Comments on: Windows Music Subscription Services: Advice?

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:20:22 +0000

It’s a little cumbersome, but at least with the ITMS you archive the songs on a standard audio CD. The audio CD can then be ripped into the format of the the player of your choice… DRM free.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:54:13 +0000

don’t forget Magnatune.

They give great opportunities to bands, as well as CD Baby, who will get your music on the iTunes Music Store if it sells a bit.

WMA is a curse, a pox on the audio community. It shouldn’t even be considered a legitimate format for any self-respecting musician. It sounds terrible at any bitrate.

The fact that there isn’t even a question of ownership (unless you choose to ugh.. purchase WMA) with the other services is a good reason to look at anything but Yahoo, MSN Music (shudder at the contract), or Napster.

Remember, kids, stay non-exclusive and you should be alright.

Discover new bands on both sites listed above as well as MySpace

By: rolandreinke

rolandreinke — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 14:48:21 +0000

I second what the previous poster have said…. Bleep I’ve tried several times and it’s actually very conventient and optically nice to use as well. They’ve now added Scape to their impressive list of labels.
Beatport has been recommended, but I’ve never tried it. Also I wouldn’t buy from iTUnes ever, because of the DRM restricitions.
Roland

By: admin

admin — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:21:11 +0000

Yeah, absolutely terrific stuff on Beatport and Bleep. And you’re right, the industry doesn’t have a clue.

Anyway, I decided to form an opinion, I’d go ahead and expose myself to these things, and see what’s out there. There are artists on labels whose music I care about . . . I can spare $6 a month to get them on Yahoo. Less evil than, oh, my local electric company, which I spend a LOT more on so they can burn fossil fuels. ;-)

And I might add, CDs = no DRM, bless them. (Not for long, I know.)

By: atomic_afro

atomic_afro — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:16:17 +0000

Peter man, as an electronic musician I’m surprised that you would even consider buying into the failed experiment that is DRM. Realize that when you give money to a music service that uses DRM, you’re not buying the music, but rather licensing it and are thus under the whims of the recording industry that would rather see creativity stifled rather than promoted.

Of course some might say that it’s okay because it’s a subscription service, and it’s not really buying music anyway. I say that why bother when one could just opt out of the system entirely, just buy good, cheap indie music until the time that the industry catches a clue and we get a industry-wide music store/file sharing service worth a damn.

ATA

PS, try http://www.beatport.com. NO DRM, Great choons (as them Brits would say), slightly more expensive but they give YOU the power to control YOUR music.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:55:41 +0000

Yeah, the subscription deal definitely doesn’t stack up to Napster’s math. You can’t burn CDs, you don’t keep the music without the subscription fee. But at the Yahoo rate of a few dollars a month, you can save on casual listening — CDs you might want to listen to just once or twice. I’ve been using it to audition CDs. The ones I love, I buy on iTunes . . . or better yet, on CDs. (Remember those great lossless storage media?)

The big downside of all these services is they still pale in comparison to the *selection* of what’s available on CD . . . maybe not at your local record store, but certainly via the Web.

And iTunes being “pretty much yours” is a big restriction, thanks to DRM, same as these other services. The best services are the ones that offer high-quality DRM-free downloads or old-fashioned CDs. If I’m purchasing music, that’s what I’d rather do. Having to regularly replace your iPod isn’t a very reasonable subscription fee, either.

Peter

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:21:38 +0000

The way I see it, those services are not “unfettered free access to music” at all. If you stop paying the monthly fee, all the songs you’ve downloaded go away. Sure, it may seem like a good deal initially, but I think if you do the math, the iTunes model will save you money in the long run because you only pay for what you what you want, and once you’ve got it, it’s pretty much yours.

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 06:28:39 +0000

I use Yahoo Music and here’s a tip - you can play the tracks using Windows Media Player or even WinAMP. I play them all in WinAMP and only use YME when I’m downloading new stuff.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 21:45:58 +0000

I really enjoyed eMusic for a while especially when it was unlimited download. it is still a good deal but they don’t always have new stuff. So once you’ve gotten a bunch of tracks, unsubscribe. they’ll send you a free tracks offer for a month.