Filed under: iPod Family, iTS, iTunes
Digital Music Vendor Showdown
Wired has a good article up about the various digital music vendors: Urge, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic and iTunes. They compare and rate the services. In the end, they chose iTunes as their editor's pick, pointing out that although iTunes has no subscription plan at this time, its combination of easy-to-use shopping plus the huge catalog of music, TV and video makes iTunes the most compelling digital vendor. At the bottom of the pack was Napster with its three-device playback restrictions and limited device compatibility. eMusic won on pricing (about $0.25 apiece, if you buy all the tracks you're allowed) and their DRM-free tunes.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Adrian said 11:59AM on 12-20-2006
Well, eMusic definitely wins it for me.
It has good pricing model, no drm, good editorial content (eg themed recommendation from the staff or known artists) and good music.
Sure, there is no music from the major labels but that isn't what I'm looking for in the first place. Besides the majors, there are tons of well known indie artists that make terrific music. There's more than I can fully appreciate avaialable and little I didn't find (they often don't have all albums of an artist but they're constantly adding more).
The only thing that sucks is the website when you have no account. You can get around to see what music they have but I always have to look for it. Try this link:
http://www.emusic.com/browse/all.html
Reply
eieio said 1:09PM on 12-20-2006
I have to agree on the emusic. I use a mixure of emusic and itunes. With a very high % of my music coming from emusic.
As a foot note to it all I think I only bought one CD this year.
Reply
umijin said 2:30PM on 12-20-2006
I'm not going to take any comparison seriously unless they include AllofMP3.com
Regardless of your opinion of its legality, it is a resource that many people use, though they may not admit it. And until it is shut down, remains a source.
Reply
Quix said 2:44PM on 12-20-2006
"I'm not going to take any comparison seriously unless they include AllofMP3.com"
Are you serious??? AllofMP3.com is a pirate site, period. If you're going to include them in the review, you might as well include all the illegal P2P services as well. Unbelievable mentality there.
I like eMusic, but their paltry selection finally drove me away.
Reply
Adrian said 4:20PM on 12-20-2006
I also don't think that there's any difference between AllofMP3 and any P2P network.
Well, there's the difference that by gettting your music through AllofMP3 some dubious people make money of it and who knows, you may be supporting some crime syndicate.
If you're going to spend money for music, I think it doesn't make sense if the artists don't every see anything of it. I buy music at eMusic because I want the artists I appreciate to get paid for their work. If that doesn't matter to you, you better get your music through a free P2P network.
But don't compare such a site to legitimate services like those mentioned in the article.
@Quix
eMusic has a great selection of indie Folk / Alternative, Jazz, World and Classical music. Luckily, that's what I'm looking for. If you look for music from the major labels, I understand the eMusic is nothing for you.
Reply
sundoggy said 11:51PM on 12-20-2006
AllofMP3.com has one advantage over P2P--quality--and you can choose your encoding and quality. It's worth the 10 cents a song, and though I buy a lot of stuff from iTunes (lots and lots), I like the prices at AllofMP3.com, it's allowed me to replace my vinyl library finally without breaking the bank... So I don't have a problem "repurchasing" there. I buy all my new stuff at iTunes or on CD.
But, it's UI sucks big time, and it will eventually be shut down. I'm looking forward to the day when the musicians all sell straight through iTunes and get rid of the middle men. They'll make more money, we'll get a better deal, and everybody will be happy.
What's surprising is that there was no comparison to the Zune Marketplace. That's probably going to be the only real viable competitor (legit that is). Not that I would buy anything from MS. The store doesn't look too bad, but they really botched up that whole release. I mean come on, if you're model is Apple, you should RTFM.
Reply
Galley said 9:46AM on 12-21-2006
I hate to say it, but as long as the iTunes Store continues to offer only 128Kbps tracks, they won't be getting any money from me. CDs are a much better deal.
Reply