Emusic Relaunches - Cheap, DRM-Free Downloads

An anonymous reader writes "Emusic.com has relaunched today. This is important for several reasons. 1) They sell MP3s. No DRM. I can play them on my Linux box or wherever. 2) They are encoding at 192Kbit/s VBR. That's near CD quality (and how I rip my own CDs). They are focusing on lesser known independent music and providing some editorial content to separate the good from the bad. I see lots of great jazz, classical, and folk/country stuff in their library. 4) Subscription rate is 9.99/month for 40 tracks. That is $0.25 a track. Much cheaper than everywhere else. It's near my pricepoint. This is the first online music store that I will seriously consider. (And actually the first that I _can_ consider since I'm a linux user.)"

Comments

Want to see what they have?

[DrunkenTerror]

Here's the link to browse their catalog!

Stupid promo redirect.

Re:Want to see what they have?

[DrunkenTerror]

And here's a Coral link!
She's getting hammered, as of 20:19 UTC.

Re:Want to see what they have?

[tfoss]

here is what it will take for me to pay for music:
1) must host every song ever, available for immediate speedy download in more than a few different formats/bitrates
2) a query tool (genre, artist, date of release, lyrics, etc) at LEAST a simple search utility
3) when I select a song I want to see the list of "other people who selected this song also selected.."

thats it.. first site to implement these 3 features gets my money. I don't care what it costs.

Hm, would you like those to come with a naked supermodel listening partner, or would you prefer she have a whipped-cream bikini instead?

Seriously dude, if you are setting your sights that high (#1 by itself is im-freaking-possible), then you are not the target market.

-Ted

monthly/per track pricing?

[wheezl]

are they hoping you might forget to pick up all 40 of your tracks? odd.

allofmp3.com is still superior

Re:monthly/per track pricing?

[jschottm]

Yes folks, the dubiously legal (at best) russian site that doesn't actually pay the artists (anything appreciable) is somehow able to undercut the legal service that tries to make sure that everyone gets paid, yet offers reasonably high quality recordings with NO DRM and restrictions for personal use. Hands up those who are surprised.

As far as the 40 tracks/month thing, well yeah. It's called being in business. No pricing policy will ever suit everyone's needs, but these folks have chosen one that appears to work for them and their clients. If you only want one or two tracks a month, this is not the service for you. I've been a subscriber for some time, and it works for me, even though there've been some months I don't use up my quota. Big deal. The monthly fee is about the cost of a decent meal.

As a point of information, a nice thing about their DRM-less existance is that they keep track of what you have download and let you redownload the same tracks for free. So if your hard drive crashes or if you want a copy of a song while you're at work, just log in, go to the page of what you've downloaded in the past, and download it again.

Re:monthly/per track pricing?

[Txiasaeia]

What are you talking about, not being legal for USians? From the linked site:

"Anyway, my friend and I were scouring the net looking for info on this site, and the controversy surrounding it. Here's the final word...from the horses'...well, I'll let you decide which part of the anatomy you insert there.

After checking with the RIAA and other licensing agencies, KCTL Kansas City; the radio station for KCTalk.com; has switched from paying $1.00 per song with Napster, to using the "pay per meg" service at allofmp3.com.

After the RIAA confirmed in an email that the service is in fact legal, just under a different contract due to the site being located in Russia, the switch was made immediately. All downloaded music from the site was quote "able to be used in a full broadcast and media capacity".

KCTalk.com just wanted to pass this information on to others that have been searching for a real site to download stuff from without paying arms and legs. Thank you to Dies Irae for pointing out this service.

Furthermore, KCTL has started replacing thier songs that were previously encoded at 128k, with the cheaper, yet better sounding, 192k that allofmp3.com provides. We have downloaded 9 songs, and have not quite used $0.75 yet. Great service!

Go, check it out. This radio station has done all of the "legwork" for us. Download, and be merry!"

I let my account lapse 3 months ago

[mekkab]

I had the "Platinum" membership- and to tell you the truth despite my very non-mainstream tastes, they didn't have a whole lot that I liked. Also, I hated how their electronic music was organized (there was little-to-no Drum and Bass/Jungle in the Drum and Bass/Jungle section!) Additionally, a 30 second sample (taken from the first 30 seconds!) of a 10 minute electronic music track (that takes 2 minutes to build up anywhere) is a use-less way to "try before you buy."

