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Digital Music Stores Reviewed
Kozz writes "If you've thought about trying the new Napster 2.0, or perhaps MusicMatch, or even WAL*MART music service, you really need to read this review at BBspot.com. Brian takes a break from his standard satire fare and writes a comprehensive review not only of the previously mentioned stores, but also of BuyMusic.com, eMusic, Apple iTunes, and RealOne Rhapsody. It breaks down the features of each service, the prices, restrictions, general pros and cons, and really gives you an idea of which one(s) you should try depending on your needs."
Why is it not okay to buy CDs, but fine to buy music piecemeal via the internet? I don't want to give the RIAA my money, and distribution via the net doesn't change that at all. I buy the few CDs I want at concerts, in the hope that I'll still get legitimate music and the RIAA will get less money.
Hypocrisy sucks, pick a stance and stick with it.
--
lds
The only down side in reading the review, is that it's highly windows-centric. The reviewer fails to point out obvious things like the fact that iTunes works seamlessly between Windows and Mac platforms (while most of the other services break completely). Besides that, it was definitely a good read.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Going to be? It is. Check out this article about Wal-Mart's ruthless business practices.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
Ive said it before and ill say it again, cdbaby.com kicks ass. They let you listen to 2 minutes of 5-7 songs off an album to see if you like it, if you do buy it, if not go on to the next one! All their albums are reviewed by the editors to give you description of what the music is like. Plus, after your first purchase, they send you a free cd with each purchase thereafter (usually a mix cd which is pretty good.)
Disclaimer: all though this read like an ad, its not. Im just a satisfied customer.
This is a great alternative to emusic and such pay for play setups where you waste a quota trying to find music you like.
What I find interesting is that some songs are available in one service, but not others. So if you think of downloadable mu$ic as equivalent of a physical music store, it's not quite, becase a CD is a CD, and no matter where you buy it, you can play/rip it anywhere, on anything (capable of playing CD's, that is).
So there's still an insentive to buy CD's. But not as much, not enough to keep CD stores in business, I would not be surprised if they start closing soon. After that happens - what do you do to get a song that's only available from one service, but not the other?
Will there ever be a way to buy once play anywhere?
Sorry, but anybody that uses these services and feels they're sticking it to the RIAA while rewarding the artist has their head in the sand.
If you break a CD from the store, are they obligated to give you a new one? What if it gets stolen? This is no different from the way it's been in the past. I see it as 'you bought something, so it's not their responsibility anymore'. Besides, iTunes (and perhaps others) allows you to copy the track to 2 other machines.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
This is interesting because I just read on CNN that 2004 is to bring loads of free music Could it be that the business model of the way that music is sold is changing due to all these online stores?
I wanted to buy a book on tape as a Christmas present for my offline mother, but I didn't want to pay for express shipping to receive it in time. Amazon.com referred me to an online download at Audible.com. "Great," I thought, "I'll buy an MP3 file and burn it to CD."
I rushed into the purchase without reading the fine print. I didn't realize I was buying a proprietary "MP3 quality" recording and not an actual MP3 file. I didn't realize I had to download Audible.com software to listen to and manipulate the audio file.
The audio software failed to recognize my CD burner, so I requested and received a refund. I was miffed at not having an MP3 file and the prospect of spending time with a tech support person to route around a problem that wouldn't exist if I had been given an MP3 file to begin with.
As luck would have it, I bought the book on *CD* from the manufacturer for only $2 more, plus $6 standard shipping, and it arrived today.
Exactly, that's why I'm saying it's important to be able to make back-up copies of your music. With licenced music, you have to worry about the songs only working on a few computers, if that. If it was one of your favorite songs, do you think those few systems could withstand say 20 years? Will the online music website be there to re-verify your license files on Windows 2023? Will all these online music stores survive that long? Maybe not. At least with physical CD media you don't have to worry about such things.
From what I have read, about 45% of the final sales price of a CD is based on retail, manufacturing and distribution costs. If that is so, then the current online offerings actually raise the profit margin to record labels and the RIAA without benefiting the artists at all. Should I be grateful? I think not.
There is tremendous potential here for artists to go directly to consumers. The costs of setting up a digital recording studio are no longer prohibitive, though they are not trivial. It is reasonable to expect that sites will spring up soon enough to provide the infrastructure that independent artists need to distribute their music and collect on the sales with a reasonable overhead. The current online stores seem to be a last ditch attempt to maintain control by the music industry. Nothing surprising there, but we should think very hard about whether we want to support a timid change when the potential for radical change exists.
If your using AAC, then you are fine in this suituation.
WMA - depends on the Music Store, for example, WalMart... if you format your hard disc / change your PC, you cannot play your music on your box. The music file is tied to a license which is downloaded the first time you play the music IIRC.
I don't know if you've noticed or not, but everyone and their brother is setting up their own freakin' online music store. If they all offer nearly the same exact content in the same exact form, why should I go with one over another? The online music market is still in its infant form, and it's already becoming saturated with too many stores. Coke setting up their own music store? What the hell?!
