Miscellany: eMusic first impressions

As part of my campaign to keep a constant stream of interesting reviews coming to Shangrila Towers, I'm trying out eMusic, a music download service with an interesting business model. If you're at all familiar with online music stores like the iTunes Store, you know that companies rarely allow people to download regular, unencumbered mp3s. Instead, they implement some sort of DRM scheme in an effort to prevent unauthorized duplication (and in iTunes' case, unauthorized playback - only iPods work with iTunes, and a predictable flurry of antitrust litigation is pending).

eMusic is very different - by paying the monthly subscription fee, you get regular, run-of-the-mill mp3s, which you can easily burn to CDs, move from your laptop to your desktop, etc. The service originally had an all-you-can-download policy (discontinued for obvious reasons), but the current plans average out to a very fair 30-odd cents per track, which means the average album costs around $3 to download.

Sounds great, right? The only catch is that eMusic's library is limited - mostly indie and alternative acts that haven't gone mainstream. The big record labels don't put their catalogs on the service because of its commitment to DRM-free downloads. The miniscule per-track price also means limited customer service and occasional server downtime.

I signed up for a trial subscription and have already downloaded albums like "In Rainbows" from Radiohead, "The Genius of Komeda" from Komeda, and "Grayscale" from "The Atomica Project." It feels weird at first, getting a bunch of full albums for such a low price, but it's all apparently legal and above-board, not like questionable Russian sites like AllOfMp3.com. If it sounds like something you'd enjoy, go ahead and give eMusic a try.