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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.
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
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.
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.