In this post, I'd like to highlight and compare some of the online music services that I have used over the past several years: the iTunes Store, Amazon's MP3 store, eMusic, and Lala.
The iTunes Store: For a while, iTunes was my clear choice for purchasing digital music. Their selection is pretty comprehensive, their prices are cheaper than buying CDs, and it's easy to sync iTunes music with an iPod. The only drawback is that much of their catalog is DRM-protected, meaning there are restrictions to how many computers the music can play on and how many CDs it can be burned onto. Apple is fazing DRM-protection out of the iTunes Store, but I bought quite a few songs with DRM-protection that Apple is now asking me to pay for again in order to get DRM-free versions, which annoys me, so I've chosen to boycot the iTunes Store whenever possible.
Amazon MP3: Amazon's selling point is that (1) they offer their entire catalog of MP3s without DRM-protection, (2) the bit rate (i.e., sound quality) of the songs is higher than the average song in the iTunes store, and (3) their prices are slightly lower than in the iTunes Store. The experience on the Amazon website isn't quite as nice as that in the iTunes store, but that's not important to me.
eMusic: I recently joined eMusic, and I love it. The service is subscription-based, so you pay for a package that allows you a specific number of downloads each month. Depending on the package you choose, the average cost of a song ranges from $.25 to $.60, significantly less than songs from iTunes or Amazon. Glaringly absent, however, is music from the "Big Four" record labels, so a lot of mainstream music isn't available. This means it's probably not possible to rely completely on eMusic to get all the music you want, though it sure has a lot of good stuff. The site features interesting editorial content and a music recommendation service through which I've found a lot of good, eclectic music that I might never have discovered (or been able to afford) otherwise -- jazz from the early 1900s, old Hawaiian music, minimal electronic, and lots of "indie" music.
Lala: I only signed up for Lala yesterday, but so far I'm blown away. Lala's model is certainly going to cause a stir, and it wouldn't surprise me if they give the above-listed incumbents a run for their money. By far the coolest feature is the fact that Lala automatically syncs your current music library with their catalog of 6 million songs, allowing you to listen to any song in your library as many times as you want through their site. Even better, any song in your library that's not in the Lala catalog is uploaded and stored in "the cloud", meaning you can listen to any song in your library on any computer through the Lala site. They also allow you to hear any song in their catalog once -- all the way through -- while iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic only allow you a 30-second preview. Then, if you like what you heard, you can pay $.10 for a "web song", which you can listen to as many times as you want through the Lala site. If you decide you really like the song/album, you can download the MP3, and what you paid for the web song counts towards the purchase price, which is competitive with Amazon and iTunes. If this doesn't seem revolutionary to you, consider the fact that Lala makes it possible to listen to your music library on any computer anywhere there's internet. The day when the internet is everywhere and available on every device is probably not far off, which means that it won't be long before you can listen to any music you want, whenever and wherever. I expect Lala to have an iPhone app out at some point (that is, unless Apple decides to nix it in order to reduce the threat Lala poses), and then maybe I won't even have to put MP3s on my iPhone anymore.Another cool thing about Lala is that you can embed songs in blogs! Check out this song, which I actually discovered thanks to eMusic, but it's now also available to me wherever I have a computer and internet (I think you can only listen to it once, but hey, if you like it you might be willing to pay $.10 to be able to hear it as many times as you want):
Yes, these online music stores sure do make it easy and cheap to find and obtain new music. Technology can be great! But sometimes I feel the urge to sit by the fire and listen to an album on a record player. Eh, nevermind -- I'm too lazy to get off the couch.
This is a cool, informative and intelligently written post. I think you've got a cool thing going with your blog here, and it will be fun to watch the blog grow and develop as you do with your music.
ReplyDeleteYou should podcast some of the music you've made, like the remixed Radiohead song.