eMusic, Napster, yahoo... which one is right for me?

[ken]

Hey All,

Can you share your experiences with me? I've been thinking that eMusic has the best deal, but they don't have 4 major labels available. I mostly want to
be able to check out new bands and hear whatever obscure 80s hit pops into my head. Commments?

JB, didn't you get Yahoo for a while?

Thanks!

Be well,
Ken

[jb]

I still have Yahoo. It's great for the price-- $60 for a year. The software is kind of clunky, but still. Almost anything I've wanted has been on there. I used it the other week to learn a bunch of Elvis songs.

The downside of Yahoo is there's no Mac client.

I also tried Rhapsody, and liked it a lot. But Yahoo's pricepoint was just too attractive.

I haven't tried Napster.

[ken]

One of the things that is attractive about eMusic is that it includes downloads each month. Yahoo seems to allow you to burn CDs of mixes. How does that work for you? Also, can you transfer music to a portable device?

Ken

[Plat]

I'm trying out emusic.com again this year. It doesn't feel as cool now that I'm charged per-song; previously it was all-you-can-download. The quality of the site and content has much improved, though.

A few thoughts:

* I'm not familiar with many of the bands. Sometimes a few sneak through (e.g. Better Than Ezra, Matthew Sweet, The Pernice Brothers, White Stripes, The Donnas, Veruca Salt, etc), but overall it's a big question-mark. You might want to browse or search their catalog to get a better feel for it.

* Don't expect comprehensive catalogs. They might have albums A and D by an artist, but not albums B, C, E, F, G, etc.

* Just because a song/album is available "today", doesn't mean it will still be around next week. It's mostly static, but sometimes things pop in and out.

* They're all MP3s, so you can play them anywhere, and yours to keep. Encoded around 192kbps VBR or so.

* You can re-download MP3s all you want (while you're subscribed), so you're truly paying per song, not per download, unlike iTunes.

* In order to find good new music, I've had to use their (pretty decent) search engine, look at members' lists, and preview tracks before actually downloading it. Be prepared to hunt around a while, it's not going to fall into your lap.

* If you actually buy a subscription, know that your credits don't roll over from month to month! For example, I get 65 downloads a month. If I only download 60 songs that month, I lose the opportunity to download those other 5 songs I prepaid for. There is no warning.

* They have The Spinto Band, and Brad Sucks, and the Psycraft remix of a Brad Sucks song, so whatever that means to you.

* Overall I feel happy with the yearly subscription so far. I've found some artists I never would have heard of before (e.g. Spiraling, Chk Chk Chk, Horse The Band, Matson Jones, The Mains, etc), at a competitive rate. Sometimes I've also saved money compared to the cost of buying a mainstream new release on CD.

* If you're curious, you can try the service "risk-free" and download 100 free songs using one of their promotional URLs, like this one. (EDIT: This URL must be from a GE promotion. Just to clarify, I am not getting squat for referrals or anything. As I re-read my post, it feels like an ad. But I do like Emusic).

[jb]

I haven't tried burning a CD of a mix. Honestly, my primary use for it is sitting at my computer when i'm at home. You can authorize up to three computers to access your account, so if you want to listen at work (and are allowed) you can, and you can authorize a laptop or a friend's computer then too-- but they all share the same settings, ratings, etc, since those are server-based.

Yahoo and most of the others are Plays-For-Sure compatible, so any mobile device that works with PFS will work with Yahoo.

With Yahoo you can choose to download the songs (which then have DRM on them) or just stream. I hardly ever download, which means that sometimes I'm cut off.

But since Yahoo isn't my only source of music, it's not a hardship. And hey, $60. Peanuts.

You can also purchase songs. I haven't done that yet, so I don't know what DRM if any is on them. I kind of presume there's no DRM on purchased songs. Most of the tracks I see on Yahoo are like 88 cents or something.

Yahoo also has an upgrade to its music player, which is for purchase. However, the default player is just fine, and I don't notice any lack in sound quality compared to, say, MP3s grabbed from somewhere else. They're at least 128kbps, in other words.

So yeah, I like Yahoo. Still no Radiohead, but Thom Yorke is there. The catalog is pretty complete. I mean, there are actually 1.5 million songs, and it feels like it. If there's a track or four that I can't find on there, there are thousands of others that I can.

