Downloading Music

This article, on Ars Technica was incredibly positive about “Universal Music, the largest of the world’s big five record labels, [releasing] about 1,000 of its hard-to-find back catalog albums through its online music subscription subsidiary, EMusic.com”. They refer to an article on SFGate that first broke the news, Universal Music provides alternative to file sharing…

For those of you that are into music and are having trouble finding good-quality music on Gnutella, this looks like a viable, for-pay alternative. There are “about 1,000 of its hard-to-find back catalog albums” and, in a surprise move away from DRM enforcement, there is no copy protection on the music, which allows “…the downloaded tracks to be burned onto recordable CDs or transferred to a portable digital audio player”.

“EMusic.com, which charges $10 to $15 per month for a subscription, will offer Universal’s jazz, pop and classic hits from the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. The artists include Olivia Newton-John, Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Oingo Boingo, Chuck Berry and Pat Boone.”

If that’s the kind of music you’re into, then it seems that the subscription is completely worth it. The only drawback is that it costs money and “all the MP3s are at 128k”. That’s not too bad…sometimes it’s amazing the hours you can waste trying to find music on the ‘gray’ market of the Gnutella network. If you’re still not sure, you can sign up, browse the library for free and you get “50 … free trial downloads”. Of course, you have to cancel within 14 days or you’ll get charged a subscription, but there are at least a few happy customers out there; as Hannibal of Ars Technica says: “it took me about an hour on a fat Internet pipe to get my money’s worth for the entire year.” Check it out for yourself at EMusic.