Hopefully there hasn't been a recent thread on this... The pay-per-song download service is a wonderful thing. That is, if done right. I don't have an Apple product, so iTunes is out, which leaves Rhapsody or BuyMusic. Even though it is not the best compression format, I wanna stick with 192kbps .mp3 files. My car stereo and home DVD player can play .mp3's, and it's enough compression for my needs. Looks like Rhapsody is a $9.95/mo service with optional CD burning ability. Their FAQ is vague wrt CD-burning . They say they are not a download service, so are these CD files proprietary that require the Rhapsody executable in order to listen? That would do me no good if I wanted to listen to them in my car stereo. Also, what % of tunes are available for CD-burning - apparently not all, which leaves me out of luck if I want to play the tunes in my car. And what are the current prices per song - they don't even mention these important bits of info in their FAQ. (On these points, I could try out the free trial, but I don't want to sign up just yet; I'm too busy to really make good use of the service at this time.) BuyTunes looks like it uses files that can be used in WMP9, but are they .mp3's (or .wma's) with copy protection flags set? If I ever wanted to change which machine was my hard drive digital jukebox in my wireless home network, would I be able to, or does it somehow write info to itself that remembers that it has already been installed on one computer and will not transfer any longer? If so, that will leave me no alternative but to search for the songs in unprotected .mp3 format or worse, make my own .mp3 myself (though I will still pay for the download as I feel the copyright holders still should get paid). Are the restrictions listed based on an honor system, or are there in fact prohibitive obstacles in software which make this difficult or impossible to accomplish? So who out there is using these that can help me out? If it's been discussed ad nauseum in the past, a link would be great too. Thanks.
I have bought 2 "albums" via buymusic.com. The songs are downloadable as MP3s, thus no problem playing them in WMP9. Each song throughout the site may have restrictions. Each can be burned to CD x number of times, moved to a portable device x number of times and be present on x number of computers. As far as I can tell, x can be anywhere from 1 to unlimited. One thing to watch out for is that your portable device MUST have DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology in order to play the file. The Rio Riot does not while the Rio Sport S35 does (or if it doesn't, it doesn't care). You should be able to contact the manufacturer to find out, although I was told by Rio support that neither device had it. I have a suspicion that if you burn the songs to CD (you can use any burning program to do so), you can then rip them and then use them however many times you want, but I coul dbe wrong. There is no monthly fee. Most songs are downloadable but at times you must download the entire album and at other times the songs are only available as individula downloads. Quite often there is a 30 second snippet of the song to listen to. Since thereis no fee, you can freely examine every song on the site.
ive been subscribing to rhapsody for over a year now. its $10/month and you can only listen on your computer, but since i work infront of one all day its perfect. its not MP3 either. its all digital and sounds great. i would recommend it to anyone. it has just about anything you can think of. no beatles, zep, radiohead though. the entire stones catalouge just became available. ALL of miles davis, ALL of dylan. its turned me onto more stuff in the last year than the previous 10. the song burning part is stupid though. it was 99 cents, but now ONLY 79 cents/song. at that rate its actually cheaper to just go out and buy the actual album. i would do it if the songs were like 25 cents each. $4 bucks for a burned cd.
Thx bobrek. Although a jukebox would be kinda large to do this, that is a good backup plan, I appreciate the suggestion. At least I could try their service for a couple songs and see if my CD players can live with it, and if not, use your approach for those songs (or failing that, make my own .mp3 out of it) and then try a different download service. Rocket104, the file compression is excellent, but they are AAC files, not MP3, no? So I'm kinda doubting Audition will open them (I'll check tonight about what formats it reads), but if I could open them in Audition, that would be an excellent solution. Again, if Apple's downloads only open using Apple players, that's another proprietary solution which we should all shun. So, anyone have Rhapsody to confirm my worries about it? Also, if anyone has any bad experiences over any of the three major services and wants to vent, please chime in! (bad sound quality, poor selection, whatever).
I think Rhapsody's $10/mo service sounds great by itself, don't get me wrong. I think it's perfect to sample what you want to then buy. But your favorite music should be playable anywhere, which is really why I'm keen on learning more about the CD-burning option. Is it MP3? If so, is it at least 192kbps and are there cumbersome rights management restrictions? If it's not MP3, then just what kind of file is it? Thanks jm for confirming what I had heard about the price having been cut to 79cents/song, which is lower than the other guys. I assume all songs are that price. If you are already using Rhapsody as a try-before-you-buy subscription service, then their lower download price gives it a big advantage over the competition imo. But not if you can't make your own jukebox out of it which doesn't rely on their service.
