Hi Jash,
Thanks for the clarification. It's cut down the options substantially.
Given your clariification, your best choices are:
EMusic
http://www.emusic.com/
IUMA
http://www.iuma.com/
Epitonic
http://www.epitonic.com/
MP3.com
http://www.mp3.com/
Here's why.
Staying legal, there are four categories of sites that you could look
for:
1. Major Label Commercial Sites
2. Independent Commercial Sites
3. Free Download Sites
4. Artists' Home Pages
They can be broken down as follows.
1. Major Label Commercial Sites
This is where you'll find the most famous names, the biggest labels,
the music that populates the charts. These sites carry the music that
most people have heard of and want to download, from Linkin Park to
Madonna.
However, you have to be a resident of the US to qualify for
membership. This is due to artists and labels having differing
licensing agreements in different countries. It means that I can't
sign up to these services in England and you can't sign up in Asia.
The downloads are also protected in varying ways, so that you become
limited in your ability to make copies, burn to CD or copy to a
portable device. The major labels very much want you to buy music on
their terms not on yours.
The one major exception to this rule is the newest, Apple's iTunes
service. It makes a large amount of major label music available for
download at a reasonable price of 99c per track. However, this is
currently available only to US subscribers who run Apple Macintoshes.
Windows and international versions are promised soon and this may
cause the other major label sites to offer a realistic service.
Lastly, there are also dubious Spanish sites providing major label
music for a fee. I say dubious because they would be illegal almost
anywhere else in the world, but they are taking advantage of a
loophole in Spanish copyright law. Puretunes has already closed and
Weblisten may soon follow.
MusicNet
http://www.musicnet.com/
MusicNet is a collaboration between EMI, BMG and Warner, and is only
available through partners, most notably AOL. It does not allow
copying to portable devices.
Pressplay
http://www.pressplay.com/
Pressplay was created by Sony and Universal. For a monthly
subscription, there is unlimited streaming. While downloads are
unlimited you must either pay an extra fee per track or lose the
ability to play all your music when your subscription ends.
Rhapsody
http://www.listen.com/
Rhapsody claims to have the largest legal collection of digital music
in the world, but it is only available as streams. You can't download
any of their 20,000 albums. You can, however, burn tracks to CD with a
monthly subscription and an extra fee per track.
iTunes
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
Apple's new legal download service offers high quality files and a
wide range of major label music, but no subscriptions, a proprietary
AAC file format and is only currently available to US Apple Macintosh
owners.
Weblisten
http://www.weblisten.com/
This Spanish site offers various subscription methods, from monthly to
a single night only. You can also buy vouchers to download 2, 10 or 25
songs. However, it may not survive long.
2. Independent Commercial Sites
These are sites that carry music mostly from independent labels rather
than the big majors. You'll find less household names here, but there
are still many famous artists from Louis Armstrong to Creedence
Clearwater Revival to Bush. Music is usually made available in album
format but tracks can be downloaded individually.
Primary among independent commercial sites is EMusic, who pioneered
the legal download market. In fact they offered the first album
available for sale as a digital download (Frank Black's 'Frank Black
and the Catholics'), back in 1998 when EMusic was called GoodNoise.
EMusic
http://www.emusic.com/
A monthly subscription of $14.99 (three months) or $9.99 (twelve
months) gives you unlimited access to over 200,000 songs and 17,000
albums from over 10,000 artists. You can download as much as you like
and there is no built in protection to stop you copying, burning or
moving your downloaded music. Downloads are usually very fast too and
the message boards are active. It has also recently updated from 128k
mp3s to a high quality variable bit rate.
3. Free Download Sites
Legal free download sites are exactly that: totally free, gratis and
for nothing. The catch is that they are almost entirely restricted to
unsigned or obscure artists. Music is mostly listed on a track by
track basis but there are some complete albums.
While you won't find the Backstreet Boys or Metallica here, you may
find the artists that will replace them in another ten years time.
There is much dross but some excellent music too. Free music sites are
a voyage of discovery.
MP3.com
http://www.mp3.com/
The biggest of them all, mp3.com, has recently and regrettably limited
the amount of music available per artist, though the selection is
still huge and incredibly varied. A monthly subscription will remove
popups, banner ads and audio ads, but the music is free regardless.
IUMA
http://www.iuma.com/
The Internet Underground Music Archive is the oldest free music site
on the web, and still offers a massive selection of music, in all
genres. There are some complete albums available here too.
Epitonic
http://www.epitonic.com/
While Epitonic is also varied, it is especially noted for its indie
coverage, mostly punk and math rock. It also carries much electronic
and experimental classical music.
4. Artists' Home Pages
These come and go and any list will soon go out of date as sites
disappear. Some artists offer their entire back catalogues for free
but then find that their bandwidth usage is more expensive than the
publicity justifies.
I've recently downloaded complete albums free and legally from the
home pages of Anacrusis, Love/Hate and Chris Thompson. There are many
others. Search for your favourite lesser known bands and you may get
lucky.
Choosing which sites to sign up for is a daunting task, though your
choice (like mine) is severely limited by your not living in the
United States.
EMusic is your best choice for a commercial site, for many reasons,
not least of which is the incredible value for money. Customer
satisfaction is high, as is the speed of download and the variety of
music. You should also watch out for the international and Windows
versions of Apple's iTunes store when they are released.
On the free level, you simply cannot go wrong. If you are willing to
experiment with your downloads and listen to artists that you have
never heard of, there is a huge amount of free music available to you.
As with EMusic, I can personally recommend all three of the sites I
mentioned above.
Finally, a couple of useful links for you that may help you discover
even more music online.
Boycott RIAA
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/links/
While this site has an axe to grind, it does contain a huge amount of
useful links to download sites and almost anything else to do with
music. It aims to educate the public about digital media and the
alternatives to the major labels.
ProMusic
http://www.pro-music.org/
The opposite of the Boycott RIAA site: a site provided by IFPI, IMPALA
and many other groups of record companies. It also aims to educate but
is far more likely to tow the industry line.
Bumbles MP3s
http://www.bumblesmp3s.com/Free%20Music.htm
A list of various legal sites with reviews.
Enjoy!
Poe |
