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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."
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.
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.
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.
" 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 you're not an iPod owner, you're stuck without the ITMS.
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'
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
So, you don't have the time to back up your data, but you DO have the time to read Slashdot? Uh, I think you have your priorities mixed up.
Since the data in question resides on your hard-drive, then the existence of that data relies on you. You can't assume that some magic elves come to your computer and back up YOUR data while you sleep. If you don't back up your data, and your HD dies, it's YOUR problem.
Sure there is. It costs money. And everyone would start claiming that "uh, my dog ate my HD, can I re-download the songs?". The key to safekeep your data is in YOUR hands. If you choose not to take the necessary precautions, it's your decision, and your problem.
Seriously, what is this "I want others to take responsibility of my data, and back it up for me, because I'm too lazy to do it myself!"-mentality?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
" ... 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? ..."
.m4a (everyone), and FairPlay encoded AAC with the .m4p extension (iTunes, the iTMS, and iPods only).
Umm, yeah, sort of, but not quite, exactly.
Microsoft's Fair Play program is a promotional tool used in some countries. It's a registered trademark of Microsoft, and basically gives sales staff prizes for selling software. For example, here's a link for those of you who speak Russian:
http://www.microsoft.com/rus/fairplay/
If you don't speak Russian, well, note the URL.
Apple's FairPlay is a DRM encoding/decoding scheme for music files. It's added onto Advanced Audio Codec format audio (which is not, as you hear often, a proprietary Apple format and works fine in many players) to create a file in the encoded format (which is proprietary).
So it's Microsoft Fair Play (TM) versus Apple FairPlay (TM). And it's AAC with the
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.
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.
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'
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 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?
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?
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