OT: Online music vendors

PossibilityX wrote on 2/3/2005, 9:03 AM
Just bought my first MP3 player. I like iTunes for their selection and for playing tunes on my computer while I work, but I find to my annoyance that you can only use Apple's own portable players, so iTunes just lost (no doubt ANOTHER) customer. (And BTW, wasn't it this insistence on proprietary Apple-Only-Think that made the Mac the Betamax of the computer world? Ah, well...)

So, excluding iTunes, which online music service do you recommend, and why?

Thanks in advance....

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/3/2005, 9:42 AM
I recently just started using iTunes too. I have to say i detest the iTunes software. It seems like they went out of their way to make it more difficult than necessary to find your way around, and, it stole my music file associations! That should be grounds for disbanding a company. ;)

However, the selection seems good, the prices are reasonable, the service is fast. After downloading a bunch of tunes i'll burn them to a standard Audio CD-R, then rip them back into whatever format i want. It's a couple extra steps, but it's worth it.

I've also tried signing up for Wal*Mart's music download service, but have been unsuccessful so far. Maybe my fingers are getting clumsy in my old age, but every time i try, the website complains that my credit card info is wrong, and if i submit it incorrectly 3 times in a row, i'm locked out for 3 days. *shrug* Probably my own fault, but then again, i never have that problem when i shop online anywhere else. Hopefully i'll get in eventually and i'll let you know how it goes. The prices are cheaper than iTunes, but i've heard the selection isn't as good.
boomhower wrote on 2/3/2005, 10:03 AM
I tried the WalMart option and was able to download a couple of songs. The problem came later when I tried to move the songs to disc so I could transfer them to my home pc. I could never get the music to play on anything except the computer I downloaded from. The license said you could transfer to a disc and move it to another computer along with putting it on your portable (you had a limited number of times you could transfer but you had unlimited transfers to the portable if I remember....this has been a while ago now) but when I tried to play the music from my home pc, it gave me an error and would not play.....didn't work on the cd I copied it to either.

I've given up and will just keep buying "greatest hits albums" and listening the old fashioned way. I even get out the vinyl from time to time ;-)

Not to hijack the thread but I just read an article on Yahoo that discussed online music

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&ncid=738&e=1&u=/ap/20050203/ap_on_hi_te/digital_music

What hit me while reading this article is that somewhere in this online music purchase kingdom may be the answer to the license question that keeps coming up with the wedding video folks etc. How difficult would it be to set up a similar system that allowed production folks to set up an account, log in and purchase a license for XX number of copies with XXXX rights etc etc.?

Just a thought.....
PossibilityX wrote on 2/3/2005, 3:57 PM
Chienworks and Boomhower, thanks for your input.

I had the idea (my false assumption?) that there was some sort of coding black magic that made re-encoding an iTunes-burned CD impossible. But it's a good idea, and I'll be giving it a try.

Boomhower, your idea for an online music account for wedding video folks or the like is a good one, I think. Alternatively, I've toyed with a trial version of Acid and really like it----I've gotten some sample loops from the Sony site and just tweak them in Vegas pending my purchase of the "middle version" of Acid. I don't really understand why the wedding folks who can't or won't buy licensed music don't just compose their scores in Acid, as it seems butt-scratching simple even to a chucklehead like me.

In any event, I've got some CD re-encoding to experiment with!