Are you sick and tired of being told that you cannot make legitimate copies of your own music? Did you buy a song for your iPod only to later discover that you could not play it on something else that you own? A “little” company, eMusic.com, has the answer: they sell good music for a fair price without DRM. You can make all the copies you that you want.
Ars Technica has a good article about them, Making money selling music without DRM: the rise of eMusic
They’re doing a lot of things right. The site works well, downloads are quick, and it has plenty of tools with which to discover new music. The music itself is high bit rate VBR MP3 files, and it sounds terrific. Still, you’ll need to have a musical taste at least slightly outside the mainstream for the site to interest you in the long term. We’ve talked mainly about indie rock, but eMusic also has massive jazz and classical sections (it recently acquired the entire Naxos catalog, for instance), and is also a good place to go for (of all things) comedy albums.
I have been an eMusic subscriber for over two years and I have found a bunch of good stuff. Give it a listen; I think you will be pleased. If you are interested in signing up, let me know; you will get 25 free downloads (and I will get 50, which I would sure appreciate 🙂 )
