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Online Music Stores Compared
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.'"
"Stuck" with the most popular online music store?
Poor, poor us.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
But the real trick up Harmony's sleeve is its digital rights management (DRM) technology, which allows it to support virtually every kind of mp3 player - including the iPod
Of course I still believe in the ripping CDs myself method. If I want music I still want my little piece of plastic, especially since entire albums still cost about the same.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Basically, if you download a track from iTunes, it will only play on a computer in iTunes (and on an iPod), not on mp3 or Windows Media
iTunes is free so that doesn't really bother me much. I can just download my music and start playing it on my computer. I don't own an MP3 player, but if I were going to buy one it would be an iPod. That's not because I'd have to buy an iPod to play my music, it's because I think the iPod is the best MP3 (I know not technical MP3) player out there. Just my opinion.
Bradley Holt
Give me a break..... as an iPod owner, I don't feel "stuck" with the iTunes Music Store. It makes it sound like the iTMS is a piece of junk that we're "stuck" with. Personally I love the user experience of the iTMS and love all of the little nice touches.
I buy all my music via used compact discs (CDs) or directly from the artist.
No way am I paying $1.00 per song to Apple then having to re-buy everything after my hard drive dies and I lose the songs I downloaded.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
A mass suicide of iPod owners has been reported on the eve that they discovered they were "stuck" with iTunes.
"If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes."
That's bullshit. I have an iPod, and only a tiny fraction of my music has come from iTunes. I would think by now that everyone would be aware that the iPod is very capable of playing mp3s, regardless of where you got them from.
After your 250GB BestBuy hard disk becomes little more than a metronome (click, click, click!).
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
The review contradicts itself and contains factual errors.
eMusic allows MP3 downloads but iPod owners have to use iTunes?
No. You can use eMusic downloads on your iPod too.
iTunes downloads with fairplay are only playable in iTunes and on iPods?
No. iTunes downloads with fairplay are playable in any application that supports QuickTime. There's a very simple api for extracting the decompressed audio data from those files. The user must authenticate with the music store before the files can be decrypted, but that's it.
except this is one proprietry format against another. When buying a portable music player you have to consider which service you prefer. If you get your music from iTunes, you are forced to only ever use an iPod, even if something much much better comes along.
Don't ypou love vendor lock-in.
You know you can back them up on DVD or CD .. Its a good idea to do that with important data .
I do buy most of my music via second hand CDs (or new if I can't find them second hand) but a failing HDD is not a reason to avoid iTunes .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I loved iTunes too until my disk drive stopped working and I had to buy a new one.
I thought, well, I'll just download iTunes again, log in as me, and it'll start re-downloading the $1,500.00 worth of digital songs I bought from Apple.
Well, I was wrong, and haven't "bought" a song online since.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
" 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"
Because we all know that the iPod isn't a mp3player, don't we?
The iTunes (program) - iTunes Music Store (the store) confusion should be a clue to the cluelessness the review has.
Been fairly pleased with Emusic. High-bitrate mp3s for 0,25USD. Yes it's a monthly subscription and they don't have mainstream crap, but other than that they're great. Did I say that they offer mp3s? And then there's allofmp3. 0,02USD/1Mb. Using a loophole in russian copyright legislation. Been operating for years.
"Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
If I'm paying $1.00 for 3 minutes of music, it's not too much to ask Apple to keep track of each 16 character array/string/uniqueID of all the music I download.
If you connect to iTunes after, say, a fresh install of iTunes and there are no music files, it should prompt you to login and then re-download everything you've ever bought based on matching your userID up to each uniqueSongID you downloaded.
Not that difficult, and it'd go a long way toward customer satisfaction.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
I'm certain no US online market could compete with the lovely prices over at allofmp3.com
If you're not an iPod owner, you're stuck without the ITMS.
Sorry but I simply DON'T have time to "just back it up".
I paid for the damn thing it should be around forever even if some craptastic BestBuy red tag special PC stops working and all the music my parents and grandparents bought is gone. They don't know how to back up large amounts of data and don't have the equipment for it either.
There's no reason iTunes can't let you re-download your music.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
http://www.bleep.com/ Bleep is egregiously absent from this list. Not only is it DRM-free, but it also has some of the most adventurous and interesting music being made today.
Well, you ARE stuck with iTunes, but not necessarily iTunes Music Store. It would've been nice if you didn't even need iTunes to put music on an iPod. Why not do what most other mp3 players do and just have a directory structure on it that you can drop music into? If you put music on an iPod it mangles up the filenames and requires specialized software to read the database to sort it all out. With other mp3 players they act more like portable hard drives that also happen to be able to play the music files stored on them. Personally I will not buy another iPod when this one dies.. I wasn't aware of how they stored the music before I bought it (and yes, that's my own damn fault for not investigating it more thoroughly). Sure, it plays music fine and sounds fine, but frankly I would've liked to be able to keep my music in sync between my work computer and my home computer, and with an iPod it's a PITA.
For long, the best music store for me has been AllOfMp3
.WAV music, unencumbered by DRM, quite cheap and easly. (Oh and they have a damn lot of music).
I can buy lossless formated music, ogg or even raw
And also, there are a number of different ways to pay (in case you do not trust Russian stores):
-Credit Card
-Pay Pal
-Xrost
-Bank Transfer
-WebMoney
Cool uh?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Aparently the trolls have mod points today, as someone found a troll post insightful.
Back up your data. If you're not smart enough to know that, you're not really qualified to have a conversation on this subject. In fact, you're not really qualified to discuss anything related to technology.
Out of curiousity, when you buy direct from an artist as opposed to buying a CD, what format do you get it in? Do they come play it in your living room? And what do you do to ensure a fire or theft doesn't remove your access to the CDs?
Right, because I'm such a moron that I can't figure out how to get an mp3 onto my iPod.
eMusic does NOT require you to download their "music manager" (At least it didn't 2 weeks ago), though it is necessary if you want to download an album at a time instead of track by track. Another thing the reviewer didn't mention is that members get one free track every day for downloading their IE toolbar, and that it's the only service of the bunch that has no DRM whatsoever. As you might imagine, I'm a satisfied customer.
They are all MP3 players. Some also play AAC or protected AAC. Some also play WMA or protected WMA.
They also all play WAV, most play AIFF. Note these formats span the entire player industry - there is no 'lock out' other than what the labels create for themselves.
It is not a given that this idea (selling unprotected music) is totally outlandish.
Keep this in mind next time you see the labels gnashing and wailing about vendor lock-in.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I have a nice 2 yr old laptop and a decent 4 yr old PC both which actually have some hard drive space, but for the most part that's about it. And shit man, I'm a Slashdotter. Most "normal" ;-) people only have 1 computer and they can barely function with it yet alone run automated weekly backups.
The iTunes service is overpriced and doing INCREDIBLY well. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason why they cannot use 16 bytes per download to store the uniqueID for the song and then associate it to your userID. NO reason why this should not be done. These are the Internet days, the Google-SUN Office days, the WebApp days, we all want our data to be available from EVERY machine at ANY time!!
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
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.
The model of the major corporate record label controlling the music business is a dead idea....the content just isn't that great anymore, anyone can buy reasonably decent equipment cheaply enough to record their own album (or find someone who can), and the real threshold to entering the marketplace (the labels) is lost if you can market direct to the public. Since all of the production costs get charged back to the artist, it is no wonder why many artists have home studios.
The labels are trapped in their own 1950s era business model. The ones that survive will be the ones that can adapt to the technology....RIAA lawsuits and DRM-ed CDs are "running scared" approaches that avoid them having to deal with the real issue that they are not able to compete on the strength of their content.
