This Ars Technica article makes a good point: that Apple's refusal to license its DRM system means that only non-DRM'd music can be sold by anyone other than Apple to iPod users, now the largest slice of the digital music sector. And that's just what eMusic has done with great success: it claims to be the world's number retailer of downloadable music.
What particularly interested me is that among its million tracks are many from the Naxos catalogue. Naxos is the biggest-selling classical label, and by no means just cheap and cheerful, even if it started out that way. It now has an enviably-wide collection that includes many rare and obscure masterpieces, with more being added all the time.
No DRM, reasonable prices (25 US cents or under per track) and an increasingly good classical catalogue: bravo, eMusic.
I've been using it for a few months now and thinks its a really good service - for one thing their software works well with all platforms (I'm partly a Linux user.
ReplyDeleteIt encourages exploration and experimentation I'm listening to a very enjoyable steel guitar cover of Bang Bang that simply wouldn't be happening without trying emusic. It also acts as an online backup of your music too (perhaps iTunes does that too-I've neve rtried it). I'll be keeping my subscription up for a while yet.
Thanks for your feedback.
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