"I CAN'T GET NO SATISFACTION..."
TechCrunch has a good, two part review of the online music scene, with Part 1 focusing on the sites that sell music like iTunes and Allofmp3.com, and Part 2 focusing on the subscription services.
I've been a fan of two of the subscription services, Real's Rhapsody and Yahoo!'s music service (see previous posts on both from last year here). The new kid on the block that I haven't tried, is Virgin Digital, which gets a good mention in the review.
For those impatient for the bottom line, here is the conclusions paragraph from reviews of the subscription companies:
Overall, the best service based on pure stats is Virgin Digital, which boasts the largest catalog of music (2 million songs) and the best overall price at $8/month. Unlike all of the other services, Virgin charges one price for both the PC and to go versions. Virgin also has excellent additional features like user reviews of music create a social atmosphere.
All of the services require the download and use of a special player, except AOL, which uses a web based approach along with the Windows Media Player.
For the flat out cheapest price, Yahoo comes in at the lowest point with a basic plan of $5 per month (although the to go plan is $10/month, higher than Virgin’s single price plan).
But based on pure joy of the user experience, Rhapsody has the slickest software and the most intuitive user interface. It’s the most expensive at $15/month, but worth the money if you want the best service available.
On the purchase side, the conclusions are as follows:
"The choice for best overall service is dead simple. The best service by far is AllofMP3.com. Music costs $0.02 per MB (about 9 cents per song at medium quality levels), and it can be downloaded in any common audio format and quality level. It is so cheap and easy to use that many people choose to download music from AllofMP3 in lieu of ripping their own CD collection.
The problem is that AllofMP3 operates under a different set of rules (Russian copyright law) than the rest of the companies. The service has been around for years and has many loyal users; however, its continued existence is in question. Some people have ethical concerns with using the service since no money makes its way back to the artists or labels.
Of the remaining services, the first question is what music player you will use. If you want to use an iPod, you need to use iTunes (or AllofMP3)."
I've long stopped purchasing music off iTunes for the simple reason that I find it tough to keep track of where my purchased music is stored on various computers in various places. I know it can be done with enough care and attention, but it's way too much effort for the return.
I like the subscription model for music discovery, and I especially like using Rhapsody through my Sonos system, which delivers music throughout the house (here's my post on Sonos from last year).
The whole thing gets even more complex when you throw video into the mix, which of course is fairly nascent, and changing rapidly (see yesterday's post).
My big problem, as I'm sure for many others, is that the best hardware to play this stuff on the go continues to come from Apple, with it's various cool iPods, but the iPod of course doesn't work with any of the other music subscription services because of incompatible rights management software systems (aka DRM).
It's still an imperfect and frustrating state of affairs in the online music world, for mainstream consumers. But over time, we'll all hopefully get more satisfaction out of these services.
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