For an entertaining look at the music industry, check out the Mixerman Diaries over at the prosoundweb forums. A lot is probably fictional, but the dysfunction has a true ring to it.
And if you read any of the other replies you'd see I already answered your "JUST BACK IT UP JACKASS" response.
I'm so sick of the arrogant attitudes of those Slashdotters who think they're the tech elite and that everyone knows how to program in 5 languages and script in 2 and has 14 computers sitting at home in some big dark room with ThinkGeek crap strewn all over the place.
Bro, some of us are just guys who are really good at technology and enjoy reading about it but we have other parts of our lives that we enjoy too, such as wife kids family outdoors cars guns etc. I ask that you don't judge me and also don't call me a "troll" just because I don't get on my knees at every new Apple product and think our Lord God for it.
So next time, avoid the name calling, read replies first before duplicating what others have said, and avoid the bad sarcasm.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
From TFA:
The big downside about iTunes, of course, is that its proprietary Fair Play DRM, isn't compatible with other systems.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't Fair Play a Microsoft thing, you know that little badge that shows up on their mp3 players and cdroms? Isn't Fair Play the CD DRM that Apple refuses to support?
-- lol pwned
The iPod plays standard MP3s as well as other formats. That's all I've ever loaded onto mine. Is buying a CD at Amazon and ripping it not considered "buying music online?" Is instant gratification required?
I've never even been to iTunes. In what way am I "stuck" with iTunes?
However, I agree with you. I don't understand why there seems to be a time limit on songs you download...they leave it up to you to handle the backups, and proprietary DRM songs shouldn't be hard to re-obtain.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
I don't understand the frustrating part. The author tries to make an issue of having to convert iTunes songs into mp3 or WMA. But why would you want to? iTunes also plays songs bought from the iTunes Music store.
The only possible reason to do the unweildy conversion is to get rid of DRM. But the author is willing to accept DRM from other stores and, IMO, worse conditions:
Napster You don't own the music, however, and if you cancel your subscription, all the tracks you've downloaded disappear.
Looks like once you start with Napster, you're also stuck with Napster.
Yahoo However, as with other subscription services, you only have access to the music as long as you maintain your subscription.
Same with Yahoo.
Maybe the full disclosure should be placed at the beginning of the article?
I don't have money for some $100/hr consultant to "set up a music server" for me either.
And to be honest I don't get paid all that well and often times the overtime is on me and I'm not compensated for it.
The typical computer user doesn't either and they blew their extra ca$h on a big hard drive for iTunes and for the $50 a month they spend there downloading new music. We the average consumer can't afford it it seems when it comes to "buying" music that disappears if your hard drive happens to die.
If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
I really like to buy music online, especially in the iTMS.
But none of the legal online music shops sell their tracks in a lossless format!
As long as they don't do that I don't see buying tracks online as an option.
Where's thepiratebay.org in the comparison? They have the biggest selection, DRM free, for the lowest price! (free, as in free beer)
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
Ifyou're gonna pay all that money to "legally" download/buy your music, you should probably do it with a service that's ACTUALLY LEGAL, which AllOfMP3 is not.
Actually legal?, Where?. IIRC where [I suppose] you live it is legal to DOWNLOAD music, although it is illegal to SHARE [upload] it.
Now, IIRC again, in Russia [where this service is given] it is legal [maybe it is not fair but it is still legal and, you know some laws/practices in the US that are not fair but again, they are LAW].
So, when someone is downloading a bought music file from allofmp3.com they are not doing anything illegal.
So, could you explain me where is the "illegality" of this?
Cheers.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
[From beginning of article] ... ... since Apple turned the iPod into a necessary fashion accessory ... To be fair, Apple did a superb job with the iPod and iTunes by making it easy for people. And, by making the software proprietary, they made it a lot harder for the competition; what you downloaded from iTunes wouldn't play elsewhere. ..."
... If you're an iPod owner....then you're stuck with iTunes. ..."
"
Online music has come a long way
Read carefully, you see either a predetermined bias (fine, it's in everything we read and the wise know how to look for it) or misunderstanding of the topic (not fine; he's offering advice here).
iTunes is a software product that runs on Windows and Macintosh computers. You can't download music "from iTunes". What he means is downloaded from the iTunes Music Store with the iTunes application on your PC and I would be fine with that if he just said that once, at the beginning of the article, but he doesn't. Most people are more careful to differentiate between the iTMS and iTunes itself.
"
You know, he writes in such a nice, matter-of-fact style that even after reading the entire article, I'm not sure whether it's bias or ignorance we're reading. But, for the record, the iPod will play pretty much any music format except ogg vorbis and WMA audio, you can get music files from any source, including some of those listed in the article, and iTunes-the-software will happily import and play other formats on your computer or upload them to your iPod, whereupon you can happily enjoy them just like any other mp3 player.
Basically, if you download a track from iTunes, it will only play on a computer in iTunes (and on an iPod), not on mp3 or Windows Media
iTunes will burn an audio CD which you can than rip to Mp3 no problem.
Yea, it's an extra step but my wife really likes the iTunes interface.
Ehmmm, hello... backups?
I can use bleep.com, which I do do with no problems.
Jonathanjk.com
One place I used recently has been Magnatune.com.. they are teh good.. .5 to the artist, .5 to Magnatune)..
(price per album $3 -> ?? (you decided)..
thier downside if they don't have the huge selection you'd expect of alot of places.. but IMO if you check out thier licensing scheme and the formats you can D/L (VBR MP3, VorbisOgg, FLAC, raw WAV, and AAC) it outweighs that.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
Probably for the worse, however I still enjoy it.
.WMV format using Tunebite and back into MP3 so the music is *mine*. Yahoo's Music Store ALSO recommends music to me based on the same ratings I've made over the last three years, and I see the technology of recommending songs getting better and better as my choices are getting more broad, and now with the Music store, even easier to acquire. Before the YMS, I would listen to a song on Launchcast and then scour the P2P networks or the web to find the song to add to my collection. Many times, and I'd say more often than not, I would go out and buy the CD.
:)
I have long since been a subscriber of Yahoo's Launchcast -- their internet radio station that could play music based on your ratings. And as a work day went on, I would tag songs 1, 2, 3 or 4 stars, or even "Never Play Again". Yahoo would learn my tastes and has since then, recommended countless songs that I'd never have heard before. Bands like Nightwish, Evanescence, Lacuna Coil are bands I heard of before many, many people.
Now with the advent of the Yahoo Music Store, the same great benefits exist except that I can put them into my MP3 player and take it all to go. I admit freely however, that I convert all my music OUT of the
Now I'm paying a low monthly fee ($4.99 prepaid one year in advance) to get my grubbies on all the music I can handle. And probably, there are people that take advantage of the $5 price a LOT more than I do. But as a casual music listener, who is always looking to find new types of music that might pique my interest, Yahoo's Music Store has nailed my needs on the head solidly, and I'm glad to pay for that benefit. If you don't want to pay $5 a month to get unlimited downloads, then the RIAA has a good reason to go after you; however given their greed they want to come after me as well.
Oh well... at least if they bust down my door I can prove I'm legit
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Many of the other systems don't provide MP3s! They use DRM'ed WMA, which can't be legally converted to another format.
i used to have a bunch of drm'ed windows media tracks on my windows box...they never ceased to annoy me. Every couple of weeks they would refuse to play and a message would pop up whenever i tried to play one...telling me that i needed to buy the track. A call to the music store managed to get it fixed a couple of times...but then they stopped doing it.
