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Audio Lunchbox: Music with no DRM

Posted by michael on from the tanstaaflb dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MacCentral just posted an article on Audio Lunchbox, an online music store dedicated to music by independent artists and labels. ALB offers all of its music in DRM free MP3 (192 kbps) and Ogg Vorbis (Q6) formats with iTunes style pricing and a completely web based and platform independent delivery system."

5 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Good deal by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me help those of you who may not know... it costs a lot of money to write and get a good recording of a song. If I were to only charge 25 cents for a recording that cost me $500 of my time, it would take me 2000 copies, versus perhaps 500 copies, to get at least to a gross return on my investment. What makes this website cool is that the artist doesn't have to sell as many tracks as they otherwise would, because the artist is getting a bigger payout than pretty much anyone offers. Considering that this is the case, is it worth your 99 cents to get the track? Yes, because that 99 cents goes a lot farther towards helping that artist than it would for say, Britney Spears, who probably gets a tiny fraction of that sale and could really care less. Oh yeah -- she doesn't write her music anyways, so it's kinda moot to discuss her, but you get the point.

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  2. Re:It had to happen sooner or later by niko9 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here use this link to be sure. RIAA Radar

    You can be sure that the music you purcase doesn't support the RIAA efforts.

  3. Magnatune.com is better by kwelndar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Open music is what Magnatune.com sells. From the site: "All songs are available in MP3, CD-quality WAV, OGG, FLAC and MP3-VBR: download whichever formats you like." The best part is you can download and audition the music, then decide what you want to pay, if anything. "Magnatune lets you choose how much you want to pay for your downloaded album. The more you choose to pay, the more the artist makes, because at Magnatune, half goes directly to the artist, while the other half supports Magnatune." They are also members of the Creative Commons.

    Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with Magnatune.com. This is just a really cool idea whose time has come.

  4. Re:Magnatune by Mprx · · Score: 5, Informative

    Magnatune is great. Unlike most online music stores, they sell lossless CD quality audio (in FLAC format, or WAV if you want to waste everyone's bandwidth). The selection is steadily growing, and there is some excellent music there. All their music can be previewed in 128kbps MP3, and it's only $5 (or more if you are feeling generous) an album if you want higher quality.

  5. Re:$0.99 ?? by Zardoz44 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Please don't bring books and intellectual property into this. Of the $40 for a new hardcover, you're paying about $3-5 for the author. The rest goes to the publisher for actually printing the book with good paper, good ink, etc.., and shipping the books to the bookstores and so forth.

    The reason people download music and not books is that it is cheaper and easier to download and burn to a CD. If you buy a hardcover for $40, you're paying $35 for the medium, not the content.

    With peer to peer, the medium has been made enormously cheap. Why are we paying $.99 for a track (equivalent to store prices) when their distribution costs are all but eliminated (bandwidth + servers are much cheaper than stores, staff, shipping, and packaging).