several reasons:
1. They all largely support RIAA music
2. Each has its own stupid DRM scheme, even if a weak one, that is a hastle for consumers
3. They are all platform limited and not Open Source (after all, you can't have DRM otherwise)
4. Most importantly: they still do not give all musicians a fair deal! ie.) at most 10-15% of sales for the typical signed artist, according to most reports.
The characteristics of a good online music service would be:
1.) Only non-RIAA affiliated labels or independent artists
2.) No DRM whatsoever, besides charging your account for the initial download
3.) Option to download in a lossless compressed format (such as FLAC)
4.) Contract with all artists that the music published via this service shall enter a non-restrictive Creative Commons license in at most 5-10 years (or after a sales target is reached) or else go public domain. This would re-introduce the concept of actually "supporting the arts and the public good"
5.) A free-downloads section for artists who realize it makes more sense to use recordings as a marketing tool for their live performances. Other artists services may be available in complement.
6.) All clients are open source and based on standard, open protocols.
7.) Artists directly receive at least 75% of the sales and are allowed to set their own per-track or per-album prices to remain competitive.
That would be a service I would love to use. Let us not accept anything less!
I don't know how realistic this parody is, but someone's got their 2 cents about artist's share posted here:
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/index.html
JGG
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.
Windows Media Audio with digital restrictions management encoding is encrypted, and it's decrypted, decompressed, and output through a Secure Audio Path (explanation). But because these services do in fact allow recording audio to a CD-RW disc, the limitation of no direct transcoding to MP3 is only a minor hurdle.
Will I retire or break 10K?
1) You can buy the one track you like for $.99; saves you $8.99!
... it's been mentioned here a million times.
2) AAC at 128 sounds great to me.
3) You do get the cover art.
4) Of course you can convert the AAC to MP3