My music tastes have since shifted to something compeltely different and much better than that top40 pop crap...
but my point is: backing up drm'ed music is not easy, at least not with microsoft's drm system. Apple's may be a bit better, but, not being located in an itms-enabled country, i can't try it.
Not that it matters now though...the RIAA lost me as a customer when i got a few MP3 cds of psytrance off a friend 6 months ago
So you have no way of backing up your data?
However, all of the stores that offer more than a tiny amount of music (and are not of fuzzy legality) other than iTunes aren't offering most of their music as MP3. It is usually WMA.
I had always assumed that iTunes did what you are suggesting. I have an iPod, but have not bought a single song of iTines, and now I'm glad I didn't even if only on principle.
Thank you for telling us about this gaping flaw.
The iTunes appologists who lecture you about backing up your data are hilarious. iTunes doesn't implement a reasonable, I would say vital feature in their product, which you paid money for, and they have the gall to act like you are the one who screwed up.
I have always thought that Apple appologists have their heads up their asses and these guys have proven it beyond a reasonable doubt. Hey geniuses, why do you think there are a dozen 3rd party applications for loading mp3s on to an iPod?
This is a poor article that has taken an interesting topic and given it a half-asses review.
.. "Why?" I wondered as I read on. Well keep reading. The only thing the author goes into is that iTunes Music Store is only compatible with iTunes and iPod (and Real Harmony). The author doesn't say what makes this the most frustrating, other than implying that were their format available from more services, it would somehow make this service less frustrating. Stupid.
I use iTunes and own an iPod, so I was interested in what they said about it. Here goes...
iTunes is one of the best and also the most frustrating services
Then there is the GLARRING oversight of what I think is one of the coolest things about iTunes (forgive me if other services like MusicMatch offer something similar) - the music store is built into the music manager - no need to go to a website, download songs, then import them into your music library. With iTunes, I can even drag songs I want into play lists and buy them later. I can also select complete albums or iMix playlists, drag them to a playlist in iTunes, and it will find the songs in the playlist I have already purchased and make the rest links to buy them later. Sweet!
In summary - I'd love to read a complete review of these systems not written by some "Plays for Sure" supporter who is trying to drive people away from the lagest (2 million) catalog of on-line music with the best software that plays on the most popular device with the most accessories.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Nice article, but it seemed to be stacked in favour of the larger players, iTunes, MSN and eMusic. If the world of online music was governed by five or so players it would be a dire world! Oh wait...it's dominated by the big four record companies...forgot about them! ;)
Currently, I'm using http://www.karmadownload.com/ as it seems the most geek friendly (and legit) site going at the moment. High quality MP3, no DRM, plus they support the independent artists. The only bummer is the Flash they use. Oh well, can't win them all.
The best of all is that its in MP3 format so it works with every mp3 player on the planet. The only glitch I've ever found is that sometimes (but not often) the tags aren't as good as they could be. I usually run my downloads through Easy tag before importing into my IPOD.
www.allofmp3.com Lets you choose which format you want it ripped to (OGG, FLAC, mp3), what bit rate, and you pay by the size of the file.
I guess All Of MP3 is below their radar, but US$1.50 for an entire album is pretty damn cheap, even compared to Walmart.
-Tom
A: "You're stuck with iTunes, because it uses a proprietary format which isn't compatible to anything Apple doesn't want you to use."
B: *puts hand over ears and screams* "BUT THEY ARE GOOD, THEY ARE GOOD, THEY ARE GOOD..."
The most annoying thing I find is that it's not even true.
.zip archives and you can re-download stuff as much as you like if you have an active subscription, the only thing I don't like about it is the 'subscription' model rather than the more traditional pay-per-song model).
iTunes of course is software that Apple provide that allows you to upload to your iPod (the sort of software you'd expect any MP3 player vendor to provide with their hardware), and there are 3rd party utilities - both commercial and free - that also offer this functionality.
This is distinct from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) which was added after iTunes and iPod's had already been available for some time, but is a feature of the software (for logical reasons, as it would be much less user friendly if it had a completely separate application window).
You can of course use music from stores with the iPod. I buy from the iTMS, but I also buy MP3's from the outstanding Emusic all the time (I like the service as you get plain MP3's so there is no messing about with keys or authorisation, and you can entire albums as single
The 'problem' is that the iTunes Music Store only supports iTunes, which only (officially) supports the iPod (though unoffically it's possible to use it with a number of devices using 3rd party plug-ins), NOT that the iPod is somehow 'locked in' to the iTMS, which it isn't.
This is a premise that a 10 year old should be able to grasp, but is apparently way above the heads of Chris Nickson, the editors at Designtechnica, ScuttleMonkey and prostoalex.
I don't know if your comment was posted with tongue-in-cheek, :-(
but allofmp3.com doesn't pay a single dime to the artists,
so no wonder they are so cheap
Local artists (Denmark) have been struggling for some time to get any
money from the site-owners, but without luck.
FTA: music is a disposable commodity, anyway.
That sucks.
As a musician, hearing that my music is a "disposable commodity" is pretty disheartening. You want your tunes to connect with people (no matter how few or how many) and stay with them their entire lives. It used to be that bands had the ability to do this, and have become timeless powerhouses that last 20 years or more (Pink Floyd, Beatles, Aerosmith, KISS, etc.).
But now, people have the musical attention span of a cashew. The industry is eager to forcefeed us what they think is the "next big thing," and the majority of the listening population (mostly teenagers without a shred of good taste) are eating it up, chewing it up, and spitting it out almost as fast as the industry can spew it forth.
In other words, listeners have ADHD.
They're validating the industry's asinine practice of "more more more, hell with the quality." Especially with today's dime-a-dozen rappers. There's no integrity in music anymore.
And that's very, very sad...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
As a subscriber to Napster, I found after a hard drive crash I was able to re-download all the music I had purchased/downloaded previously via the service. I don't think it's naive to expect the iTMS to have a similar function; how hard it is to store a list of all tracks purchased under a customer's userid?
Backups are all well and good, however I shouldn't feel the need to backup music - especially when it's to compensate for the failings of a specific online service.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes.
Yeah..."stuck". With over 350 million sales, I can see people are hating the fact they're "stuck" with iTunes. And with a prediction 23 million iPods sold by 2006, I can see people are using their dollars to show Apple they don't want to be "stuck" with iTunes anymore.
Can we say "biased reporting" anyone?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The reason should be obvious. People do not like iTunes. They use it for the first time and realize that it didn't load their iPod with mp3 like it looks like it should have. Then they screw around with iTunes for a while, trying to figure out how you trick this application in to actually putting mp3s on your iPod.
Then they look for a different program to load mp3s on to their iPod.
So a person drops $300 on an iPod after hearing among other things that iTunes is in itself enough reason to buy one. Then they look for a 3rd party application to replace iTunes, which their iPod purchase essentially paid for.
Do these sound like satisfied consumers?
There's a few features I wish iTunes would add. First, it should remember what music I've purchased and somehow indicate that while I'm shopping (so you don't make the mistake of buying something twice, although that's unlikely anyway). Secondly, I should be able to re-download those tracks in the event of a hard drive crash or if I'm on the road and forgot to grab a song while I was home. The biggest thing I'd like to see them add is song purchases count towards a credit on buying the album. In other words, if I buy two songs on an album, and then later decide I wish to purchase the album, I shouldn't have to re-purchase those two songs as part of the album. They should offer the album for a lower price (possibly even $1 off per song, or as a percentage). That would really spur album sales on iTunes.
