Music Download Services: Choices for 2008

January 31, 2008 · Filed Under Product Reviews, Technology · 1 Comment 

As little as 8 years ago if you said the words “Music Download Service” to most people they would have looked at you with a puzzled expression on their face.

Not any more!

Today downloading music over the internet is one of the chief reasons many people want to get connected to the World Wide Web in the first place. Portable Music Players and then the advent of the Music Downloading Service in the past decade have vastly changed how music is made and marketed by it’s producers, and then distributed to it’s consumers.

If you’ve spent any time doing much of anything on the internet in the past year or two, chances are you’ve come across one of the growing Music Downloading Services that are now available.

The growth of this particular industry has actually led to a marriage of sight and sound; many popular PC video players available over the internet, such as RealPlayer or Window Media Player, now automatically provide connectivity to music downloading services. When RealPlayer is installed on a new computer it will also install a secondary program which offers music downloads from Rhapsody Unlimited, which also happens to be owned Real Networks, the creators of the Real Player.

Like many Music Downloading Services (MDS), Rhapsody offers a free trial period where prospective customers can download music for free until that trial period ends and a membership must be purchased for the service to continue.

Not all MDS’s are alike. Many of them have a different model of doing business.

Some MDS’s let you download as much music as you want, just as long as you pay your monthly subscription fee. Others charge you a small fee per each track downloaded from the service. And still others charge you a monthly subscription fee AND a per track downloaded fee.

Also, very few Music Download Services seem to still be using MP3’s (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) as their main format for downloading. Many of the services have now switched over to the Windows Media Audio format (WMA).

Most of the top MDS’s will have a song database of almost 2,000,000 to choose from.

E-Music and Wal-Mart have less, but unless you consider 500,000 to 1 million songs to be pretty small, that shouldn’t matter.

Even after you’ve downloaded the songs from their service, the MDS’s can still maintain control over them. Copy technology named DRM built into the files downloaded can limit the number of times a song can be burned to a CD, or if it can be burned at all. Microsoft has been a big supporter of DRM and has built support into Windows Media player to download the appropriate licenses and play DRM tunes. If the license is not found, the song cannot be played at all, nor copied or moved. In recent months an anti-DRM sentiment has risen through the music consumers and industry has begun to respond with non-DRM song downloads.

Some services will let you burn CD’s from whatever songs you downloaded from them. Others will only let you burn songs that you purchased individually for that purpose.

Many of the MDS’s require you to download an application to play their tracks. Tracks from those services are usually configured to ONLY run on that particular application. Other MDS’s will let you play their tracks on any media/audio player.

Rhapsody Music Service:

http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html

Subscription is $12.99 monthly plus 99 cents for each track downloaded / Must have Rhapsody application to play tracks / Number of songs: 1,000,000 / File Format: WMA / 99 cents for each track burned to CD.

Napster Music Service:

http://www.napster.com/choose/index_control_2.html

Subscription is $12.95 monthly for service, 99 cents per song for purchase./ Must have Napster application to play tracks / Number of songs: 5,000,000 / File Format: WMA - DRM / Only purchased tracks can be burned. ‘To-go service’ for additional cost allows you to take music with you on your portable device.

iTunes Music Service:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/

No subscription, but does have a 99 cent per track download fee / Must have iTunes application to play tracks / Number of songs: 5,000,000 / File Format: AAC - DRM(Advanced Audio Coding - specific to Apple iPods) / All tracks can be burned to CD’s but same playlist can only be burned up to 7 times / Tracks will only work on an iPod and no other portable players. Itunes has a 60% market share. TV Shows and Movies are now available as well.

Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download

Amazon is the upstart in the industry. Offering single song and album downloads at a price that undercuts itunes. Single songs are 89 cents each, albums are $9.99. The songs are mp3 format – and no drm. These means that the you can take your music and play it anywhere, copy it to a portable device or burn it to Cds. With the ease of use and the Amazon brand name this store is gaining momentum quickly. As it does so does the movement to offer DRM free tunes.

eMusic:

http://www.emusic.com/

Charges a flat fee of $10 for up to 40 downloaded tracks / Requires eMusic Download Manager to access the songs, but they can played on any media/audio player / Number of songs: 500,000 / File Format: MP3 / Any track can be burned to a CD.

Yahoo Music (MusicMatch:

http://music.yahoo.com/ymu/

Subscription is $9.95 a month plus 99 cents per each track downloaded ($74 for a 2 year contract) / Requires Yahoo Jukebox application / Number of songs: 2 Million / File Format: WMA - DRM / All tracks can be burned to CD’s but the same playlist can only be burned up to seven times.

Virgin Music Service:

http://www.virgin.com/companies/virgindigitaluk/virgindigitaluk.aspx

Subscription is $7.95 monthly plus 99 cents for each downloaded track / Requires Virgin Music application / Number of songs: 1,000,000 / File Format: WMA - DRM / All purchased tracks can be burned to CD.

Wal-Mart Music Service:

http://musicdownloads.walmart.com/catalog/servlet/MainServlet

No subscription, just a fee of 88 cents for each track downloaded / Requires no application / Number of songs: 1,000,000 / File Format: WMA - DRM / Purchased tracks can be burned to a CD up to 10 times.

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Almost all of these MDS’s offer a free trial period, so you can test the waters before purchasing anything.

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