Additionally, there are too many Live recordings (read: poor sounding recordings). For example, they have a bunch of The Selecter tracks, but they're all live. Sorry, I want to studio versions.

I hope its useful for you. But I paid my money, downloaded some good tracks, a bunch of bad tracks, and walked away.

Re:I let my account lapse 3 months ago

[dr_dank]

I cancelled my account with them too. Their linux client didn't work more often than not (It would continuously time out connections). Their downloads are dependent on this client, so I had no choice but to drop the service.

Re:I let my account lapse 3 months ago

[deliciousmonster]

You should check out BeatPort.com. New releases aer encoded at 320 kbps, and previews are a full 2 minutes long.

If you're not into "uhn-tss uhn-tss uhn-tss" there's not much there for you, but it's great for club music.

Uh... near CD quality?

[GojiraDeMonstah]

CD quality is 1411 kbps. Certainly 192 is higher than the commonly seen 128, but at less than 14% of CD quality I wouldn't call it "near" CD quality. 320 kbps, which is the highest my chosen ripping software will go, is still roughly 1/4 CD quality.

Re:Uh... near CD quality?

[hethopus]

I guess you know nothing about music format quality. It's not the kbps that matter. Flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec) plays the exact same bits of a CD. That's why it's called lossless! And, it will give you 700 kBps. Quality is measured with very expensive equipment, not kBps. Mp3 is a lossy codec, meaning it looses quality when encoding.

Re:Uh... near CD quality?

[dasmegabyte]

What you're talking about is bit quantity. CDs use 1411 kilobits to image a given data sample...44000 packets of two 16 bit values per second.

This is not the same as quality. Quality in music is the amount of discrete dynamic information recorded within a sample. Believe it or not, storing an accurate representation of the data at a given sample rate and bit strength is not necessarily the best way to preserve quality. It's certainly not the most efficient. With a 1411 kilobits, psychoacoustically compressed sample, you could easily have a much higher bit strength or sample rate with more discrete dynamics than even the CD. Shit, even lossless compression could get double the quality or more at 1411 kilobits than a CD can.

That number is mostly meaningless for this reason. So is the term "CD Quality." I've seen it used for 192 kbit MP3, 128 kbit AAC, 64 kbit WMA...fact of the matter is, "CD Quality" is whatever you perceive it to be. I happen to really like AAC at 128 and higher bitrates, it preserves the precision I expect when encoding a rhythm section without creating shimmering or tiering. It's great for rock and hip hop. And that's all that matters.

Fixed client?

[Hatta]

Have they fixed their linux client? In the glory days of emusic, when downloads were unlimited, the client was compiled against some weird library that only red hat and mandrake had. They provided the library and a wrapper script for the rest of us, but I never could get it to work quite right. It would load, but couldn't fetch anything without a proxy server. It wasn't all that much fun.

If they've fixed the client I'm willing to give emusic another try. The selection is good enough that it's worth $.25 a track, and obscure enough that you're not likely to find it cheaper anywhere else.

What Relaunch?

[mmmmmhotpants]

I think this anonymous post was an advert.

Emusic used to be $9.99 per month and unlimited downloads, over a year ago. It was an absolutely amazing service and had me thinking that the world of digital music could be great for all parties.

I was wrong. Last Fall Emusic was bought out by some other company who changed the policy to the $9.99 for 40 or 50 tracks and its been that way for over a year. I cancelled my subscription.

After the annoucement was made, but before they switched formats, they pulled horrible stunts like not actually allowing you to download unlimited music (per their contract) but putting some aritifical cap on your downloading. They also used to incriminate people for downloading too much even though there was a unlimited deal in the contract. I started to lose respect for them.

I don't think there has been a relaunch. I think there is an executive at Emusic trying to get more business via Slashdot.

If you are reading this Emusic executive, bring back the old unlimited format (even at a higher cost)! Honor your contracts!

*thumbs up*

[incast]

I was an emusic subscriber for the earlier part of this year, and it was pretty darn good. My only complaint is that I ran out of stuff to download. That is why I cancelled my account. I'm a big fan of indie music, but I found that there wasn't quite enough to keep me going. And new releases don't show up very quickly.

But, the revenue sharing program does give 50% to labels/artists, so I found that if I did have extra credits in a month, I would download albums that I had once (illegally) downloaded. This made me feel better about myself.

I lasted for about 9 months on the old emusic, and it was $100 well spent.