Not according to the super smart Best Buy employees. I was listening to them explain to some poor soul how MP3 players work this weekend. Apparently all MP3 players no longer support MP3, and will seek out any copyrighted material you have that didn't come from an online music store and refuse to play it.
I don't know if they were going to then push the prepaid music download cards or what. I didn't think telling someone that their whole line of players are useless was the way to sell product.
The other gem from that trip was the guy pushing the XP full box instead of the Upgrade since upgrades don't work as well, failing to mention that you can use upgrade on a fresh install with an old windows CD. Or get an OEM copy down the street with the purchase of a $3 mouse.
...
That's the super screwed-up thing about DMCA. It takes legal things, perfectly legitimate things, and makes them illegal. It is a SCotUS determined right to "format-shift", but it becomes illegal if it removes DRM in this crazy country. That seems like the RIAA cutting off it's foot to remove a blister. I mean, that makes buying a CD even more useless: Not only do I have to pay for the songs I don't want, but I can't legally put them on my iPod?
I suppose this also makes mix CDs illegal, as it removes the DRM from the MP3?
Aside from the generally crap quality of their downloads, and insistence on Windows OS, I have a serious gripe with the way these "services" try to make me buy a pig in a poke. It's extremely hard to browse their catalogs to see what they are offering. Maybe I'm mis-reading the interfaces, but here's my impressions:
iTunes isn't some mysterious special format for storing songs. It is simply a well-organized folder structure that is augmented by an XML index file. What iTunes does is rename all of the music files based in the ID tags of each song, providing a GUI on top of the file structure. What's really nice about iTunes is that it encourages proper, decent tags for each song file. I used to see such crappy tags (or none) from people using software other than iTunes. Tagging is much better now which implies either many people use iTunes or others have caught on to how useful proper ID tagging is.
It is illegal to violate copy-write law, it has nothing to do with whether you are downloading or uploading. The RIAA is going after the unloaders right now because it is easier to prove that these people are doing something wrong (if you ripped a CD you could well wind up with an identical file as is on filetrading sites).
There is probably no legal precedent about file downloads that go across international boarders, but there is little doubt that a US Citizen is violating at least the spirit of the law by using AllOfMP3.com... and in all probability the letter of the law.
And notice that we have not said anything about the morality... there it is black and white: the copywrite owners are not being paid. (I am avoiding the whole issue of who should get what money after that... two wrongs does not make you in the right)
About that, look at this other post where I cite the breakdown of a USD$15.99 CD:
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
So, pretty much the artists are not being really paid too much, as anyone can tell you, where artists earn is in live performances. So, my opinion is that each RIAA CD people buy is only giving money to them [the RIAA] and almost nothing to the authors.
If people really want to support their artists they should go and watch them LIVE.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Amen.
I second everything the parent said about Magnatune. They have very high quality artists, no DRM (#1 consideration for me), a choice of formats (#2 consideration), and reasonable prices. They even encourage file sharing as another way to market their artists.
Oh, you can also listen to every song in their catalog at 128kbps mp3 (and even download them for free, if 128 is enough for you) before you buy.
US Citizen is violating at least the spirit of the law by using AllOfMP3.com...
Better for me that I am NOT a US Citizen as other 6'180'596,000 persons in this world.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
There are freeware apps that will rip the DRM out of your digital music, however.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
Ask any artist how big their royalty checks are.
My iPod (about 1 year old) doesn't play all mp3s. With several mp3 in my collection it freezes while continuing to read the hard drive. Every time this happens I lose 30 minutes to one hour of batterly life. If I leave it playing rather than hitting next for 30 seconds it will completely drain my battery while trying to play this one song.
That would be annoying enough, but there is really no way to delete a song from your iPod, at least without hooking it up to something so you are pretty much stuck with it. Every time my iPod hits one of these song I just want to throw that piece of shit out the window.
I have downloaded firmware upgrades, but the problem remains.
Apple makes lousy software.
I'm sure he means that CDs are his data source, not necessarily his final data format.
He buys used cd's and cds direct from musicians to avoid the RIAA tax. In case you don't know, there are shops in most communities that resell used cds for a fraction of the original price. Often you can get them for only $2 or $3, and are usually allowed to preview to your hearts content to verify there are no scratches you can't live with. Likewise, many musicians sell their music direct to the fan either by their website of at concert venues on cd, again cutting out the RIAA and selling for much lower than the price of a new cd.
Then presumably like most normal people, he rips his cds to mp3 and puts them on the mp3 player of his choice.
I'm really unclear why you thought his post was trolling, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Maybe you weren't replying to the post you seemed to be?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I started to read the article, but couldn't wrap whatever language in which it was written around my brain. "Bloggers" need to work on their writing.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Wrong answer: You're stuck with iTunes, because it uses a proprietary format which isn't compatible to anything Apple doesn't want you to use.
Right answer: Since you're going to strip the DRM off any music you keep anyway, isn't it nice that iTunes makes that so easy and convenient?
DRM is evil. If you aren't burning the music you buy to audio CDs you're just asking for the fuckup fairy to turn your music collection into digital hash. And once you do that it doesn't matter what format it was originally... it'll play for sure on any player.
(yeh, there's a miniscule loss in fidelity that I've yet to be able to detect... if yuo cared about that you wouldn't be buying lossy-compressed music in the first place)
I find it amusing that iPod owners are so defensive. Its as if those stuck with their precious iPods are finding a way to justify iTunes and its proprietary format. I thought the article was well written and covered everything I was interested in. Yes, music you download from eMusic works on an iPod, but music downloaded from itunes ONLY works on an iPod, and I think that was the authors intent. BTW I thought a new patch for iTunes prevented Rhapsody users from playing Apple formatted music?
IANAL, but what I've been able to drudge up from lawyers about this is, there is no clear legal answer for US citizens as to whether downloading from AllOfMP3 is legal. It could be argued, for example, that the purchase takes place in Russia, and therefore it is a legal sale by Russian law, and that the downloading constitutes a private individual importing a good purchased overseas. There are laws about what goods can be imported and how, but nothing barring purchased data being transferred over the internet.
Therefore, (according to this interpretation) if it is legal to buy in Russia, legal to import, and legal to own in America, the purchase is legal.
I thought the whole thrust of the RIAA/MPAA was that UPLOADING was illegal, not downloading. You share with no one when you use allmp3.com. So, how is this illegal?
---
You can use any kind of HTML formatting that Slashdot accepts.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
I guess All Of MP3 is below their radar, but US$1.50 for an entire album is pretty damn cheap, even compared to Walmart.
It would be a great deal if it was legal for them to do business in most countries outise the former Soviet Union.
What about quality, usability and iPod compatibility? Who cares about a few cents here or there, if you have to use a crappy interface and Windows Media formats?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Perhaps you should get yourself educated more instead of flaming like this. I wasn't sure myself so I did some research before I decided to hand over my credit card number and now I'm a happy user. It's the best music service in the world not because of the price but because there's no stupid DRM crap.
Do a search and fix yourself man, because you're not gonna fix the world.
Dave
I was a very early emusic customer - back when there was nothing else legal, their eclectic mix was a good starter.
Unfortunately, that "mainstream crap" is where 80% of the music business is - so they're never going to land many large catalogs from major labels - so eventually most people will find they spend lots of time hunting for something they would buy rather than just getting the stuff they want.
They did offer a free player and got me all my Rick Wakeman albums back!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
They failed to mention in the article, but Yahoo Music uses 192kbs WMA, which is probably the highest bitrate of all of them.
