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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.
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
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.
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'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?
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
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...