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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.)"
The iTMS was the only online music store that really had me sit up and take notice. Now eMusic is making me do the same thing.
iTunes is nice since it's cheap per song, but the selection, though huge, misses out one some less mainstream, more niche genres. eMusic seems to fill in the missing areas pretty well (although still not enough psychedelic trance) and provides DRM-free tunes. This company could go quite far.
For most consumers, though, I think the price-per-song versus a monthly price could still be the deciding factor.
is MP3 Search. They sell tracks for $0.10 and no DRM either. Worried about giving your credit card to them? That's why I use a Virtual Account Number instead.
I encode at 256 or 320 VBR.
No, no, I'm lying. I encode with ogg, set at quality 6. That's not bad, but it still isn't CD quality.
If you have a *good* stereo (no, your computer speakers, or a headphone pluged into your soundcard does not count), you'll hear artifacts if you actually have the real source. In addition, mp3's at moderate quality always sound "flat" to me.
I'll wait until someone offers lossless quality downloads. Until then, I'm far better off buying used CD's...at $3-$5 a CD, it's a far better value.
When Emusic.com had unlimited MP3's for something like $14.99 a month and I was a subscriber for a couple of years. Then they "relaunched" with monthly limits and I jumped ship. I was willing to try new music when there wasn't a limit, but as soon as there was a ceiling, I stopped experimenting with the music in their catalog and dropped the service.
Now, they're "relaunching" again with what looks like a smaller catalog, the same monthly restrictions, etc. I'm trying to see how this is better. Most likely an attempt to appear as a "new" alternative to iTunes, et al when in fact they've been there all along and are actually on a downward spiral.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Their business model was better -- for me! -- when it was $10 a month for all the tracks you could download. I came to digital music late, found out about emusic first, and can honestly say I don't have any pirated .mp3s among the ~4GB of music on my machine...
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Ummm, this doesn't sound all that different from their last Re-launch. I was a subscriber when they were $9.99/month for unlimited downloads, and let me tell you how much I loved that (and how much stuff I downloaded). I am not a fan of this new model, but that might be because I already downloaded 8 gigs off of them for about $50.
/. crowd, but I never looked too closely at their third incarnation (the flat monthly fee was their second). This new launch might be different, but it sounds a lot like the last one.
Their selection is a combo of new, indie artists and great old jazz artists. There is a lot of techno, too. If you are into jazz or techno, or just like listening to interesting indie bands it is worth it.
This story, though, doesn't sound like anything more than a PR dump on the
IANAL, but I play one on
Partially true indeed, but at least some popular or semi-popular songs are quite good. This product does however appear to be cheap enough to supplement kaaza and cd ripping. Why steal when you can buy cheaply?
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
why don't more sites use a simple query tool like newegg's? just about every site tries to categorize everything into drill down categories that actually maximizing the amount of clicks it takes to find what you want.
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.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Why stop at allofmp3.com? Might as well go straight to pirating music off KaZaA or whatever kids use these days since both are illegal in the United States. allofmp3.com is only legal in Russia. They made a deal with the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society which is the Russian equivalent of the RIAA. This does not in any way translate to being legal for Americans.
p /t-2147.html
There is discussion at the following forum as well as many others if you Google for a few minutes.
http://www.delldjsite.com/forums/archive/index.ph
I did, however, get a whole bunch of George Carlin, T. Monk, and other collections before I jumped. That same stuff would take a year or two at 40 tracks/month.
Independant bands are all well and good, but Id like to see the major bands signing on with these.
Won't happen. EMUSICs focus is small, indie bands (for the most part) because the big labels won't let their stuff be released with DRM 'protection'.
It's good for the indies, really, as all the big stuff is available for free anyhow so this gives the indies some exposure.
Trolling is a art,
I used to download all sorts of songs off mp3.com for free. Ya, they were only 128kbps non-vbr, but that was better than the crappy Xing encoding that was all over Napster at the time. The only thing bad about mp3.com is that I had to sort through all the shit. Finding a good song was like finding your wife's diamond ring that the dog ate.. There were a lot of good songs, though.
Now, we have the same thing and it's only $9.99 as opposed to free. Wonderful. Is it just me or does it seem like the Internet is trying to charge us for things we used to get for free? Once people are used to getting things for free (as in songs), it's very hard to get them to pay unless a new feature is added that outweighs the opportunity cost.
