emusic: good, bad, and ugly

[BradKlein]

I've been using WWW.EMUSIC.COM for over 2 years, and have been happy overall with the cost and selection. I pay 40 cents per track and about $5 for most discs. Files are MP3s without any digital rights management protection.

Among the offerings, are all(?) the Skaggs Family Records and Grisman's Acoustic Disc.

NOW THE BAD NEWS: I have NEVER worked with an e-commerce site that has resulted in SO much unwanted e-mail SPAM. I used a unique e-mail address to sign up with e-music, and thank goodness, because either their security measures are faulty, or they sell e-mails to the UGLIEST kinds of spammers. Literally hundreds and hundreds of bogus drug offers, sex services, and scams have come in to that address. Since there has NEVER been a useful e-mail from the company -- and they have never responded to customer service inquiries about SPAM problems -- it all goes into the garbage.

But still. It makes me wonder how trustworthy their security is with my credit card info.

[Alex Orr]

You may want to check out Lala, which I use quite a bit. Although the mp3s are pricier - I think Lala averages about $.79-$.99. Still, HQ mp3s, DRM-free, free full track/full album previews, and "web only" versions of tracks for a dime a pop. You can also upload your digital library to their site and stream it anywhere through their player, which is surprisngly handy.

[foldedpath]

I've been using amazon.com for purchased MP3's. I used to use the iTunes store, but went to Amazon when they started offering DRM-free MP3's (many of the files you buy from iTunes are still DRM'd).

The preview length is a little longer than iTunes, and the catalog is huge. If I can't find it on Amazon, then I usually can't find it elsewhere without ordering a physical CD. There is no annoying spam, just a single email receipt for each order. And if my credit card data isn't safe with Amazon, then I'm already in big trouble from other purchases there.

Amazon MP3's do have a couple of negatives. They're a little more expensive than some services like emusic.com, because they license the "Big Four" record label catalogs. I don't buy that much music online, so the cost difference for me is negligable. The other thing is that Amazon places a unique user ID tag in the metadata comment field, which could (theoretically) be tied to your purchase record in their database. I suppose that's intended to track the spread of illegal files. I think I read somewhere that emusic.com doesn't do that.

I don't share music illegally, and I don't like the assumption of guilt, when I'm a legitimate purchaser. So I just use the free Mp3tag editor to blank out the comment field, and then re-save the file. It takes a little extra time, but I can de-tag a whole album of files at once, if I'm buying more than a single track. Whatever music service you use, if you care about this sort of thing, you might want to check with something like Mp3tag to see what information is being tagged onto your purchased files. If there is any extra info there, it's just an open metadata field that's easy to blank out. Re-saving the file doesn't alter the compression quality (AFAIK) because you're just changing the file header, not the data stream.

[BradKlein]

Thanks for the lala suggestion. The full track preview option is great.

For example, I never knew about the Louvin's Delmore Brothers tribute, and I'm able to preview the whole disc on line for free. That's a real value!

I guess that I am very cost conscious (trying not to say CHEAP!!), but I do appreciate the value at emusic. I like to stay on the legit side of things, and somehow, the difference between $5 for a disk on emusic and $9.50 at amazon adds up. And I like the 'record club' system of paying my $12/month and looking forward to my 30 credits. Keeps me on a budget.

Here I was trying to SLAM the company, for giving out my email to spammers, and I end up defending them, at least somewhat.

I wonder, do the musicians get twice as much for an amazon.com sale as they do for an emusic sale?

[Alex Orr]

I've been using amazon.com for purchased MP3's...

At the risk of sounding like a zealous spammer, you really might want to check out Lala. Smaller selection than Amazon, but for the most part, you'll find what you're lookng for and I don't think they insert user info in the metadata. Also, I don't think any of the mp3s are over $.99, and as I said, they offer a one-time, free full-song preview with the option of unlimited online listens for $.10.