I find it laughable that people would actually spend $1 to buy a song. That's insane. For a full CD, you're almost talking $15...for songs I can only listen to on my computer...in a lousy format...and I don't get any case, media, or art with it. Thank you, I'd rather pay the $13 and take my music wherever I want to. Does anyone else find it shocking that these stores are actually able to stay afloat?
Let's give it a year. I'd love to see an "online music store" year in review next December. Who will stand and who will fall?
Jeez, now I remember why I hate going into stores that sell CDs. Going to the dentist to have your wisdom teeth removed is an experience too, it doesn't mean that I am volunteering to have any other teeth ripped out of my head.
You and your scruffy, NIN-quoting, black-clothes-wearing haters might enjoy going to the music store to make fun of all the people with actual lives, but the rest of us would just as soon skip all that fun and just get our CDs, by mail preferably. The last thing that I want to do is pay extra for a CD so that I can wallow in all of that "atmosphere."
Wal-Mart, a great company.
there's no place like ~
I see a lot of people complaining in this story about restricted formats, money still going to the RIAA, and Windows-only. None of you read the article.
eMusic gives you unrestricted VBR MP3s at well under a dollar per song. They deal largely with independent artists who are not beholden to the RIAA, which is a big part of why they can offer these distribution terms. They also explicitly support Linux, as well as Windows and Mac OS.
"But I don't like that music!" Well, you _should_
Yeah, it takes more effort to find music, but I've been on both sides of the fence and I've found the indie side to be far more rewarding. Bands like Enon, Quasi, El Guapo, Freezepop, Call and Response, Stereo Total...they will probably never hit mainstream radio, and there's absolutely no good reason why.
With a band like Freezepop, you don't even need an eMusic! Their CDs are cheap, and you can download full MP3s of many of their songs from their own site for free. Lifestyle, a side project of one of their members, has an entire album's worth of tracks that basically fall in between the first and upcoming second album. All for free.
There's plenty of crap in indie too, of course. Here, I'll have to give a blatant plug to the site linked in my sig, wmbc.umbc.edu. We are currently on hiatus until the spring, but you can listen to the automated music stream that usually fills in between live DJs. You can also look at our Top 30 chart, which is actually a representation of the 30 albums the DJs chose to play the most, not a pre-mandated playlist. And hey, we use Debian! And our music database software is available on freshmeat!
See, you can discover independent music the same way you used to discover mainstream. There are many other stations like ours (and I'll admit that some are probably better). You could also take eMusic up on their 50 free tracks offer, or check out cmj.com, where most college stations report their top 30. I'm almost positive you'll find something you like, and you don't have to feel bad for buying it.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
The author could have either tried to make a more apples-to-apples comparison by measuring the service against that other other sites on their first week out, or at least summarized at the end of the walmart review making the callout and saying "I should review it again in a few months".
Personally, I'm taking a wait and see approach -- I suspect their catalog and feature set will both grow substantially over the next few months. Yeah, sure, the explicit lyrics will still be edited out, but since I don't listen to much music like that it won't really affect me much.
Just wanted to point out another option if Clear Channel pop isn't your thing. Audio Lunchbox carries an interesting line up of indie label music, the file format is unencumbered, and songs are $.99. The have "bulk" rates, too, if you purchase a "lunch card".
http://audiolunchbox.com
I haven't bought anything yet (and I have no relation to the company), but I'm keeping my eye on it.
-h3
I've been using Rhapsody for over a year. I love it.
First, you can do all the normal stuff you'd expect from an on-demand streaming service; make playlists of songs, add entire albums to your library, listen to pre-programmed channels, or create your own channels by selecting a list of artists, etc.
The sound quality is high and the connections reliable. It's not for dial-up users. You need broadband.
In addition to streaming the songs most can be burned to CD for 79 cents/each. I seldom use this feature. I use this gadget to get the audio from my PC to the stereo while streaming.
Here's what really makes Rhapsody valuable to me: The Rhapsody desktop app integrates the Muze database, the same database you'll find at music store kiosks for doing searches. With this you can do searches by artist, album, and song title. Also, for each artist you see similar artists, influencers, and followers, all hyperlinked together. I can spend hours just following links among artists, finding music new to me that I'm more likely to like.
Music is also categorized by genre, with a playlist of typical songs for the genre and a list of albums and artists considered important to the genre.
A small negative: I'd like to see the ability to search by genre and include boolean expressions in the search.
Price: $10/month ($8 if paid quarterly). Not bad.
When you get tired of your eBook being locked in a propretary DRM, you can just burn to CD and re-rip (with iTunes). That's why I like iTunes and the ITMS, because I know even if Apple folded tomorrow I would still be able to convert songs to whatever format I liked at my leisure without worrying about music expiration. Wait until some of these services start folding... sure MP3 books would be nice but ITMS gets, as the engineer in the classic joke would say, "close enough".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've downloaded a lot of songs from iTunes. The quality is quite good actually. I have also burned my entire CD collection to AAC with 192bit rate. I can't tell the difference. In fact, I think some of the downloads from iTunes sound better. It might have something to do with them creating the AAC files from master recordings.
It now makes me wonder how much quality is in the CD's we buy. I'm still trying to determine if some of my older CD's from the 80's have begun to sound worse over time. Or were some just not recorded very well to start.