Found: An Online Music Store I Can Endorse!
Dear readers, if you’ve hung around here any length of time, or if you know me at all, you’ve heard my tirade(s) against the iTunes Music Store, Audible, and any establishment that uses / endorses / promotes digital rights management. You also know I’m fiercely dedicated to what I call the DIY ethic.
I’ve finally found an online music store that is compatible with my particular brand of fanaticism. With any luck, I won’t have to eat my words at some point in the future… but today, at least, I can say with great confidence that eMusic is the shnizzle.
Dig it:
- They utilize a subscription model, creating something very much like the content-as-utility concept put forward by Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard, where you pay a monthly fee to download content.
- The music you buy is in MP3 format — the worldwide, universal standard… and NO digital rights management! That’s right, kiddos… you actually own the content you download from eMusic! It’s yours, to do with as you please. Burn it on a CD… or fifty! Put in on your portable music device. Put it on a dozen portable music devices, or fifty, or a million! Share it! You paid for it, it’s yours.
- They’ve been around since 1998. They’re not going away.
- They are focused on independent artists and labels, over a million tracks. Awesome. It’s like we were made to be together.
They’ve even got a free trial — fourteen days and twenty five songs is the basic set-up, and if you stay with them, it’s $9.99 a month for forty downloads. That’s right… $0.25 per song!
If you don’t want to continue after the free trial (you know, if you’re, like, out of your farking mind, and stuff) then you cancel, and that’s that. You get to keep the twenty five downloads you got for free.
I believe in this company. I’m a subscriber, and y’all know I have no discretionary income to blow. Still, I try to support good works, and that’s what this is. I’m also an affiliate, so if you decide to try eMusic (even if you don’t stick with ‘em) I’ll get a little something. It’s love and happiness all around, just like Al Green used to sing.