No thanks

[peeping_Thomist]

I was an Emusic subscriber, but they kept jerking around the users. They continually changed the terms of the service. And their support for Linux was pathetic/nonexistent. What confidence can you have that the service you subscribe to is the service you'll eventually get? They've changed horses in midstream several times in the past; why should I think they aren't going to jerk me around again? Has there been a change of management? That's the only thing that would make me think about going back.

Allofmp3.com

[Xerotope]

The poster has forgotten my favorite quasi-legal russian music service, http://www.allofmp3.com/

They have no DRM what so ever, so it's great for you Linux users. Also, it's based in Russia, so it lends itself to those classic Slashdot "In Soviet Russia..." jokes. (In Soviet Russia, Music DRM You!", sorry, the lamest I could come up with)

It also has the most complete catalog (including Beatles), is priced right at $0.01 US per megabyte, and has a multitude of on-the-fly encoding options, including ogg Vorbis, Flac and mp3 up to 384 kbps. (however, I think FLAC and other "premium" encodes runs you $0.05 US per megabyte).

Suposedly it's perfectly legal under Russian copyright law, as long as they compensate the artist directly. Perhaps it's just paying for illegal music downloads that you could otherwise get off Kazaa.

Re:Allofmp3.com

[prostoalex]

How Russian music licensing works.

Compulsory licensing, so it's legal as far as they care. It's not really legal to distribute that music outside of Russia though.

Re:Allofmp3.com

[hom]

If they track you down in the US, you can be prosecuted under US laws for breach of copyright

not quite. there is no "breach of copyright", as everything is done legally. If you bought a bootleg VCD in Tiwan and then brought it home, you could get in trouble. But if you buy a legit VCD and bring it home it's totally legal, even if the VCD company has undercut US prices drastically.

In AllofMP3's situation, they have purchased a Russian broadcasting license of some sort. From what i understand it is basically a flat fee and not based on the number of items (songs). This lets them sell songs for just over bandwidth costs and still make money.

I would agree totally that the artists see next to nill from this. BUT if you want to support the artists you listen to, simply send them a donation. No money gets lost to middlemen (except a few cents to AOMP3) like the RIAA.

Re:Allofmp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, in the US, 17 USC 602(a) and (b) both prohibit unauthorized imports. There is a personal exemption in 602(a)(2), but that only lets people escape the ban in 602(a). The 602(b) ban is still in force, even for personal importation.

The difference is that 602(a) provides a remedy for the copyright holder, and bars importation where neither the exemptions of 602(a)(1)-(3) nor 109 apply. 602(b), OTOH, is enforced by the Customs Service, not the copyright holder, but is limited to copies that, had they been made in the US, would've been made illegally, regardless of the laws in the place they were made.

Re:Allofmp3.com

[Ahnteis]

Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501. This subsection does not apply to -

(1)

importation of copies or phonorecords under the authority or for the use of the Government of the United States or of any State or political subdivision of a State, but not including copies or phonorecords for use in schools, or copies of any audiovisual work imported for purposes other than archival use;

(2)

importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person's personal baggage; or

(3)

importation by or for an organization operated for scholarly, educational, or religious purposes and not for private gain, with respect to no more than one copy of an audiovisual work solely for its archival purposes, and no more than five copies or phonorecords of any other work for its library lending or archival purposes, unless the importation of such copies or phonorecords is part of an activity consisting of systematic reproduction or distribution, engaged in by such organization in violation of the provisions of section 108(g)(2).

(b)

In a case where the making of the copies or phonorecords would have constituted an infringement of copyright if this title had been applicable, their importation is prohibited. In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable. In either case, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to prescribe, by regulation, a procedure under which any person claiming an interest in the copyright in a particular work may, upon payment of a specified fee, be entitled to notification by the Customs Service of the importation of articles that appear to be copies or phonorecords of the work

"In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable."

I missed the "had they been made in the US" in that sentence?

there is also magnatune.com

[bluelarva]

You might be interested in http://magnatune.com/ as well. It's also DRM free and half the money goes directly to the artist. Also there is no subscription fee.

Bleep

[vitaflo]

This is the first online music store that I will seriously consider. (and actually the first that I _can_ consider since I'm a linux user.

That's not entirely true. You can buy from Bleep.com, and it's basically the same thing. Non-DRM 192kps MP3s. You just have to like their selection (mostly electronic music on Warp Records). It's been up for a while now, and you pay per song (or album), not a monthly fee (which I prefer).

