Digital Music Options for Prog Fans

this topic isn`t going to last long 

Ghandi 2 wrote: What are good digital music services beyond the perennial iTunes? eMusic seems to be pretty good (I like that I just got a bunch of free music from them with their trial period), but their prog selection isn't too good and their MP3s are usually encoded only around 170 kb/s, which is only ok (although to be fair, they do use VBR, so some of the songs are encoded significantly higher, and I don't know what iTunes encodes at).

The eMusic files are quite good ... I've been using the service for almost a year and most of the 840 tracks that I have downloaded average at well above 190kbps. Their selection is also quite nice ... of course far from being complete, but there are plenty of interesting albums, surely enough for a couple of months on the subscription service.

I would recommend you check out the Napster flatrate too ... a much better selection, and you can listen to everything they have for $10/month.


BTW: Of course these two services are completely legal ... in case anyone was wondering.

Ghandi 2 wrote: Ha, I was wondering what happened to this thread. :) The problem with Napster is that it's streaming, but I like to listen to music when I'm away from the computer. Although it's good to listen to a whole bunch of different things, and the To Go is nice too; except I lose everything once I stop subscribing, and I want to keep this stuff.

Sorry, but you can't expect to get access to the whole catalog, listen to everything for as long and as often as you want, and expect to keep the stuff you listened to when you cancel the subscription. That would be the same as a public library where you can lend as many books/CDs as you want to one day just decide to keep the stuff and never go there again.

So: Of couse everybody would like to keep the stuff, but it is impossible.

And for the record: Napster is not streaming only. You can download all the tracks you want to listen to as part of the flatrate, and you can even transfer them to portable players as part of the "To-Go" flatrate.

Ghandi 2 wrote: The thing I like about eMusic is it's the way digital music should be: high quality and significantly cheaper than physically buying it, without a bunch of code screwing with your ability to use it. I can even use it with iTunes because iTunes sees it as just an imported MP3--it rejects Napster because of its separate code. Although you could probably use a 3rd party program to manually upload the MP3s onto the iPod.

I hate when people bash any hardware or software that isn't compatible with the iPod or iTunes. APPLE is to blame for that, nobody else. They chose to make a player that will only play their own implementation of DRM, although it was pretty obvious at the time that the Microsoft DRM was going to be used by all the other stores. Of course from a business standpoint it made (and still makes) a lot of sense, but consumers buying iPods should be aware that by doing so the are essentially saying "ok, I bind myself to iTunes and will not be able to use any other music store".

Except for those stores like emusic.com which use mp3 ... I like eMusic, but of course they have a limited selection (they have many, many great albums, but not as many as Napster or iTunes).

Ghandi 2 wrote: Napster does have a significantly better selection in most cases, although both aren't too strong in the prog department.

Yes, they are. I currently have more than 500 prog albums from Napster, and that's only because I obviously don't need to download albums that I already have as CD ... I think that 90% of my collection (approx. 1,000 albums) are available on Napster. Purchasing them in stores would cost approx. 15,000 EUR. Now imagine you use the Napster To-Go flatrate for 90% and buy the rest. That means you spend 1,500 EUR for 100 albums ... that would leave you with another 13,500 EUR for the To-Go flatrate fee. That's 15 EUR/month ... so:

With the money that I would need to purchase my 1000 albums (15,000 EUR) I would be able to listen to the same collection for 75 years on Napster.

So much for the typical "I don't like Napster because I can't keep the albums after cancelling the service" argument.




Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 13 2007 at 08:04

^ Napster has 12 Steve Hackett albums, but no Magma ... but they have many obscure albums, so either those who own the rights on the Magma albums don't like Napster, or they just haven't gotten around to adding them yet.