Cubsfan

Ok, so I was suckered in by the Pepsi bottle-caps I have mixed feelings about buying music from iTunes at the moment.

My first attempt was simply to buy one Smashing Pumpkins song for my girlfriend that she doesn't have. Worked like a charm! Purchased it (actually it was free), and it showed right up on my smart playlists.

Then, yesterday I figured I'd go buy all of the songs for the new Godsmack album. That didn't work out quite how I'd like. First of all, there are only 7 songs on the album, so I figured it'd be 7 free songs. Well, for some reason, one of the songs on the album was available ONLY if you bought the album as a whole, which you can't do with the free Pepsi caps. Only problem is that they are charging $9.99 for the album! That makes that one song basically worth $4! Needless to say I went down to Best Buy and bought it for $6.99. (great album by the way!)

Just thought I'd share my expereiences. Pretty slick, although I'm not so sure about their pricing at the moment.

ApltnHkyMutt

I have also just recently change to itunes. and since i loved the experience so much i have decided to support apple and buy the new apple ipod mini.
hope the combo of itunes and the mini (which i get from fedex on friday) is worth the $250

cheapie

i freakin' hate the itune player. maybe i just haven't screwed with it much but it's not even close to other players. plus, it uses a lot of resources, takes a long time to load, and freezes up frequently.

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ribitch

itunes takes up very little on my g5.

I was pissed off at the godsmack album. i too bought it for 6.99. i was planningf on using my itunes credits towards it. i have spent 50 or so bucks on songs so far. i love itunes. i have 28 songs waiting for redemption.

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look_ma

Unfortunatly this is some of the restrictions of the new generation of buying music. It encourages CD sales, and keeps people from getting the whole thing for free. I personally use Rhapsody, I can listen to all the songs availible as much as I want per month. It is subscription based, but for 10 bucks a month, it is worth it. I share it with my brother, we both cannot be on at the same time, but our daily scheduals are opposite. If i want a song i just pay 79 cents which i have still yet to do. They have the Godsmack CD "the other side" which is 8 songs (8 times .79=6.32) slightly cheaper but i would rather have the orinal from store for that close in price.

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ray

iTunes player for Windows is awful. I have tried iTunes, Napster, and Walmart now. Napster has definitely been the best service all around since I can use Windows Media Player to play the files. iTunes has a similar selection of songs, but I have to use the iTunes player to play the downloaded files (unless I burn them to CD and rerip them back to my hard drive). I ran into some problems with burning a CD from the songs I bought off Walmart.com. Their selection is pretty good, and they are priced cheaper than both iTunes and Napster. It turns out that you can't use Nero to burn their DRM protected Windows Media Audio files. Of course I didn't know that, and it took me nearly an hour to realize that Roxio was the program I should have been using.

All in all, now that I know how to burn the Walmart downloads to CD, I would probably go with Walmart since their files are the least expensive and their selection is pretty good (for current releases and more recent artists). If you want some catalog material, then iTunes and Napster are probably the way to go.

Cantacuzene

PAying for music. I can't believe thats actually happening.

Burzhui

i recently decided to pay for mp3s as well i pay for 1 cent per megabyte of the song so on average a song runs 3 cents

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look_ma

Nice

Ray: try rhapsody, you can get a 2 week trial at bby for free or you can probably go to listen.com as well.

Burzhui

yea i'd rather pay 3 cents anf have my song within seconds, then wait on kazaa and hope the other person has a good connection with no people in queue

ray

I had a question about Rhapsody since their website doesn't really explain it clearly. It costs $9.95/month for subscription PLUS 79 cents to burn a song? That doesn't sound cheaper than the other services to me. So if I wanted to burn an album consisting of 10 songs in 1 month, I would have to pay $9.95 monthly PLUS $7.90 to burn?

Cantacuzene

I pay about $1 per gig of music now that I think about it. If there is a good deal it can be as low as $.33 a gig.

Burzhui

explain that please?

SnowSurfer

i pay...absolutly nothing...get full unrealeased and rare cds in minutes and...burn them onto an mp3 mix that i can just keep adding to until the cd is full...life is good

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look_ma

this thread is more about legit alternatives.

Also rhapsody is not all about jsut getting the song. The whole reason I like it is because I do not have pay for an indivdual song to listen to it. I can listen to 30,000 albums for 10 dollars a month, but If i want the tunes in my care I will pay.

hapoo

http://club.mp3search.ru/

VERY VERY VERY cheap site for mp3's if your into paying for them. Usually about half a buck a CD. Probably the site Burzhui uses.
Apparently these guys have a deal with the russian equivelent of the RIAA so the songs are all legal.
Hell i should post this in got deals

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ribitch

i have seen this before, and i was afraid to use them. Are they trustworthy?

ray

I would be wary of sending my credit card info to a company in Russia.

caribiner23

I agree that the iTunes player isn't the greatest. (I use Winamp for playing mostly.)

The other thing about iTunes is that unless you specifically tell it otherwise, it wants to take over and reorganize your music collection on your hard drive. And there doesn't seem to be an option for getting rid of "orphans" if you move the songs from one directory to another.

As for buying music, there are some annoyances with all the online services, all along the lines of what you guys saw with the Godsmack album. The other thing that bugs me is this business of "partial albums" where key songs are sometimes missing.

Still and all, it seems to be the model of tomorrow.

Burzhui

hapoo is the man... that's exactly what i use


no problems yet

ribitch

i signed up. kinda sucks that the songs are not encoded at the same bit rate. I also noticed that some songs are "compilations" and not real releases. Makes me think this site is kinda bogus. 20 bucks for 2 GB isnt bad though!

Burzhui

compilations??

hapoo

I think he means "unofficial" releases.

billxp

Now this is how music should be priced.

I can't see paying those other sites for a full album and basically have nothing physical to show for it.

And also have them telling me how and what I'm allowed to do with the songs I pay for.

ribitch

anyone use www.allofmp3.com

I gave it a whirl and got the $5.00 option. I figured i would try it with a few bucks before I spent $20+ on it.

They are the same format $1 per GB. They do have online encoding, where they will encode the files in the format you choose. They have windows media, ogg, AAC, and a few more. I grabbed teh Gov't Mule Deepest End Live CD. I decided to go AAC encoded at 192. I had to wait a short amount of time, but then my links started to appear. I started to download them (speeds are pretty decent), and they sounded great. I then opened it in iTunes and all the track info appeared! on the site previously mentioned, I found that only a few albums had the full ID3 info.

They also have an option to reencode from the original CD. I am assuming the standard encoding is based off of ripped tracks that are stored on a server. My tracks sounded great, so i doubt i would pay more to have the track encoded from a cd.

They also have an unlimited (limited to 1000 dl's per month) service for 14.95 per month.

So how legal is this stuff?

Paymaster

As I understand it, this stuff is legal under Russian copyright law. So if you were in Russia, I would say "go for it". However, once you export the music to any other country (i.e download it to your PC in the US), this becomes a grey area- and I won't comment.

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bachviet

Hard drive price???

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