Ummm...

[The Fanta Menace]

...where I come from, the presence of Moby in the catalog would be considered a good thing.

No news here...

[krbvroc1]

Nothing to see, move along folks.

I can't believe this makes 'news'. This is the same old crappy E-music as before.

For those who don't know, E-music had high quality VBR MP3 titles for download. Most labels would not license to them, so their catalog consists of mainly out of the maintstream / lesser known labels. In exchange for this less than up to date collection, they allowed unlimited downloads. That all ended in October 2003. First those who had the audicity to load up on the unlimited songs in large quantities quietely had their accounts cancelled.

In Oct 2003, part of the email they sent was the following:

" In order to respond to these ongoing challenges and maintain a compelling service for our valued customers, EMusic will be making a number of significant changes in the coming weeks and months. As part of these changes, we will be discontinuing the unlimited service plan and replacing it with a new service offering.

Unless you visit the link below: http://help.emusic.com/cu/index.cgi?cmd=step2&st=1 &categoryID=1198 and notify us of your intention to cancel your subscription prior to November 8, 2003, your EMusic subscription will convert into EMusic Basic. Under EMusic Basic, you will be billed $9.99 per month for access to the service with no minimum monthly commitment, but you will be limited to no more than 40 downloads during your monthly billing cycle. "

So you can see, nothing has changed. Browsing their catalog the selection appears to be the same limited catalog. Their price point hasn't even changed. In fact, their same website stills has the same 'sleaze' factor. Information on the costs and limitations are not easily available from the front page. Clicking - sign me up for a trial - doesn't give much details until you give personal information.

The same limitations remain from Nov 2003. If you hit your whopping 40 tracks download in the month, thats it. There is no per song fee for each song over that.

Like I said, its hard to believe this qualifies as news. I wonder if someone was cleaning out their email and say Emusics email from Sep 2003 and thought it was 2004?

Re:I am signing up...

[16K Ram Pack]

If you've got some capacity, try some of the following bands on there...

The Fall, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, The Pixies. If you can find Cruiser's Creek on there,try it.

encourage magnatune

[chocolatetrumpet]

I am the last person to "promo" a record label, but I can't believe I haven't seen it on slashdot yet.

Magnatune
Free mp3 streaming of the entire catalog.

If you want, pay $5-$18 (you choose!) for an album download (40+ minutes) in mp3, ogg, wav, or whatever it is you like. Artist gets 50%.

If you want a physical cd, pay $15-$30 (something like that.. you choose!) and the artist gets 100%.

There is *no crap* in magnatune; all of their members are peer reviewed. It's solid.

I don't work for them or anything, I am just a very happy customer!

Former Subscriber

[Gatton]

As a former subscriber I can say they are worth it depending on the type of music you listen to. If it's strictly mainstream then forget it. For me I spent nearly all my time in their classical and jazz catalogs. There's plenty of good stuff including lots of historical recordings by great artists/conducters etc. I was upset when they changed their pricing model. Being able to download all the tracks you wanted (well it was actually ~2000 per month but me being dial-up I never came close to the unspoken cap) was certainly nice but we all knew it wouldn't last.

Check out the link to browse their catalog that someone posted earlier in the comments. It definitely doesn't sound like much if you're used to downloading all you want from p2p. But if you already use pay sites it's a very economical way to try new music.

And as for why I'm not currently a member it's all economics. I plan to join again in the near future.

Oh and again if you're a jazz fan (especially if you like the great jazz pianists like Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Jelly Roll Morton etc) then you'll really like the service.

Re:Sounds like a front page ad as usual.

[timster]

Well, there's no magic to "CD quality". It's just 1411kb/s linear PCM. At any given bitrate an MP3 has much better sound than PCM at the same bitrate. And don't talk to me about compression artifacts; linear PCM has compression artifacts too.

We don't encode MP3 much higher than 320 because naturally it's not possible to get better sound than was present in the original PCM data stream. If we had access to a very high-bitrate source, a hypothetical 1411kb/s lossy-compressed file made from that source would sound better than a CD... but you wouldn't have to go all the way to 1411 to beat the CD.

Point is, all sound recording is compression, some is better than others. And I'm just hassling you on the "no mp3 is better than a CD" line. A 192 of course isn't CD quality, but I'd challenge you to find much difference at 320.

Hardly the first.

