Alternatives to eMusic?
As far as I know, there aren't any really.
But I think we should share any good info we have.
Here's some from a post I made earlier...
Amie St - never seem to have stuff I want available to me in the UK, but I'll keep checking it more often now.
Audiolunchbox - I used to use it, but have heard so many bad things I'd be reluctant to go back.
Amazon's UK mp3 store is OK but the special deals are mostly a lot less special or interesting to me than the US ones I keep hearing about (Frank Sinatra box sets excepted of course!).
7digital.com and Play.com both get some decent bargains, but still mostly only in comparison to the higher UK pricing.
Bleep.com, Boomkat.com - mostly great for electronic stuff but also other genres depending on label.
Beatport.com, Junodownload.com - dance / electronic all the way.
klicktrack.com - scandinavian indie site, has some interesting things
mp3.mondomix.com - 'World' music for want of a better term. Used to be Calabash.
tentracks.co.uk and 14tracks.com - sell pre-selected themed bundles at cheap prices. Some great deals if you happen to like the choices.
I never really got on with Last.fm. Couldn't say for sure why, it just didn't ever feel right for me.
I'm going to try and get into using Spotify I think, although the collector voice in my head keeps screaming that it's wrong to not OWN the tracks, for a lot of material it might do just fine in the long term.
Until the ads get too frequent or the bad guys shut it down of course.
...any more?
But I think we should share any good info we have.
Here's some from a post I made earlier...
Amie St - never seem to have stuff I want available to me in the UK, but I'll keep checking it more often now.
Audiolunchbox - I used to use it, but have heard so many bad things I'd be reluctant to go back.
Amazon's UK mp3 store is OK but the special deals are mostly a lot less special or interesting to me than the US ones I keep hearing about (Frank Sinatra box sets excepted of course!).
7digital.com and Play.com both get some decent bargains, but still mostly only in comparison to the higher UK pricing.
Bleep.com, Boomkat.com - mostly great for electronic stuff but also other genres depending on label.
Beatport.com, Junodownload.com - dance / electronic all the way.
klicktrack.com - scandinavian indie site, has some interesting things
mp3.mondomix.com - 'World' music for want of a better term. Used to be Calabash.
tentracks.co.uk and 14tracks.com - sell pre-selected themed bundles at cheap prices. Some great deals if you happen to like the choices.
I never really got on with Last.fm. Couldn't say for sure why, it just didn't ever feel right for me.
I'm going to try and get into using Spotify I think, although the collector voice in my head keeps screaming that it's wrong to not OWN the tracks, for a lot of material it might do just fine in the long term.
Until the ads get too frequent or the bad guys shut it down of course.
...any more?
Comments
Music Gourmets seem like a decent crowd and you can spot some old eMu faces there too.
I might have to investigate further.
Craig
I'll stick with Spotify for the streaming option I think.
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
At first Music Gourmets looks like a private party with lots of in-jokes and irreverent banter, but overall, I've really enjoyed it. And drunken ramblings are not only tolerated, but encouraged. Or at the very least, readily forgiven.
If you're in Canada, particularly Southern Ontario and Quebec you should check out www.stillepost.ca
It's a very active community of musicians, writers, artists, movie fans, critics, and fans of culture in general. It's my primary haunt on the Internet.
I would propose the name of andiemusik.com
6 music services compared: Who can bust the iTunes monopoly?
Nothing new here, just thought you might be interested in his opinion.
Is this where you post without scrolling through pages and pages of general abuse and argument?
Great
Hello!
I've not had much experience of other downloading sites, never felt the need till now. I have had a go at Jamendo recently (best download so far is HiFi Hustlers - Blagging it EP, excelent, fun, dubby). My only slight complaint is the deluge of emails I got when I joined, still, they've slowed to a more managable quantity now.
The excellent customer service is a definite plus with Amazon.
I do not get the Lala "web purchase" thing.
This morning I made my first purchase at the LimeWire store. Christian McBride's Live at Tonic - which went up to 36 credits at you know where. Not the best interface, but the product is good. Hopefully they'll expand even more and be in good shape for when my annual runs dry.
Sony actually has its own download store in Australia which they only launched last November -- I can't believe they would go to all that trouble just for little ole us so I presume it is a trial run for a wider roll out. Make of that what you will. With unitentional irony, it is called bandit.fm.
After declaring I would never give them my money, I weakened and tried it on the weekend because they were having a "buy your first album and get a $20 credit" promo. So I did that with two credit cards. Got Miles' Kind of Blue, The Best of the Johnny Cash Show (great CD), Gilded Palace of Sin and Burrito Deluxe -- Flying Burrito Bros, some tracks from the new Knaan record, a Ray Charles EP from Rhino, the Blind Faith album and some other cherry picked tracks.
I was happy with what I got for what I spent with the free credit but overall I will stick with iTunes for mainstream needs. The price is the same -- too expensive (about USD $14 and album on current exchange rate) but while it looks pretty it is just that bit more clunky and time consuming to use. And they send you zip files instead of automatically synching with iTunes. There are some good things, the catalogue is not just Sony, the downloads are 320kbp (although I tend to think thats actually excessive, a Miles track can easily clock in at 30MB!), no DRM. If they have more desperate promos I might use them again but otherwise, I don't see them getting much traction.
This this is the Jamendo I've been trying
Other places to buy downloads (good, but not cheap)
Mindawn - mainly progressive rock, some of it top quality. OGG and FLAC downloads
Burning Tree - contains music by side projects of Porcupine Tree band members, and a lot of other interesting stuff. MP3 or FLAC downloads, with CDs, and even vinyl for some issues.
(edit) Magnatune - Lots of different genres. Free download of 128k mp3 files. Purchase in flac, I think (didnt buy anything from them yet)
I also ran into a place called 'music is here'. It charges 99c per download, doesn't have a lot of stuff compared with iTunes/Amazon/eMusic, and seems to be based in Latvia. Does anybody know anything about it?