Digital Music Services

[chlngr1970]

So, I broke down and bought an MP3 player. I got a great deal on it ( and had per diem ). It came with the 2 free months of Rhapsody to Go digital subscription service. So far, I am less than impressed with it. I have not been able to consistantly run it on any of my three PCs ( PD 820, 2G DDR2, Vista Ultimate 32 bit/A64 4000+ Laptop, Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit/Core 2 Duo E6300, 1G DDR2, Vista Ultimate 32 bit ) so I am looking for suggestions on a better service. Their tech support says Vista is not an officialy supported OS ( Wow...must be run by Creative ) and no ETA. I know about Itunes, but am not the least bit thrilled about that...

So, any suggestions?

j

[cherno]

Why not be thrilled about iTunes?

I have been hearing very good things about eMusic. Unlike most other subsciption services, you don't rent the music you download, you own it. You pay a montly fee based on he tier you pick. The tier determines how many downloads you get per month. I believe that the tracks are all drm free mp3, decent quality, but I am unsure of how large a catalog they have.

[SidcupMartin]

Originally Posted by cherno

Why not be thrilled about iTunes?

Vista and iTunes aren't exactly getting on at the moment. Apple haven't released a Vista compatible version yet and while the XP version does work it's far from perfect. It runs on my machine but it's dog slow compared to XP.

[Jason]

I really like eMusic. I just started using it a couple of months ago and really, really wish I would have started sooner. They say they have over 2 Million songs so it's not a bad catalog.

The only downside, although I don't consider it one, is that they have very few major label bands. Their catalog consists of the "independent" labels, but if that's the kind of music you like, as I do, then it's not going to be a problem. Personally I think they have a GREAT catalog, but of course you can browse the website to see if you agree.

They use VBR bitrate so it's decent enough quality. Considering iTunes uses 128 it's better than that anyway. They are DRM free so you can do what you want with them. As far as paying, you get 25 songs free for trying it out, then it goes up something like $9.99 a month for 30 songs, $14.99 for 50, $19.99 for 75, $24.99 for 100, $49.99 for 200 and $74.99 for 300.

I started out at the $9.99 level and am now up to the $49.99 level. If you average 10 songs per album you're talking 20 albums for 50 bucks, so to me it's totally worth it. I should mention, I'm not positive if the highest three levels are available right away. When I joined they weren't but were offered to me after a month or so.

Well, enough of that I suppose. I would recommend checking out eMusic though. Browse for some bands on the site and see if they have enough to make it worth your while.

[chlngr1970]

But, didn't emusic just lose a major portion of their selection, or was that overblown by the media?

j

[Jason]

Originally Posted by chlngr1970

But, didn't emusic just lose a major portion of their selection, or was that overblown by the media?

j

I gotta be honest, I'm not really sure what you're talking about, I haven't read anything about it. If it was recent, then I haven't noticed anything. Then again, 2 million songs is a lot so it's entirely possible that some went away and I didn't notice. The best I can tell you is to hit the site and browse around for some bands or artists that you like, and see if they have enough to make it worth it. To me, there is. There are labels like Epitaph, Nuclear Blast, Vagrant, and others that have many bands I enjoy. It might be different for you.