No, you don't understand. You are paying people in Russian to undermine the economies of the rest of the developed world. What's worse, you are doing it for no good reason. If you don't care about copyright law, you don't have to pay anyone anything to get this music. If you are buying this music from them, you are basically just giving money to some russian scam-artist asshole. There is no sense in it. It has nothing to do with my education, or the law.
You'd be better off throwing your money away than giving it to these assholes. Don't you understand that? The money you are spending in no way contributes the the production of the music you are buying. This is like if some shady character came to you house and offered to sell you your neighbors car for $200. Your neighbor didn't agree to it, so you might as well have just stolen the car yourself. At least that way that shady character didn't make off with your $200 in the process. Do you understand what I am saying.
If you have no respect for IP law, you have no reason to pay for this music. So please don't do it.
How come they didn't check out this big name. You can get 10% rewards for SONY MS at my web site, iTunes only get 5% back.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
It is naive. You purchased something. You own it. It is now your responsibility to safeguard it.
Napster is essentially a rental service - you do not own the music you download (unless you burn it to CD, at which you have a backup anyway, right?). If Napster ever disappears, so does your music collection. Not so with tracks from iTunes, especially when you strip out the DRM (trivially easy to do these days).
Why does even the blogosphere continue to ignore Allofmp3.com ? Let me know if you find a service that can beat $0.02 USD / MB, where you can choose what format (mp3, aac, wav, flac, etc) and what bitrate you encode at. I have had little problem finding obscure titles (not no problem, but little) and really im nothing but satisfied with putting $10 in an account and getting 5-10 albums. Really exposes the other services as the profiteering scoundrels that they are.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
I call bunk. Here is the US Code:
d e17/usc_sec_17_00000602----000-.html
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usco
Pay particular attention to a), 2.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
There's one thing that's bugging me about a lot of the posts here: It's all very well saying "I download WMV and use such-and-such tool to strip out the DRM and turn it into MP3 for my player", but that's just extra-crapifying an already-crappy source IMO. Am I the only person on the planet who listens to my (own) ripped/MP3d music through a decent stereo? It's the one reason I don't (and currently won't) use download services - either they're poor bitrate-encoded or they're DRMd or both. I'm dreading the day when CDs really do disappear if this is all we've got to replace it. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of quality HiFi components, because after CDs (or their original-source equivalents) have gone and all that's left are poor-quality downloads, what'll be the point?
It's too late for me to die young
First of all, Russia IS a developed country.
Second, AllOfMp3 pays to ROMS for EACH downloaded file the same fee radio stations pay for each BROADCASTED song. Your performers can freely come and claim their share of collected money from ROMS.
on yahoo music brasilian site... iPod shuffle...
they advertise a product that don't work with their service and also atracts consumers to ITMS. odd...
What ? Me, worry ?
Nope, they are not in violation.
d e17/usc_sec_17_00000602----000-.html
http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usco
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?
Emusic uses 192kb VBR
Ingredients: Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey, Water, Salt, Flavour.
I have a feeling he didn't get an iPod for his birthday, or he got a small cheap bad sounding mp3 player.
I'll probably never own an Apple computer, but I love my iPod. I would have never spent the money on myself for it. I thought "After all it's only a music player that cost $299.". I have a 4G iPod, and having the album art, and pictures is an awesome feature. You can use the iPod as a portable hard drive. You just have to set it up that way in the options. You lose the ability to connect and disconnect at will if you do, but the option is there.
I used iTunes way before I ever had my iPod. When Pepsi was doing the promo with the free iTunes songs was when I got "stuck". I'm not sure why he says the ability to burn the audio files to CD then rip them to mp3 is "ridiculous and unwieldly". I think it's a step you should take when you purchase music from iTunes especially when it's lossless audio. Then you have a good backup copy that's not on a hard drive. The people in this forum who were complaining about losing their music downloads lose that argument or they are foolish for not taking care of their data.
I also don't think people consider the DAC in the cost the iPod or other mp3 players either. You get what you pay for. I don't know what DAC the iPod uses, but it does one heck of a job making mp3's listenable.
I think the person who wrote the review "Ain't too bright", or got bent-over by Apple somehow.
I've been using the full Yahoo music service for a couple of months now, and so far I love it. It has changed the way that I listen to music.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Yahoo, and I don't use other Yahoo services (I'm a googlite). I do know someone who works for Yahoo, but I don't believe that has influenced my opinion of this service.
I can't compare the Yahoo service to the other services (because I haven't tried them) other than to note that it appears to be a fair bit cheaper. I wouldn't be surprised if they had to raise the price at some point.
The selection seems very good to me, but I have noticed that often they will have an album minus one or two songs.
The sound quality is very good: 192, rather than 128.
The client software was very buggy initially but is much better now. I'm running it on a Win2K notebook with a PII 366 CPU. It's not fast but it is acceptable.
But most of all, I like this subscription model. It's really great having access to everything. This way I do a lot of trying out new music and following up on suggestions. As soon as I joined I looked around and gathered some albums that I hadn't heard in years. I'm listening to more music now and I'm discovering lots of new stuff. It's a great feeling of musical freedom to have everything available at your fingertips.
The problem is that now I'm hooked. If I wanted to quit I would have to look at all the music I've collected, decide which songs I liked the best, and purchase them for $0.80 a song. On the other hand, I could just keep subscribing and still pay much less than I would if I wanted to buy even a few of these albums I've now collected.
My biggest complaint is that they manage your music data the same way that most other big music apps do. I heard someone say that iTunes stores everything in your folder structure in the tags and xml files. That sounds like a much better way to do it. I wouldn't use the iPod/iTunes because of the price and lock-in, but kudos to them for using such an open and sensible system.
They're paying for the Russian mafia to steal if for them. Sheesh, don't you read your own writing?
Seriously, I haven't bought a thing from allofmp3.com, but I can understand the inclination. "Stealing" music is a pain. Dropped connections, crappy encoding, low bitrates, etc. People have been saying for years that they'd be willing to pay for downloadable music if they could have their choice of encodings, at the bitrate they choose, without DRM, and cheap.
Every time someone downloads from allofmp3, it just demonstrates that there's a market that the RIAA refuses to satisfy. People are willing to pay for downloads when the service offers something superior to "stealing".
Finally, I'm not so sure I like the RIAA any better than the Russian mafia. Either way, not one cent of my money is going to be given to the musicians.
Funny how that works..
Oddly musicians have to pay for there recording sessions (a fixed cost usually fronted by the studios). If the musicians wrote there own music they get the publishing royalties as well.
Its not a great deal for musicians, but the publicity spending (payola?) is why most musicians fall over themselves to get a recording contract.
The article missed a major point--all of the DRM services except for iTunes only work with Windows. If you want to move or listen to music that you've purchased on your Windows machine on your Mac (or vice versa), or switch from one platform to the other, the iTunes Music store is the only DRM service that could support doing it.
I'd like to at least check out the other DRM music services, but their web pages all say that they don't support the Mac and won't even let me in to see their catalogs--which is a huge negative IMHO.
In theory (and in practice I'm sure) this degrades the music but I only play them back on cheap headphones and $50 computer speakers. I can't tell the difference.
Penny - plain text accounting
I regularly buy my music for around $1.50 - $2.50 per album in my choice of formats and encoding rates. Web based download service is available for all non-windows users, and they have a nice peice of software for the windows world appropriately named "explorer". ;)
http://www.allofmp3.com/
Go Russia.
Wisest is he who knows he does not know.
Why the hell would you transcode it more than once?