People need to realize that the next big music business model is small music. Bands will have to post their songs and fans will decide if they're worth paying for. The big music will be left to selling concert tickets and controlling the radio that no one will listen to.
We are a capitalist system and antiquated business is supposed to get phased out or adapt. Clearly, big music is not adapting. This smaller label might be able to sell songs cheaper for a bit, but it will be a select audience and will never explode.
I welcome the demise of big music. Music is art which is optional. Art is for the masses. They can't force me to buy their art even if they force a tune to get stuck in my head. Perhaps I'm just completely cynical, but I just can't see this smaller label having any chance of succeeding in the long run since it is still based on the current 'failing' (failed, imo) business model, only cheaper.
All I can say is 'good luck.'
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Has anyone tried AudioXtract ?
I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, and it costs $50, but you can record up to 8 streams from internet radio stations to mp3 files. It fills in the tags and doesn't record dups. They claim it is legal, same as recording from the radio. Let it run 24/7 from the right stations and your library should fill up quickly. As long as you keep them for your personal use there shouldn't be any legal problems, right?
I'm the opposite. I'd like the major bands to stay away from services like emusic. Why? Major bands are pricier, they will require a higher price, that'll confuse things at the least. Also major bands will overwhelm the indies and we'll be back to square 1. What you're suggesting is the crap that's happened over and over again in USA with Walmart, Starbucks, McDonald's and all the other "major" shops that crowd out individuals and entrepreneurship and invite in the big brother.
No. Keep the major bands in itunes and its clones, leave the indies alone in emusic and its clones. If you like both kinds, nothing stops you from using two or more services simultaneously.
...when you buy digital music such as this, what proof do you have that you really own it?
I've got a large collection of music in mp3 and ogg formats on my laptop, ripped from my CD collection. I've often been worried about going through international customs at airports and having some over-zealous security nut decide to search the contents of my hard disk drive and then fast-track me to death row for DMCA infringement.
Now, at least with my mp3 collection, I can point to all of my CDs (well, at home) as proof that I own them. But if I were to buy mp3 files from emusic, what proof do I get that I really own them? Are emusic keeping records of all purchases and will they be willing to provide
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Thanks again, and everyone else should look at it. Quality artists there.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Wow! Willing to jump onto a fixed price service with a download limit that focuses on unknown talent! You're brave!
Really, I believe the Internet needs to be the next generation radio, instead everybody is trying to figure out new pricing plans or protocols to hose the consumer or the artists. What I want is a way to discover new talent FOR FREE, new music FOR FREE, and be given some reason for faith that the rest of the CD is good too. If so, let me purchase the rest. I'm sure artists are also looking for new ways of promoting their music for free and ways of selling CDs without losing out on the markups by distributors and music stores. If you still feel the need that consumers must be hosed for something, make them use P2P.
Ozwald
Last time similar music sites came up I tagged a Magnatune comment on it but didn't catch much moderation (too late in the day I guess).
Gotta love em tho. How many other record companies have a phrase: "We are not evil." AND have a symbol that looks at first glance like it's flipping someone off?
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
0.99 is way too much for me, IMHO, as I like to listen to a lot of songs relatively few times per. 0.25 is more like it. 0.10 is probably closer to the true value of your average song.
For the record, if TV were pay-per-view, I wouldn't spend more than $0.25 per commercial-free half-hour one-time-view. It doesn't sound like much, but any more than that and the prices take it above cable and rental. Again, 0.10 or less is closer to the value of your average TV half-hour show.
Well, it doesn't matter. The RIAA and MPAA have made a career of charging exorbitant prices for what is mostly crap-not-worth-the-time-it-takes-to-watch/listen, whilst royally screwing the artists, good or bad. As the IP laws strengthen this will only worse, and will probably only give them more ways to screw people (such as purchasers of blank media). Your tax dollars at work.
Most folks aren't bothered by piracy of this sort, because most people correctly consider recorded entertainment to have little or no intrinsic worth - the sort of thing that once upon a time you could buy for a song. If they really do like it, they pay.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I haven't even seen the catalog yet. :)
I thought I would check this service out quickly. I trusted them with my name, email, street address, and credit card #. Hopefully that won't come back to bite me in the ass. Anyway, I hadn't seen the catalog before giving out this info either. It didn't seem to be available from the free trial page I arrived at. Feeling adventurous, I took the plunge anyway.
