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Online Music Stores Compared

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the addictions-i-have-managed-to-avoid dept.

prostoalex writes "DesignTechnica has a comparison of the leading online music stores. With the variety of services available they only concentrated on several top ones. Conclusion? 'If you simply want to download music from the charts, then Yahoo and Wal-Mart are your cheapest options. For your MP3 player, there are several options, with Yahoo the best of all. If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes.'"

2 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Music Services by Silwenae · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article was good, from 10,000 feet, but I thought it missed a few points.

    Musicmatch is owned by Yahoo - why is it different? (Yahoo Music engine is a 3 meg download for Windows - a tiny player with pretty good functionality, especially compared to Napsters memory hogging skinned Windows Media Player).

    With the Windows Plays for Sure stuff (Yahoo, Napster to Go) it only transfers to a Plays for Sure portable. While the article briefly touches that mentioning it's only a handful of players now, they should have specifically called "Doesn't work with iPods!" As someone already noted in the comments, iPod has 80-90% share of the portable MP3 market.

    And last but not least, licenses. With the exception of Yahoo (I believe), if your hard drive crashes you lose your license for tracks you've purchased for 99 cents each. Gone, poof. Like losing a CD. You'd think that buying a song online, they'd have a record of your purchase and let you re-download, but no.

    I've used most of the services, except iTunes on a Mac, and if Yahoo puts some marketing muscle behind YME they have a shot at 2nd place and displacing Napster. They offer the same functionality for less than half what Napster and Rhapsody try.

    As a Linux only user, I'm contiually frustrated by my lack of music buying options online. I suppose I should try out SharpMusique as an iTunes interface one of these days.

  2. Re:LOL by 955301 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nope, they are not in violation.

    http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscod e17/usc_sec_17_00000602----000-.html

    So long as purchasing from all of mp3 is legal in Russia and the US purchaser intends to use it for their personal use everything is fine.

    --
    You are checking your backups, aren't you?