Question for legal music downloaders.

[The_Llama]

I was into the whole napster/kazaa thing when it started, but after the whole litigation and subsequent fines of real people, I've stopped downloading all together. I saw something in the pit about Beatles music being to expensive that made me think.

If you belong to, say, itunes, is any song available for download, or are you limited in any way by popularity/availability.

Terribly worded question. Here's an example. Say I want to buy a Beatles album (shudders at the thought), but it's $30. I decide, screw it, I subscribe to itunes, I'll just go d/l it at .97c per song and burn it. Will I be able to get every song on a given album, even if said song is a really obscure B-Side? Or will I be limited to the songs that were popular/reasonably popular.

[Garfield226]

Depends a lot on the individual service you choose to subscribe to.

For example, I am a member of emusic.com. I pay $9.99 per month for 40 songs/month.

They carry independent labels. That means I'm not going to find many current popular artists. They do have a few artists who might be considered popular, like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Thelonius Monk, George Carlin, Louis Armstrong and They Might Be Giants. On the whole though, they have a lot of independent, old or obscure stuff. If you like Jazz or Classical (and you're just looking for a particular song rather than a particular recording), you'll probably find what you want, but if you're looking for today's top 40 stuff, you won't find it.

[Roches]

I'm not allowed to use iTunes, and it doesn't appear to do this, but the legal music download site that I am allowed to use is rendered essentially useless by a rule that requires them to remove two tracks from every CD. (Generally, they're even kind enough to remove the two best tracks.) The idea is to encourage people to buy the 'real' CD. So, you have to pay $10 or so to 'preview' the CD, then another $20 to buy the 'real' CD -- for two tracks, which will probably be the best two. As an extra touch of kindness, the site uses protected WMA files, so you can't put the music on an iPod without violating the license agreement.

[chrisk]

I buy some stuff at puretracks.com ... they don't tend to generally do things like removing the best two tracks, but the selection is somewhat limited... presumably a question of whatever they can negotiate out of record labels and artist representatives. Some artists seem to have their entire body of work there... some have a few albums and a few singles, some have only one obscure album. (Also sometimes albums are listed as 'no download available' -- you can use the puretracks site to buy the physical CD mailorder but nothing else - that's a pet peeve.)

Occasionally I've noticed an album that has a few of its most popular tracks listed 'not available for download' -- it seems to me that this is probably something mandated by an artist or his reps... deciding that they have no problem with people buying the less well known tracks over the internet, but they have to go out and buy the album if they want the hit singles. (Shrug.) They're pretty up front about it in those cases -- this is what's for sale, and you can choose to spend your money on it or not.

I like the service, especially being able to pick and choose a lot of the time, pay for the tracks I think I'll like and not waste my money on the others. The WMA tracks play on my RCA-lyra MP3 player and my pocketPC, if I store them in main memory - but mostly I just burn a CD out of them and then get MP3s off the CD if I want to.

Hope this info helps.

[Diceman]

On all of the services, availability is kinda spotty.

If you're not going to be downloading a lot of songs, then skip the memberships. Just go to some place like Napster (which I've used) and buy the songs you want for 99 cents a song. I think you can buy albums there for about $10, but I've never bought an entire album from Napster, just insididual songs.

[Cliffy]

I use itunes. Many albums are there in their entirety and can be purcahsed by album or by track. Many other albums are not complete, but itunes (and, presumably, the other services) are adding new material constantly. Individual deals need to be worked out with each label and, in some cases, individual artists, so popular stuff may be withheld. The Beatles, for instance, aren't on itunes. Bob Dylan, OTOH, has most of his albums available (including the recent remasters) for less than $10. Prince has tracks missing from most of his albums; you can't find Little Red Corvette on itunes, but Rasberry Beret, Darling Nikki, and 1999 are available. Nirvana's Nevermind and In Utero are both complete, though.

So the short answer to the OP is that it depends. For any given non-superstar artist or album, there's a good chance itunes has it complete, but the bigger the act, the more likely there are tracks withheld. As to which tracks are withheld, it's probably more likely that the bigger hits than the B-sides, but it's not really consistent. However, since itunes doesn't require a membership fee of any kind, it's no skin off my nose if the album I want isn't available; it takes 10 seconds to check, and if it ain't there I can buy a physical copy.

--Cliffy