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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.)"
Here's the link to browse their catalog!
Stupid promo redirect.
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.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
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!
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
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.
Hey freaks: now you're ju