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The Perfect Online Music Store?
brace asks: "With the proliferation of online music sales, more and more companies are jumping onto the bandwagon and trying to sell you downloadable music. Some of them do a good job, some of them are just bad at it. The question I have for Slashdot readers is essentially 'What would the perfect online music store offer you?' Should it have OGG and FLAC tracks, as well as MP3? Would you rather pay per-song or per-month? Would you want the option to purchase hard-copy as well (like the actual album, or even band merchandise)? Should the song samples be 30 second downloads or full-song streams fed on-demand? Is a radio station important for an online music store?"
"Personally, I'd like to see a store that has a 24/7 internet radio station, on-demand streaming, $0.99 downloads (and $9.99 album downloads), links to purchase actual albums or merchandise, and with MP3, OGG, and FLAC support. I'd also like to see the artists being paid more than 10%..."
allofmp3.com is already amazing. super low prices and i can get most of the music in ogg q5. :)
After 3 years of boycotting music and not buying any, I finally started using iTunes 4 months back. Since then I've purchased 10 albums. I tried MusicMatch and looked at Real, but honestly iTunes is the most user friendly.
I wouldn't pay for any downloadable music that wasn't CD quality and storable to as many CDs or MP3 players as I wanted.
TT
>'What would the perfect online music store offer you?'
FREE MUSIC!
Allofmp3.com already has FLAC, Vorbis, and VBR MP3 files for the taking. They're DRM-free and play on anything.
I would happily pay $.99 a track for what Allofmp3.com offers. Of course, they only charge $0.01 per megabyte.
Of course, Allofmp3.com is probably illegal, at least in the US. But the RIAA should learn the lesson that the MPAA has learned:
Give people the content they want (movies, some of them costing $100s of millions to produce), at a fair price ($15 DVDs), in a format that's convenient (DVDs have good quality and nonrestrictive DRM) and there will be no incentive to pirate your content.
The author's idea of a music store is pretty much aligned with my own, except for one thing - I'd like to have the ability to (for an additional fee even) download the .wav file.
.wav just gives me that warm fuzzy "I can do whatever I please with it" feeling.
Then I can do whatever the hell I want to with it. Yes MP3 and OGG are nice, and yes FLAC is lossless, but the ability to download a
Ah, yes, and I'd like the ability to download the track I purchased 3 times, just in case. Making sure I could grab my music again if my hdd fails would be an extra warm selling point too.
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How Napster used to be.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Guaranteed sound quality, and the ability to re-download any track I've ever purchased. (Ya just never know when ya might lose it.)
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
Thats why you would have the additional charge for more exotic codecs. 99.999% of people will be going after the mp3's if given the option. But a few people would rather grab oggs or flacs.
And, the topic did not say your ideal music store had to be feasable with current technology.
This is just what I think would be best format wise, but until the entire recording industry gets its head out of its ass and starts: distributing good music, at a decent price, with a decent chunk going to the artist. I won't be buying shit from them.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
It has to have CD quality or better, no DRM, and substantially cheaper than buying on CD.
No fucking way am I gonna pay a buck a song and ten bucks an album for downloads unless I really like the work and can get pristine quality. Thus far I would say Magnatune does it best: you can listen to anything they have (and you can actually hear it because the quality doesn't suck) and, if you want to buy it, you can set the price and download it in high quality formats. I've bought a few albums there and have actually found myself going back to buy a work again because I decided I liked the work more than I thought and I felt bad about being such a cheap bastard.
if the record companies would trust people to do the right thing and stop calling us all thieves they could make a LOT more money. If I can buy a used CD for five bucks, rip it and get the quality I want, why the fuck would I pay twice that for the download? Magnatune gets it... the others don't.
1) Submit story to /. /. community critque existing Music stores /. about new music store
2) Have
3) Implement Recommendations
4) Submit story to
5) Profit!
Recorded music isn't worth anything to me anymore. I'll pay to see a concert or buy merchandise if I am compelled to do so. But unless it is for a ridiculously low price, say a dollar a month for infinite music, then its just not worth it.
Even if I did join some service, almost none of the music I listen to would be available. I listen mostly to groups like machinae supremacy, who give their music away for free anyway, classic rock which I already have on vinyl and thus am legally allowed to have mp3s of, ocremixes, and foreign music. It might be possible to pay for some of the foreign music on some of the services, but either I wont be able to read it or it wont work with Linux or it will costly ungodly amounts of money.
In conclusion I would actually pay for music if.
1) Every song ever recorded was available.
2) I could choose my format and bitrate freely.
3) Absolutely no DRM encumberance.
4) Works with Linux.
5) Super cheap, we're talking pennies or half pennies per song.
It's a good thing not too many people feel like me. The record companies would be screwed.
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If I purchase an album digitally, I'd still like to download a PDF/Flash/something of the album art and liner notes. It's important content that the artist (or perhaps the label) feels complements the music, and that's why they are sold together. Although I'm puchasing music in a different format than a jewel case, I still want the same experience.
I really don't think most of the people who post care if artists get paid. I mean, look at the comments on this board. They want what they want when they want it at the price they want it--which is--essentially, free. And they create all manner of tortured justifications for why they shouldn't pay for music. The RIAA is evil. New artists don't produce any good music (but it is evidently good enough to download and listen to). A dollar is too much for a track. I don't like DRM. And on, and on, and on. But essentially, these folks have discovered that they can "share" music with relatively no consequences, and they don't care if the people who make it get paid. Drumroll please, and cue the "The RIAA doesn't pay artists either" justifications. And don't forget to mention that anyone who has this opinion is a shill for the RIAA. All I'm saying is that I, for one, like music. And much of the music I like is/was released on RIAA labels (much wasn't). And the music and artists I like are capable of releasing albums with 10 or more good songs (I always wonder about the people who find only 1-2 good tracks on an album--what kind of crap are you listening to, anyway?). And finally, for me, a dollar a song is not a lot to pay for something I may listen to and enjoy hundreds of times. But I accept that my views are not shared by everyone.