Online Music
So, where do you buy your music? I remember going to record shops back when I was in college and looking through racks of music. It was fun to see all of the album artwork, but that probably isn’t the best way to pick out music. Today I buy most of my stuff online. It is so much easier to listen to the sample of the music before you decide on buying anything. I guess that you can do it at the local record shop, but they probably don’t have 10 millions songs available. Today I thought that I would mention a few music shops that I have found, and ask you where you go to buy your favorite music.
iTunes Music Store: Quick, easy, and works with iTunes, and my iPod, (and my former iPhone). They use .aac files instead of .mp3’s so the quality is better, but the files aren’t as universal on different players and with different software. The other bad thing was the damn DRM that was attached to the files. It wasn’t the worst DRM scheme on the market, but it still wasn’t good. Well, yesterday they just announced that they made deals with the big labels to bring about DRM free tracks for most of the available songs. Seems like a great move. I still wouldn’t buy any of the stuff that hasn’t been updated.
Amazon.com: The problem was the protected files from iTunes Music Store, and the answer was amazon mp3 downloads. They were a great alternative. A lot of times prices were cheaper, and they were in unprotected mp3 files. Not only that but their download application worked seamlessly with iTunes. It was a really good solution for a lot of reasons. Having said that I will probably go back to iTMS for the better codec.
eMusic: Just found this one, but I love it already. With eMusic you pay a monthly fee and you can download a certain number of songs per month. Two big draws for this service. One, the price. You can get plans that go down to $.25 per song. The second draw is the lack of big labels. All of the songs come from smaller labels with bands making great music. There is still (not good) on there, but a lot less of it.
Epitonic: This site is pretty much dead right now. But in it’s time it had some of my favorite music on it, and it was all free. What a concept. Labels would send in an album and let the them share a song or two off the album. Even though there isn’t much new material on there, they haven’t taken down any of the old stuff so you can download tunes from Mates of State, Cat Power and many of your older favorites. Best part about the site isn’t even the music, it’s the great write ups on each of the bands and the labels. Good place to start if you want to know more about what was going on a decade ago.
Additional Information: iTunes Store on Wikipedia, Amazon MP3 on Wikipedia, eMusic on Wikipedia