Blogging Ottinger (tim)eMusic and other music services
Today I started a new experiment. I decided to finally get involved with a music service. I’d been putting it off because I am so very anti-DRM and most music services are crawling with it. Then I found an article about eMusic. I decided to give it a shot and signed up for the 24-song trial membership (which I exhausted in one evening). I can listen to 30-second samples of songs for free, or can download actual MP3 files if I decide I want to “take it home with me”. I can copy it, listen to it, burn a CD, whatever. The price is not too bad, on the order of US$0.25 per song. That is pretty close to what I want to pay. eMusic has some free stuff too. I was surprised to hear that it’s the #2 download service after that apple place. I would have thought that someone big and powerful (and greedy) would have stopped them by now.
I don’t care for those services that require a special client application (last.fm, etc), and almost quit on eMusic until I realized that I could turn off the download manager option and pull down the tracks I want in MP3.
I am really only interested in MP3 and OGG file formats. I could pull down FLAC and convert it, but that’s more work. 
I don’t want any DRM. None at all. Nor should you. To help you pick good formats and good policies, Wikipedia has a pretty large music store comparison table. That is helpful for picking services that match your politics and pocketbook.
I have been pleased to find that independent and alternate music vendors are doing well. I have already blogged about Magnatune music store, Music Rebellion, and iRate Radio. I have a link to some favorite Live365 radio stations on my link list. Of course, we shouldn’t overlook the podcasts as music sampling services. I have been enjoying Spin180 as a way of keeping up with the new Christian bands.
I wish I could find a similar site specifically for worship music. Oh, look! I did a google search and found several! Well, there’s more to blog about later.
P.S. I found this odd little placeholder site today also.
