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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.
...welcome our Cheap, DRM-Free Music Downloading Overlords!
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
...if for no other reason than to encourage this kind of service.
:)
I haven't even seen the catalog yet.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Ummm yeah... submitted by an "Anonymous Reader", not by the owner of emusic at all, right? /wonders how much that cost.
are they hoping you might forget to pick up all 40 of your tracks? odd.
allofmp3.com is still superior
-- oh.... so..... sleeeeeepy.
That is $0.25 a track. Much cheaper than everywhere else. It's near my pricepoint. This
First it was anything but $0.99/track is not cheap enough. Then $0.99 is not enough,.. Now people are not even willing to spend a whole quarter for a song? I think there are some people here who will still be complaining when they are free, just because they aren't encoded at a high enough bitrate!
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 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.
How about Epitonic for free music downloads! Free, legal, and something that everyone will like.
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
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.
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.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
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.
We whine and bitch endlessly for and end to stupid, pointless DMR schemes. We pine for non-propritary formats. We wail when downloads are expensive.
And we complain when someone tells where it is.
You guys rock!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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).
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.
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.
I encode all my CDs in 2822 kbps mp3s, thus exactly doubling the quality of the original CD.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
...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?
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).
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
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
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
...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.
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...