Yeah you got a point about transcoding. No, I don't like DRM any more than the other guy, but give me a break! That's the weakest anti-DRM argument I've seen in a long, long time.
Maybe I'm not that a sophisticated user, so would you please care to tell me: Why the hell would you transcode it more than once?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
bleh. Makes no sense to me that music stores don't think that people who spend more on their computers won't make good customers.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Why is it BAD to have vertically aligned Windows/IE/Office and GOOD when its iPod/iTunes?
Vendor lock-in is vendor lock-in.
I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player. I can look at anybody's HTML in IE, and I can look at RTF generated from Office in other office apps.
Is this just a case of: MS, bad; Apple, good.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Rationalize it all you want, but $1 or $2 a CD does add up. And I say this as someone that does have music published on a RIAA label (and also as someone who has every song he's written available for free as an mp3).
:)
I have to say, it's funny to see Slashdotters basically saying "it's ok we're ripping you off, you only make $1 a CD anyways!"
Gee, thanks.
"First of all, Russia IS a developed country."
I know that, that's why I said the rest of the developed world. So it seems that you can't read either.
Second of all, with reference to paying artists, I'll believe it when I see it, and why is it okay for someone other than the artist (or copyright holder) to determine how much a song is worth? Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.
...there is no clear legal answer for US citizens as to whether downloading from AllOfMP3 is legal. It could be argued, for example, that the purchase takes place in Russia, and therefore...
AFAIK, everything is legal until a law says otherwise.
Considering a CD has about 10 songs on it and the artist makes about $2/cd.
Would it be cool if i sent to a quarter for downloading that song for $.08??
Maybe you should set up a paypal account on your website or something. If they support sites like www.allofmp3.com, I wouldn't mind giving the artist the same share per song that you normally would get.
In todays day and age, eliminating the middle man is a way of life. In the music industry there are about 300 people between the artist and the consumer. An seemingly, many of them enjoy a nice life out in California with a woman with fake boobs and have a nice car.
Just my opinion.
And by the way, if it's a small time artist I do buy their cd. I usually only download 80s classics and todays "hot" music. My dime that would go to them is meaningless for the multi-millions they already make on it.
"Finally, I'm not so sure I like the RIAA any better than the Russian mafia. Either way, not one cent of my money is going to be given to the musicians."
This is a common myth perpetuated by musicians. The truth is, the record label gives them a cash advance for the rights to distribute their music, and promises royalties for each sale made. The catch is, the artist must "pay back" the cash advance from their royalties. If they don't sell enough to "pay back" the advance, they never see any royalties. But the fact is, they did get paid for the music, and they are entitled to royalties, assuming they sell enough music to recoup the labels investment in them. If they do not earn enough royalties, they can still keep the advance, but they will never get the rights to their music back (without buying them).
It's still definitely better to pay the labels than to pay the russian mafia.
Sorry, I misunderstood your first claim.
Artists DO get paid by the ROMS, see here for example: http://www.compulenta.ru/2004/11/24/52074/ This article is in Russian (sorry), but you can see the receipt quite clearly.
Price of single broadcasted track is determined each year by an open poll conducted among artists by the ROMS. So artists DO have a way to affect the price of their songs.
http://www.bleep.com/ It's a music service by warprecords.com. Plain mp3 files, ripped with LAME and no DRM. Their music store was nominated for a webby in 2004. I've purchased an album from them and was very happy with the audio quality. They have quite a backlog of out of print music available for purchase. I don't remember if they come with covers or if I put a cover on them.
http://audio.search.yahoo.com/
... or until a court interprets a law/precident already on the books applies to the situation.
For america's legal system, I would more quickly say, "everything is legal until it's been tried." Even laws don't really apply unless the executive branch applies them and the judicial branch upholds them. You might think you're safe from legal action because there isn't a law written specifically to cover buying mp3s from Russia, but all it takes is for the courts to decide that this is a violation of standing copyright law, and you'll be in trouble anyhow.
Here's a more comprehensive look at online music services: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1784304 ,00.asp
I'd prefer to call it a "common exaggeration". Sure, a lot of musicians will make *some* money from record sales, and some will even make quite a bit. In any case, it's all legal, as the musicians have signed contracts that allow it. The fact remains, very little money from record sales makes it into musicians' pockets.
None of which were part of the review. It's not irrational to say that, of the stores reviewed, if you have an iPod, you are stuck with iTunes.
Actually, I'm wrong on that point. It is irrational, as eMusic is on the list.
I still stand by the rest of my post, but accept that this weakens my claim that it's correct to say that if you have an iPod, you're essentially stuck with iTunes (music store). That's still true for most people, but since the reviewer included eMusic, and not only that, claims to write reviews for eMusic, he really should have known better and been a little more precise.
As an iPod owner, I really don't care if iTunes remains the best, most integrated, etc... because the premise here is false. I have about 1500 songs on my iPod, and I bought about 3 of them from iTunes. The rest I got from CDs I already owned, allofmp3.com, etc. "Stuck with iTunes"? Hardly.
/. lately. Not only is it very shallow treatment of the subject (no mention of allofmp3.com?), they apparently didn't bother to even run a spell-check. "Napspter"? "Micrsoft"?
This is one of the more worthless articles to appear on
Try again when someone writes a real review of online music stores.
Sean
I hear this excuse all the time from people who try to justify (illegal) mp3 downloads--"the record labels rip off the artists anyway, so why should I support them?" To some degree, I can begin to understand how one might believe that enough to overcome the moral dilemma of stealing music. Sure, if the labels are stealing from the artists, why shouldn't you feel OK about stealing from the labels? Especially when you'll support the artist by going to see them live and buying a t-shirt at the show, right?
The problem is that when a band isn't selling records, a record label has little incentive to support them in the future. An artist can show overwhelming popularity, but without the album sales to back it up, why would a label invest more money in promoting them any further? I've seen it a dozen times with bands I know personally--sign a big-deal recording contract, the label doesn't recoup their investment, and the album gets shelved. At that point the band is really screwed, because they're usually locked into a three-album contract with a label that doesn't really want them any more. From there all they can do is break up (see Marvelous 3 v. Elektra for an example.)
It's true that bands make the most money from touring, so seeing them live really is the best way to support them. But remember that it's the record labels that invest in these bands in the first place to give them a shot to get out to the world. If everyone is downloading mp3s for free and no one is buying CDs, a record label isn't going to give the next band the chance to make it in the first place. Or that band who put out a phenomenal debut CD might not get the chance to make another one.
One more example: A friend in the industry told me that the Jimmy Eat World's Dreamworks debut Bleed American (which was unfortunately retitled after 9/11--but I won't get into that now) sold over 1.3 million copies, certifying it platinum. Sounds great, right? Well, the label hired a research group to take some polls and figure out exactly how many people actually had a copy of the album, whether it was purchased, downloaded, copied or whatever. They discovered that something like four million copies were out there. That's a pretty big difference in the eyes of the record company, and you can bet when it came time for the next record, Jimmy Eat World didn't get the same recording budget or care from the label as another artist who sold four million records.
Buying an artist's CD supports that artist, whether you're buying it from an unsigned band at their live show or from a big box retailer. Even if the artist only makes a dime from your $16 purchase, that other $15.90 tells the record label that it's worthwhile for them to keep putting out CDs for that artist. And to me, I'm willing to pay that money if it means the bands I like will get to keep making more music.
-leigh
What I should have said was nothing.
While the RIAA takes your money, gives it to the labels, and screws the artist...
