Jul
- Has a selection of music that I like. I’m not a typical mainstream music consumer. My taste leans mostly in the indie pop/rock and electronica genres.
- No DRM! I refuse to pay for anything that is specifically engineered to not work.
- Platform and browser independent. I use Linux (the Ubuntu variety) ... not Mac and not Windows. Don’t force me to reboot into an inferior operating system just to shop your site. This rules out iTunes.
eMusic had an interesting offering: after your free trial downloads. The basic plan is $9.99 per month for 30 DRM-free song downloads. That comes out to $0.33 per song, two-thirds cheaper than iTunes and most other sites. They also have a $14.99/50 and $19.99/75 plan, which works out to even less per song.
The deciding factor here is going to be selection. I was disappointed that I couldn’t browse the download library without signing up and providing my credit card number for when my “trial period” expired. The whole sign-up processed reminded me too much of those “Get 12 CD’s for 1 cent” ripoffs of 90’s. But, curiosity got the best of me so I coughed up the cc digits.
I was pleased to find a decent selection of music from artists that I really like. And I also found eMusic’s ratings, similar artists, and editorial content very useful. I had no problem using my 35 free downloads in a few hours. Here’s what I picked up:
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Live at Radio Aligre FM in Paris by Broken Social Scene |
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The Dream of Evan and Chan by Dntel |
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Picaresque by The Decemberists |
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Dreams by The Whitest Boy Alive |
The MP3 files sound great and were happily DRM-free as promised. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use the multiple file download manager on Linux … but at least they provide a way to download tracks manually clicking on each track individually. I can live with that for now.
One thing that is pretty annoying is that the filenames of the downloaded files are named in such a way that they don’t sort correctly. For example, The_Decemberists_Picaresque_10_The_Mariner_s_Revenge_Song.mp3 sorts before The_Decemberists_Picaresque_1_The_Infanta.mp3, and therefore plays in the wrong order in my MP3 player unless I manually re-sort them. To fix this, eMusic should use 2-digits in the track filename for each file, so The_Decemberists_Picaresque_1_The_Infanta.mp3 should become The_Decemberists_Picaresque_01_The_Infanta.mp3.
Again, the selection was pretty good, but not nearly as comprehensive as iTunes. I found enough interesting stuff to keep me busy for a while, but also a few searches for bands I know and like came up empty. I think the more eMusic can improve here, the more compelling their service will be to more people.
I’ll be upgrading to the $9.99 plan for a month or two at least.
If you want to try out eMusic and hook us both up with 50 free downloads under their Tell-A-Friend program, email me or post your email address in the comments and I’ll send you an invite.
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