The thing that gets me about purchasing mp3s is that for a lot of albums, it's just cheaper to buy a used copy at Amazon. Used CD prices have become really low for a lot of music, even with shipping and handling. I was buying a lot of old rockabilly and '50s R&B a few months back. A lot of those comps were available for about $4 -$6 used (including S+H) while a "new" mp3 version of the album would run about $8.99. With my salary every dollar counts, so even though I'd love to leave the plastic disc and jewel case out of the music buying equation, it just made more sense to buy used CDs through an Amazon seller.

[SincereCorgi]

Huh, that's interesting. I use eMusic but didn't notice any particular uptick in the amount of spam I get on my address when I signed up- woudn't be that surprised, though. I thought you'd be complaining more about their recent price hike!

-Trevor

[foldedpath]

The thing that gets me about purchasing mp3s is that for a lot of albums, it's just cheaper to buy a used copy at Amazon. Used CD prices have become really low for a lot of music, even with shipping and handling.

That's a great idea, I should do more of that. It's also possible to get higher-quality file conversions from a CD with something like FLAC compression, if you don't mind a little extra disk storage size. At my age though, it's probably not worth going too high quality. Those ultra-high frequencies I could hear in my 20's are long gone.

[Wendell Jeong]

I've been using Mp3panda.com for about 4 months now after a friend told me about it. Songs are 5 cents a track. From their legal disclaimer, the site is in Russia and they adhere to copy write laws and pay royalties. I was a little worried about giving out my credit card info to a Russian site, but so far so good. They have some really old rock tracks that I couldn't find on file sharing networks. Sound quality is very good and no spam.

Wendell

[weeble]

I've been using eMusic for 4 years. Love it. FWIW, I'm spam free. I wonder if it's possible your email address ended up in the wild through some other means. I think of eMusic as a quality outfit. I think of myself as a picky consumer.

While we're talking about eMusic...

As stated, the files are DRM free (I refuse to buy DRM music) and favorably priced (though there was just a price hike). The files are also are fairly high-quality with variable bitrate mp3 encoding, which was what got my attention in first place. The selection of mando and similar music is pretty deep and I've discovered a lot music . One cool change just implemented is that if an album runs over 12 songs you download the entire album for 12 credits, or about $4.80 on my plan. I have cued up a Carter Family compilation with 25 tracks. That's a deal.

Ultimately I'm an audio-quality hound (make my own loudspeakers and have tubes in my system) so I get most of music on disk from Swapacd.com and rip the disks myself, lossless. Your cost per swap is less than $2. The kind of music this board grooves on, though, is under-represented on swapacd. So get on there and start trading with me!

[foldedpath]

MP3Panda.com is a Russian site that's similar to AllOfMP3 (Wiki entry), if not the same folks running under a new name. AllOfMp3 claimed they paid royalties too. There's a pretty big clue in the fact that they're only charging you 5 cents for major label recordings. The major labels aren't letting iTunes or Amazon sell music that cheap, and there's a reason.

Sites like this are basically just con artists acting as middle men between you and pirated files. You might as well just go straight to a torrent, and get the files for free (I'm not recommending that, just trying to make a point).

Aside from all that, Russia is ground zero for malware. YMMV, but it's the very last place I'd ever give out my personal credit card info.

[Douglas McMullin]

NOW THE BAD NEWS: I have NEVER worked with an e-commerce site that has resulted in SO much unwanted e-mail SPAM.

I am not sure that the two are related. My wife and I both have seperate emusic accounts, and I have had zero issues with spam related to their site. No additional spam in general and no spam from emusic. If you are getting all kinds of messages from them you can probably kill that in your settings.

[Django Fret]

Another fan of Emusic and I have been using it for many years without any noticeable increase in spam. They did have a recent price increase so instead of getting 65 downloads a month, I now only get 32 for $14.95. That is offset by the increase in their catalog with a lot more artists available since they upped the price.

[BradKlein]

Well, I can't say exactly how this spam problem started, but it is tied exclusively to my dealings with emusic. The junk mail does not come from them directly. But it does come to two separate e-mail addresses that were created and used for only one purpose, dealing with emusic. They've never gone anywhere else, so ultimately, it had to be emusic that released them, or allowed them to be taken.

Anyway, it's not a problem that needs fixing, since those addresses now go straight to TRASH. But it has been striking, and unique to this one e-commerce company, in my experience.