AllOfMP3 takes your money, gives it to the Russia mafia, and screws the artist.
IMHO I preffer to give my money to the Russian mafia than giving it to the North American mafia. [but then, I am not from the USA, nor from Russia]
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Reference.
I like to listen to classic country. The artists involved are dead. Cry me a river over the money the poor RIAA is losing.
Sean
After reading the article, I guess I don't understand how they came to the iPod conclusion. They pointed out two sources of music that work with iPods - iTunes and Rhapsody. That doesn't seem to support the contention that I'm "stuck" with iTunes. In fact, I know that I'm not, because I've got an iPod full of music and I've never used iTunes (the music store or the program). The first thing that I bought for my iPod was Anapod Explorer.
Maybe somebody else can explain why I'm stuck with iTunes...
-h-
Of course I'm doing it with good reason. The reasons are that I can prove to my authorities that I purchased the music and legally imported it.
The prices they charge are sufficient to pay for the royalties they pay to the music labels with which they have agreements. It's just fair enough. No scam artists, no russian assholes, no mafia. It's real.
It's easier than using some P2P program and not being able to trust what you receive. And I contribute to the music industry by making a statement that I don't like music that is crippled in any way. I don't usually download music from illegal sites (I can't say I've never done it. Mayone once. Or twice.) but lately I bought a couple of CDs that wouldn't play in my computer and that I couldn't rip unless I used a felt tip pen.
And I bought music from MSN Music which is crippled in so many ways it's not just inconvenient, it's just rubbish.
These guys provide a great quality service, I've had no downtimes whatsoever, the music always streams in at top speed in the exact encoding I want without any DRM. Ok so it's cheap. I don't care. I would still buy from them if they were 5x as expensive.
You're just so frickin locked in the thought that these are russian mafia scumbags. They're not, so quit whining about it and get on with your life!
ITunes kicks back 65-70 cents to the owner of the song (if that's not the artist's label that's their own stupidity)
The LABEL is the one who only gives 5-10 cents to most artists.
I like classic country - Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell, etc... they're dead. Why should I continue to pay a huge tax to the RIAA, when I can legally get this stuff from allofmp3?
Sean
I'm willing to pay that money if it means the bands I like will get to keep making more music.
But there's a very important, unstated assumption underlying your entire comment: You assume that bands need record labels. I agree that has certainly been the case in the past, and arguably is the case in the present, but I absolutely disagree that it needs to be that way in the future. Bands now have the tools to cut the label out, or at least to reduce the label to a role of providing business-related services to a band whose members don't want to be businessmen.
I think that's not only possible, it's a *better* structure for both musicians and their fans.
With that in mind, my problem with your position is that buying CDs supports the labels and reinforces a status quo that is bad for musicians and bad for music.
I prefer to buy from allofmp3.com and then mail a couple of bucks directly to the artist. That way, not only does the artist get paid more than if I bought the CD, I'm also helping to show them that maybe they don't need the bloodsucking label. The biggest problem I've had so far is that it's often hard to find a mailing address you're sure will get the money to the band, rather than the label.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And for people who like GOOD music and would rather not support Wal-Mart, you can find most of the good stuff on http://downloadpunk.com/ . They'll even donate a portion of your payment to a charity of your choice.
When you buy CD's you do not need backup.
Harddisk crash => buy new harddisk, copy content of iPod back to harddisk
iPod stolen => buy new iPod stop using the white headset, resync with iTunes.
Harddisk crash AND iPod Stolen => re-rip from CD's
Backup, backup, backup .. everybody seems to be missing the point, that you do not need a backup, you already have the original CD! That's the backup.
There was a Quicktime plugin for Ogg Vorbis, but it broke under QT 7 and Tiger. Ah well. Apple is probably aware of the people that want Ogg Vorbis and will implement it in due time-- as in, when they can offer the best experience possible to the end user.
This causes quite a bit of confusion among users... Apple should get some feedback on that, actually.
http://www.audiolunchbox.com/ sells them. Totally legal, US mp3s for $.99 each. I get all my Moby music from them.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
According to Nickson, iPod owners are pretty much locked into iTunes. He says this despite his own outfit selling music in a format that plays freely on just about all the players out there (save Sony's abandoned ATRAC-only Walkmen). He also doesn't mention a number of other outfits that offer music in un-DRM'd MP3 format, such as Audio Lunchbox. It would have been particularly worth mentioning services that concentrate on specific genres, such as world music site Calabash Music, instead saying "if you stray too far into, say, world music, obscure jazz and folk or avant-garde, you'll find yourself frustrated almost everywhere, because these services are understandably aimed at the main market, not the tiny niches," when Calabash (for one example I'm acquainted with) addresses at least one of these genres. Bizarrely, he says eMusic's Download Manager software is required to use eMusic, when it's not (it's recommended, but certainly not required; one needs only a web browser to use the service, and a media player to play the music once downloaded).
I appreciate the overview of the other services I'm less familiar with (mostly the various DRM'd WMA vendors), but given his treatment of those services I do know, I'm not sure how much credence to give his treatment of the ones I don't.
...is that there is only one mention of the audio quality offered by the music vendors in this article:
...although Harmony streams at 160 kbps, rather than Napster's 128 kbps, giving better sound...
Apple's mp4 is reputed to be about as good as a 160 or 192kbps mp3. So, the best audio quality offered by online music stores is what I would call barely sufficient for bubble gum pop listening on my home stereo. No thanks. I'll start buying music downloads when the vendors start offering lossless tracks.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Export a song list or library in iTunes. You get a choice of tab delimited text files (Unicode or plain text) or an XML plist. Very easy to work with. Now export a MS Office document to HTML. Does that look remotely like standard html? Will it even render properly in Moz, Kon, or anything other than IE? I'm guessing no, but I can't say for sure since I don't support MS by buying/using any of their products. But going by what I've heard...
I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player.
Big deal. Don't buy those crippled formats. I have an iPod full of tunes I didn't buy from iTunes. You don't even have to spend money. There's thousands of free MP3s floating around the web. Listen to those. If not for your wallet, then do it for the children.
I can look at anybody's HTML in IE, and I can look at RTF generated from Office in other office apps.
Regarding HTML: see above. Regarding RTF: Sure, because MS writes that standard. Now look at how they conform to something 'not invented here' like MPEG4. They got so pissed about QuickTime being selected as the standard file format for MPEG4 that they went and developed their own incompatible 'standard' and named it the same thing.
Is this just a case of: MS, bad; Apple, good.
Nah, this is a case of Apple won fair and square where Microsoft always fights dirty.
possible troubleshooting instructions:
Launch Windows Media Player.. note the version. (If 9.0 or 10.0 or earlier) Enable "Acquire licenses automatically" and "Send unique Player ID to content providers." (This second one shouldn't have a heck of a lot to do with anything, but we are covering our bases.)
Lastly, join the customer improvement program. This isn't a joke -- even though it probably sounds sick.
If you can, reinstall Windows Media Player or update windows media player's componets.
Do this by clicking Help-->Check for Player Updates.
Make sure YME, Windows Media and other processes have full permissions to get through your firewall. Put your firewall into Learning Mode if need be.
Creating a new profile may also help.
--Sam
After doing this, if it still doesn't work, reinstall YME.
It would be a great deal if it was legal for them to do business in most countries outise the former Soviet Union.
/. before, so I won't waste your time repeating details, but the short version is that the contracts are valid Russian contracts and Russia is a valid member in good standing of WIPO and several other pertinent international trade orgs. Said contracts are enforceable througout the world, but only as long as the business itself remains a Russian business. A loophole? Yes, but a legal one. :)
Luckily for us, it is. It's been debated ad nauseum on
If I buy a legitimate CD in Russia, it's not illegal to bring the CD home...even though the CD will cost a lot less there than it would in the US.