As I suspected, the music selection is extremely limited, and of pretty terrible sound quality, despite being encoded at relatively high bitrate. The first thing I tried was a Bob Marley track "Sun Is Shining" from the "Natural Mystic" album released on the Avid label (not Island Records). It sounded like a cassette dub... really awful. It was MP3 encoded at 154kbps VBR, so the source must be the problem. I went to Amazon to check if this album was legit, and one of the comments there said it was a bootleg, and to avoid it since proceeds would not go to the artist's family. Strike One!
Wanting to be fair to the service, I only went for tracks of their "Featured Artists", figuring that they would have some quality control going on there. Bob Marley was a "Featured Artist", so they deserved that first strike. The next artist I tried was Moby. I thought it would be less likely that they would be ripping off an artist who was still alive... Well, I clicked on the "Moby" link and waited. And waited. Mozilla says: "Waiting for www.emusic.com..." After a few minutes, I gave up trying to score a Moby track. Strike Two!
Ok... I'm starting to lose hope. Let's give them another chance. I tried Willie Nelson next. Hmmm... still nonresponsive. Could it be that they've been slashdotted? Somehow I wasn't seeing thousands of slashdotters whipping out their wallets like I did, so I tried another strategy. I logged on from another machine. All of a sudden, things are pretty snappy again. Hmmm... what's up with that? Anyway, I tried perusing the classical selection. I couldn't really find anything exciting to listen to, and the search was difficult because they have everything arranged by sub-genre and album name, instead of composer. I did settle on a track from the piano recital of some dude I've never heard. It was ok I guess, but no way am I staying with this service I thought. It's just too lame. Strike Three!
Ok, game's over, or so I think. I click on the account link and wait. And wait. And wait... Oh Phew! There's the account page. I quickly click on the "Cancel" link. Still slow, but I'm relieved when the next page comes up asking the primary reason why I'm cancelling. All of the reasons are equally enticing, things like "I'm having technical problems" and "Not enough music in my favorite genre." I settle on one and click on the "Cancel My Subscription" link. Then I got this message:
Your eMusic account has been set to cancel at the end of this billing period. Your credit card will not be charged again (emphasis mine). If you have any downloads remaining, you may finish downloading them until the end of your current billing period.
Wait a minute! I thought this was supposed to be a free trial. If those mofos charged my card I'm going to go ballistic! I'm not so sure this is the kind of service that I want to encourage...
- Playlists: If you listen to music in the background while you work like I do, then you've come across this problem. You heard a song you liked, but didn't look at its name before the next one started playing. How do you find out what you heard so you can buy it? Magnatune doesn't offer a playlist of the stream on their site.
- Searchable Database: Since there's no playlist you decide to search for the song. But you can't. There is no searchable database on their site. You must listen to each individual song in whatever catagory you think the stream was in while crossing your fingers and hoping you'll find it within the first 50 or so... Too much work, IMO.
- Customer Support: You really want that song, don't know what it was called and can't find it on their site, so you send an email to Punky, the Emailclown. The problem is that he doesn't respond. Any email stating "I am looking for a song played at x:xxpm write before (name of song I did catch). I have money and and prepared to give it to you." should elicit some sort of response - even a canned one. I've sent several. Even followups weeks later. Nothing.
I purchase music at Bleep [bleep.com] and Apple's iTMS. In contrast to Magnatunes, I have emailed Apple on several occassions and received replies. Both Bleep and iTMS allow me to search their catalogs. Magnatunes doesn't seem to want my business, so I'll spend my money elsewhere.I see Magnatune praised a lot here. Some of you even rave about them. But do you just select music randomly and get lucky? Or do you go there with certain musicians in mind? Aside from using them as a proof of concept in the noble fight against the RIAA, I just don't see how anybody who doesn't have a lot of time on their hands can use their service..
Fun with Inkwell | www.coo
"...but I doubt that it's four times higher, which it would have to be for this to profitable."
I imagine that the indie bands/labels are not charging the same licensing fees as the major labels, and thus a profit can be turned on a smaller per-song fee.
No CD case, no CD "art", just the music. Sounds good to me, but then I AM biased, as I already partake in Warp Records' online offerings at www.warprecords.com/bleep (please pardon my HTML illiteracy)