Let’s face it…music is just information. And digital information at that. So why hit a record store (one of my favorite hangouts as a kid) when you can just d/l the stuff.
But I make my living, pay my mortgage, and feed the family through copyrighted material. I wouldn’t feel right downloading songs through Kazaa and their ilk.
So I’m all about just d/ling the songs I want from a variety of bands but wish to do it legally. But I’m not plugged into the scene.
So can y’all tell me about what legal d/l souces you use, your experiences, etc? Do you need to d/l software? Are the songs transferable? Is the selection sufficient (I like stuff ranging from 1930s bluegrass to the present pop and punk stuff) to justify bothering with using the service?
I’ve been a user of iTunes Music Store from the very beginning. I’m a Mac user, so I had iTunes, anyway. I’ve had no problems with it, and I’ve found the selection to be very good, and I enjoy a wide variety of music, as well.
http://www.epitonic.com has a great array of free legal mp3s for downloading, as well as lots of information about the bands, and the all-important “If you like music by A, you’ll also like music by B, C, and D” listings. The majority of the available tracks are by “indie rock” bands, so don’t go there expecting to find top 40 hip hop or pop acts on major labels. But it is a fantastic site to expose yourself to great bands who normally wouldn’t get radio play or mainstream exposure.
Let’s get one thing straight: music isn’t information. The name of the president of the US is information. The bauxite production of Bolivia is information.
Information merely exists. Music – and all creative work – is created out of nothing but the artist’s talent. There is a major difference between the two and to call music “just information” – except in the most trivial and pseudotechnical sense – is misleading and demeaning to the people who have to practice for years to create it.
Getting back to the question, I’ve found some nice things at Buymusic. It will ensure that the people who created the music are getting paid for it.
I subscribe to Rhapsody… $9.95 per month, and they have just about everything out there. It’s a streaming music service, but they have the option to burn to CD for .79 per song. I love it. I can listen to just about anything, provided I’ve got a computer handy. Since I do most of my listening at home, that’s not a big deal.
The only thing I don’t like about them is that I’d like an option to buy an mp3 version of the song. (I could burn it to cd, then convert to mp3, but I don’t like the idea of going from compressed-uncompressed-compressed).
Does ITunes have a similiar streaming service, or are they just a $1 per mp3 site?
Chuck, lighten up. Music is just information, especially in a world where it can be stored in 1s and 0s. Saying that a book is information isn’t insulting to its author just as calling music information isn’t insulting to the artists. Artists are in the business of creating information, no matter what you call it.
I think you must have spelled the name wrong, cuz it doesn’t link to anything.
By the way, I wrote a long reply to the OP, but the SDMB engine seems to be running on fumes today and ate it and I just don’t have the patience to fool with it today.
What about http://club.mp3search.ru/? The FAQ claims that it’s legal, but the prices are so low, it makes me think the RIAA’s going to bust down my door and kick my dogs. Or is it a scam?
Anything that much cheaper than the standard makes very nervous.
I use Napster. I like it; they have big selection covering a wide range of genres. You can install the software for free and pay 99 cents for a track, or your can subscribe and pay $9.95 per month, download the music for free, and only pay the 99 cents if you want to burn a song to a CD or put it on an MP3 player. You can buy entire albums for $10.
I saw a discussion about this site on another MB, and the general consensus is that they’re not legal in the US. Apparently totally legal if you’re in Russia, but for the US, the primary difficulty is they pay nothing to the RIAA.
And nothing can be complete with the SINGLE BEST WAY TO GET LEGAL MUSIC: IRATE. It’s a system that uses freely available music, lets you rate it and then downloads more according to your preferences. It rocks my lame little world every freakin day!
I use iTunes, but there are problems - a lot of stuff I want, they don’t carry. It is also very hard to burn purchased music in any other format then their .aac format. Not impossible, but IMHO it could be easier. It is transferrable to I think 3 computers.
That seems to be a limitation of all online music services right now; they can only put up what the labels give them. I believe the selection at the iTMS is the biggest available at the moment, and is selling more than the others (reportedly, Napster is in second place, but is only selling 1/4th as many songs as the iTMS).
You mean burn to a CD? You can burn to an audio CD, for listening in most players.
If you mean converting from protected AAC to another format, the easiest way IMO is to do this (works only with a Mac, natch):
Start iMovie. Import your protected AAC file as a soundtrack.
Use the “Export…” command to export your movie as an AIFF sound file.
Start iTunes, then import the AIFF sound file from step #2.
(optional) Use iTunes to convert from AIFF to MP3 or (unprotected) AAC.
There’s a technical loss in quality in going from one lossy format (AAC) to another (MP3), but to be honest, I can’t hear the difference.
I’m an avid user of the iTunes Store. I’ve bought several hundred songs there. The selection has holes, but I’ve not been able to find anything on Napster (which I have but don’t use) that I couldn’t also find on iTunes, and I could find a lot on iTunes and nowhere else. There’s a reason it’s the industry leader by far.
You can use your aol account in itunes as an itunes account. itunes also has a lot of audiobook over 5000. i have 143 bought tracks. that and pepsi is giving away 100 million songs, so can try before you buy if you lucky i have won 7 out of the last 10 pepsis i have bought