[Scott Madin]

Magnatune and AudioLunchbox also provide non-DRM formats (ALB has your choice of mp3 or Ogg Vorbis). ALB also frequently has sales, or gives away free songs, and while single tracks are normally a buck, whole albums don't go above $10. As others have pointed out, $10 a month is only a better deal if you actually do download at least ten tracks in that month. There just isn't that much good music out there -- better to pay only for what you do get, rather than what you might get.

NOT the only one for Linux users!!!

[DdJ]

I use Audio Lunchbox, which lets you download in both 192kbit MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. I've also poked at Bleep, which currently supports MP3 and is thinking about FLAC.

Both of these are DRM-free and will give you files that work on Linux (or BeOS or PalmOS or an Amiga or a Newton or whatever).

audiolunchbox.com

[thryllkill]

no way affiliated with audiolunchbox.com, unless you consider rabid fan to be an affiliation.

--DRM free
--mp3s and ogg vorbis encoding (most tracks can be downloaded as ogg, there are a few that are only mp3s I think)
--independent music
--similar price scheme as iTMS
--bigger catalogue than emusic (in fact, most of the good stuff from emusic's glory days is on audiolunchbox.com)
--did I mention the no DRM

Audio Lunchbox....

[Sunnan]

...sells unencumbered oggs and mp3:s, both around 192 kbps, your choice to download both or either. (I usually just go for the vorbis.)

I hate plugging stuff but it's a really small company, they don't seem to do much advertising, and, first and foremost, noone seems to have heard of them, and they deserve better than that. They've been great to me and they have stuff that's often hard to find on p2p.

What the relaunch actually entails...

[schmatt]

I'm reading the comments on this story and it seems no one has actually explained what the "relaunch" is about. Basically all it is that they have hired a new editorial staff, changed the interface, and added some new stuff like ability to see what other people are downloading. The "new" eMusic is simply a marketing push for an existing service that's been going for quite a while.

That said, I've been a subscriber of theirs for a couple years now, and I've been very happy with it. I had an account back when it was still unlimited downloads, and while I was a little pissed when they changed over to the more limited model, I stuck with the service. I don't know their reasons for dropping the unlimited service, but I assume it was because bandwidth isn't free and they couldn't afford to continue like that.

I've seen comments complaining that eMusic's selection is crap. If you mean it has no major labels, then yes, it's crap. However, that's not what they're aiming for. From their site:

"eMusic is the only digital music service entirely focused on serving the needs of independent music fans and independent labels. "

With that in mind, they have an excellent selection and they frequently pick up new labels. I have yet to run out of things I want to download, and I'm on the highest plan (90 songs a month). For me it's boils down to the ability to get music in the mp3 format and to find new interesting music.

Anyway, just wanted to put in a slightly more informed 2 cents...

Independent music on www.emusic.com

[wemgadge]

As an independent musician myself, I was interested in signing on. So I checked the contact link and (re)discovered The Orchard. For $49US and 5 copies of your demo, you too can be on emusic AND iTunes AND Napster AND Rhapsody AND MSN AND Musicmatch plus a whack of other legit pay music sites.

As someone who got in on the ground floor at www.mp3.com the first time (and has since had his music relegated to the basement ) because of MP3.com's sale, I find this very exciting. I remember when The Orchard was ONLY selling CDs from their own website and thinking "man that sucks, I'm better off setting up a server with my own stuff on Kazaa" but now that's all changed. If you want to market your indie music online (and get into the www.emusic.com family), The orchard is the way to go.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with, nor have I ever been affliated with www.theorchard.com, but I will be joining now that I have found this link. Thanks Slashdot. I'm also not affiliated with Emusic (yet). Now my life has meaning.

Legality of allofmp3

[Calroth]

There's an article about the legality of allofmp3 in the Sydney Morning Herald, at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/26/10828314 75556.html (registration probably required). Note that it's in the context of Australian law.

Quote from it follows:

We sought some advice from a Melbourne barrister and contributor to these pages, Simon Minahan, who practises in the area of intellectual property.

His opinion: "There's probably nothing to stop the individual from downloading this material for private use. For end users, the issue is a basic question relevant to acquiring a reproduction of any copyright work: has the rights owner consented?"

Even if allofmp3.com's asserted licence is bogus, says Minahan, "the end user would seem to have a good basis to argue that he is an innocent infringer, which would mean he isn't liable to damages, although he would still be liable to an order requiring him to destroy or deliver up any copies and an order requiring him to refrain from doing it again."