[ken]

Plat-

Yeah, eMusic doesn't have the big 4 labels available, so if I want to hear Van Halen I am out of luck. Thanks for the link though, I'll check it out. Also, if you have extra downloads, you can get the Parker Street Cinema CD, and we would appreciate the traffic.

JB- No Radiohead? That is odd. Any other major players missing?

Ken

[HeuristicsInc]

Yeah, I used to be on Emusic until they switched to pay-per-download. It's really best for those that like obscure things and especially finding new obscure things. Not for hearing, say, Def Leppard on a whim or something. Emusic is more stocked with indie record companies than the majors because they don't like DRM-free songs.
I do, though, since I downloaded all that stuff and I can still listen to it rather than having dead data on my hard drive.
JB, there is probably DRM on purchased tracks. Most of the record companies require it...
-bill

[jb]

JB- No Radiohead? That is odd. Any other major players missing?

Radiohead is absent from all the services-- even iTunes. It's always seemed to me that the big players have basically the same catalog. The Beatles are also holdouts in the digital revolution.

[j$]

Radiohead and The Beatles (and one other big band whose name escapes me) are not available on mp3 / ipod / w-ever services because, they claim, they (or those who represent 'em) do not want people downloading individual tracks, breaking the album format.

I have no evidence this is actually true, it is just a widely reported fact, which I am repeating, and may be cover for greed on the part of the bands / publishing companies.

I like to think it is true, as it tallies with my only problem with the format - which is it is intrinsically opposed to the 'album aesthetic'

j$

Yah, maybe I'm going for 3000, just a little. Apologies if this doesn't really help the conversation.

[jack]

Radiohead and The Beatles (and one other big band whose name escapes me) are not available on mp3 / ipod / w-ever services because, they claim, they (or those who represent 'em) do not want people downloading individual tracks, breaking the album format.

Led Zeppelin.

[Mostess]

Pink Floyd should join that club! One of the wierdest things about my big MP3 shuffle list is when Dark Side of the Moon tracks suddenly end, and anything that follows, no matter how much I liked it before, is suddenly insipid and unwelcome.

Of course, having TMBG Apollo 13 in the mix means those little "Fingertips" songs show up at delightfully unexpected times. So it all balances out.

No on-topic advice. I haven't bothered to pay for a download, opting instead to listen to my "old" MP3s that I [ahem] somehow obtained in 1998-2000.

[Tonamel]

I'm also on emusic, and I'm really enjoying it. But then, I don't listen to much mainstream stuff. Not so much because I have an intrinsic hatred of the popular, but more that I just really like freak folk.

* I'm not familiar with many of the bands. Sometimes a few sneak through (e.g. Better Than Ezra, Matthew Sweet, The Pernice Brothers, White Stripes, The Donnas, Veruca Salt, etc), but overall it's a big question-mark. You might want to browse or search their catalog to get a better feel for it.

This is true, but I still have over thirty albums in my Saved for Later list.

* Don't expect comprehensive catalogs. They might have albums A and D by an artist, but not albums B, C, E, F, G, etc.

And sometimes only part of an album.

* Overall I feel happy with the yearly subscription so far. I've found some artists I never would have heard of before (e.g. Spiraling, Chk Chk Chk, Horse The Band, Matson Jones, The Mains, etc), at a competitive rate.

Same here. I hadn't known Espers or Calexico or even Neutral Milk Hotel before I got them through emusic. But, since I have an extensive list of stuff I want to get, I haven't branched out much yet. So that's kind of a down point: if you REALLY want to download an album, sometimes you have to wait until next month's quota to kick in.

<strike>Sometimes</strike> <b>Every time</b> I've also saved money compared to the cost of buying a mainstream new release on CD.

Fixed. I'm on the 40 a month plan, so each track is $0.25. For a normal, 11-track album, that's $2.75. Where are you going to find a full length album for that? Heck, even something like Sufjan Steven's The Avalanche, with 21 tracks, it only costs $5.25.

[edit] Also, I got GY!BE's Lift yr. Skinny Fists... for $1.00, since, even though it's two CDs, it's only four tracks. VALUE! [/edit]

And yeah, it's definitely geared toward indie stuff, and I'm kinda bummed that I can't get the new Gnarls Barkley or Muse albums through it, but I'm still happy with it, because it makes stuff like Akron/Family, A Hawk and A Hacksaw, and Final Fantasy ridiculously easy to get.