-Tom
If I buy a legitimate CD in Russia, it's not illegal to bring the CD home...even though the CD will cost a lot less there than it would in the US.
But you're not buying a CD in Russia, you're buying it in the US from a Russian company.
There are many reasons unrelated to music that I would like some kind of "neutral servers carry neutral goods" doctrine to exist, but that's DEFINITELY not settled law.
While I'm posting this far too late to get a karma bump for mentioning it, below is a list of several detailed reviews of those services. (The review cited in the article is rather short.) These reviews focus primarily on independent music and fair use, and try to explain the criteria used to make the determination.
that's DEFINITELY not settled law.
d =10372214r eshold=-1&commentsort=3&tid=141&mode=thread&pid=10 373598#10374094r eshold=-1&commentsort=3&tid=141&mode=thread&pid=10 374584#10376270
;-)
I'n never heard of a challenge to the idea that I can buy something that is legal to own here and elsewhere over the internet. Specifically, U.S. copyright law seems clear that:
"In a case where the copies or phonorecords were lawfully made, the United States Customs Service has no authority to prevent their importation unless the provisions of section 601 are applicable."
And that the section on infringing importation does not apply to cases of:
"importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time"
In short, I can buy music online from anywhere I want, so long as the seller has a legitimate license to sell the work being sold. In the case of ALLOfMP3, they do. This is the side of globalization that big business DOESN'T want us to see.
For a longer treatment of this debate you can read this earlier thread, of which I offer more a more nuanced version of my opinion on the topic.
That thread is kinda huge, so if you just wanna read the parts I wrote:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123447&ci
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123447&th
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123447&th
Mostly that's just to give you an idea of the point I'm driving at. I hope that helps. (well, really I hope it convinces you I'm right, but I'm an optimist that way)
-Tom
I'm looking at a higher level.
...
To apply that clause of copyright law you have to assume that a business operating a server in Russia that's directly accessible from the US and selling in US dollars continues to be regarded by the US as a business operating in Russia that YOU are importing from, rather than a business with servers in Russia but operating in the USA.
There's all kinds of examples of governments treating internet transactions as if they were taking place at the client rather than at the server. Germany, France, China, Canada, many states in the USA,
The "Why" does not matter. Do you agree that it is true?
Living up to that expectation is well within reach. Dell and friends could easily just slap in a second HD and enable RAID 1 on every new computer. Might raise the price a bit, but people would be getting the experience they expect.
Imagine this: Instead of having to start from scratch with a new HD, your computer pops up a window saying "Hardware failure, please contact Dell at 800-555-5555, problem reference 123-45, customer id 678-901-234". So you call, some indian dude says "Oh, lucky you, the component that failed is under warranty! Take your computer to the local Dell shop or ship it to 1234 fake street austin, TX. Tell them the problem reference number and your customer id and your problem will be fixed within one day."
I realize that is a starry eyed tale of customer service, but thats how it should be. Actually, it should be even better, but I do not want to give myself a hard-on.
There's all kinds of examples of governments treating internet transactions as if they were taking place at the client rather than at the server.
:-\
True, but even if it were treated that way, it's still a legal sale of a song/album from one validly licensed reseller to a customer. There is never a drop is licensure, which is key here, I think. AllOfMP3 is allowed, by law and by explicit agreement with the record labels, to sell that merchandise, and the agreement is cler that they may sell it at whatever price in whatever manner they please, so long as they continue to honor Russian law.
The RIAA (well, the Russian equivalent organization) has looked into AllOfMP3 and did not take them to court. They recognize the legality. In fact, they implicitly acknowledged it when instead of attacking AllOfMP3 for their practices, they went to Russian lawmakers to have the laws re-written. That's the current state of things. They can't stop them, becuase it isn't illegal, but they make it made illegal so they can plug what they see as a loophole. Sounds familiar.
-Tom
AllOfMP3 is allowed, by law and by explicit agreement with the record labels, to sell that merchandise, and the agreement is cler that they may sell it at whatever price in whatever manner they please, so long as they continue to honor Russian law.
So long as they do it in Russia.
They are licensed to sell that music in Russia. They're not licensed to sell that music in the US. If they loaded that amount of music on a truck themselves and brought it across the border themselves, it'd be confiscated. So far from it being "still a legal sale of a song...", the distinction between the sale taking place in Russia and the US is critical to the question of whether it's legal or not.
The RIAA (well, the Russian equivalent organization) has looked into AllOfMP3 and did not take them to court.
Well, of course they didn't. Neither the Russian organization nor Russian courts have standing to take them to court over their activities in the US. If the RIAA can find a US court willing to take the "right" position on where they're doing business... well, that's a whole different story.
Neither the Russian organization nor Russian courts have standing to take them to court over their activities in the US.
/change the law/ so that it will not be allowed in the future. If it weren't allowed now, they wouldn't need to do that.
/assume/ no givernment would enforce something so obviously beneficial to consumers...but interestingly to me, Russia has. Specifically:
/has/ to buy from them. They already have a solid clientele and I'm already reaping to benefits of using them. If others don't, it's no skin off my back. It's like Linux. If ya don't like it, you don't have to use it, but if you ever change your mind, there are plenty of people willing to help you change course. :)
Actually, in this case, they do. They have legal right to fight infringing sales and uses of US music. That's why they looked into it.
Hey, don't believe me. Don't buy anything from them if you want. Heck, doubt it til you're blue in the face. I had my doubts too. But in the end, if they were doing something illegal or even on the border of illegal, they'd have been shut down when the RIAA and it's Russian counterpart looked into it initially.
I said it before and I'll say it again: It's screamingly telling that instead of going to court, whcih they had the option of doing, they went to the Russian law makers and are now trying to
But, so many poepl are so busy convincing themselves that they must be doing something wrong that they are depriving themselves of a perfectly legal opportunity. It's sad to me that the RIAA has managed to scare people so much that they won't even buy music from a legally licensed reseller.
They are licensed to sell that music in Russia./em?
Not according to their contract with the music labels under Russian law. There exosts no such stipulation. That is something people say becuase they
"All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting."
Their contract never stipulates this Russia-only clause that so many people assume must be there. You say it's untested law, whereas I say clearly written and willfully entered into contracts are not untested law. Just the opposite, I doubt there is a more tested and safe section of law than those laws surrounding the enforcement of two-party contracts. Putting the Internet in the middle means nothing if that is an understood and spelled out part of the contract in question.
Like I said, though, no one
-Tom
They have legal right to fight infringing sales and uses of US music.
In Russian Courts.
In Russian Courts.
Under Russian Law.
Under Russian Law.
You keep emphasising that what they're doing is legal in Russia.
I keep agreeing with that.
You keep telling me that I'm wrong, what they're doing is legal in Russia.
I say, yes, you're right. It's legal in Russia.
You keep acting as if I'm saying something else. I don't know how many more ways I can put it, but maybe this will do the trick.
No Russian Court is going to declare that a Russian business running on servers in Russia selling material through client computers in the US is doing business in the US. So nothing that happens in Russia has any relevance to the issue of where the sale takes place, because in Russia it's always going to be interpreted that the sale has taken place in Russia.
Now.
Go back and re-read my last few messages with your knee-jerk "this is legal in Russia so there's no issue" response turned off. If you still don't get it, THEN please ask for clarification.