[ken]

Hey All,

I am once again considering signing up for something like this. I really want access to a lot of music for cheap. Any new thoughts or experiences?

Ken

[JonPorobil]

I had eMusic for about two years, but by the end, I kept forgetting to use my credits, so I kept losing them. They also raised the price without telling me in advance, so I cancelled my account with them. Their prices have steadily risen in the last couple of years, and while I was with them, their service and availability never got noticably better, so I cut 'em off.

I don't have any experience with other music subscription services; I do most of my downloading through Amazon.com. It's usually 99¢ per song, and cheaper if you buy the whole album. They require a download manager software, which I normally don't like, but it's compatible with everything, and really easy to use, so I can't complain. One time, I downloaded an album, and the first two songs failed. They don't allow re-downloads, so I e-mailed their tech support, and I got free replacement mp3s the next day.

Of course, the one-click download is dangerous. I use it sparingly.

[ken]

Thanks.

I usually buy mp3s from amazon as well. You don't have to use their download manager if you are just getting a track at a time. I don't know about albums.

I just found free.napster.com which looks good. You can stream whole songs for free. It limits you to how much you can do this, but for $5/month you can have unlimited streaming and 5 downloads. Seems pretty good.

Ken

[rone rivendale]

I've been with EMusic for about a year. It's great. And they recently added a bunch of mainstream stuff if you are into the whole popular thing.

Funny that Generic got his prices raised. Both me and my friend got 'grandfathered' in to our prices when the prices went up so we kept our same deals.

[JonPorobil]

I've been with EMusic for about a year. It's great. And they recently added a bunch of mainstream stuff if you are into the whole popular thing.

Funny that Generic got his prices raised. Both me and my friend got 'grandfathered' in to our prices when the prices went up so we kept our same deals.

I got grandfathered in once, but the next time the prices went up, they charged me more. And they didn't warn me or give me the opportunity to opt-out, either. So I figured, I could kick and scream over an extra $2, or I could just stop giving them my money.

Also, if you've had your eMusic account for about a year, then you got yours right around the time that I canceled mine. Which means that the prices have gone up again.

To be fair, eMusic audiobooks got me through my senior year of college. I spent so much time driving that I would never have gotten my reading done if they hadn't had Great Expectations and Moby-Dick on mp3.

But by the time I canceled my account, I had already wasted so many credits that I didn't really feel any remorse about canceling. If they offered rollover credits, I might consider coming back. Maybe.

[roymond]

I've had the $5/month Napster service for about 6 months. It's great for catching up on what's "hot", downloading 5 songs a month (which pays for the service, basically) and ... I don't use it for much else. But you don't have to activate computers to use it, so I can log in from wherever I am on whatever machine. And it plays through my company's firewall. So, I like it.

[jast]

The free songs you can download from Napster can only be played three times. You also need some bloatware tool of theirs for buying songs. All subscriptions only give you songs that stop being playable once you cancel your account.
The limit of free streamed songs is 25 per month.
Just saying.

[roymond]

All subscriptions only give you songs that stop being playable once you cancel your account.

Uh...no, that's not right. These are unprotected 256kbps MP3s (some are 128 according to what the record company sent them, but all I've gotten so far are 256).

You can no longer purchase WM files (I know, I was heart broken, too).

[Albatross]

You can no longer purchase WM files (I know, I was heart broken, too).

Haha, I can only think of the times I tried to get DRM-protected WMAs from Buy.com's now-defunct download service. What a farce that was. One time their files wouldn't play because the licensing URLs embedded in them weren't even valid.

I been getting MP3s from Amazon and it's been great. I did get burned by an accidental purchase once, but they just added a screen that let's you confirm your purchases before you download them, so it's a bit less "dangerous."

EDIT: Hey, this is post #11111 to this forum. What do I win?

[jast]

Uh...no, that's not right. These are unprotected 256kbps MP3s (some are 128 according to what the record company sent them, but all I've gotten so far are 256).

I think there's a difference between subscription content (e.g. files downloaded as part of the flatrate subscription) and music you paid for. At least they say on the website that you can buy songs for $1 apiece if you have the flatrate thing. (You can buy them for $1 apiece without the flatrate thing, too, so whatever.)