emusic.com

[glendiva1968]

Hey guys, I just thought I would let you know about another service other then the evil Itunes. I thought Itunes was all wonderful and great, but then I realized that the songs did not come in MP3 format, and that I could not burn them in MP3 format onto a disc, and play in my portable MP3 disc player, and that made me very sad. My husband figured out a way around it, but we found emusic.com and we are so excited about it. It is 9.95/mo for 40 songs, and goes up to $19.99/mo for 90 songs. It is MP3 format, and there is no DRM (copy restrictions.) With Itunes you can only copy it 7 times or something like that. Anyway, they are mainly focused on independent lables, so they might not have a lot of regular popular music, but they have every massage album I can think of. You can still use your IPOD too. Hope you join, and have fun.

 

[Pompal 09.]

re: music downloads - iTunes & eMusic

Thanks for the link! I wish these other music download stores wouldn't require membership fees, though. Frankly, that's why I buy from iTunes. I like the simplicity of browsing their store for free and only buying when I'm interested. That's a concept that's worked at land-based music stores for years. Why do the Internet-based stores add membership fees? Anyway, I agree that iTunes is annoying with its proprietary format. Here's an article I though was funny. It's a little bit about iTunes, and a little bit about piracy, the US and France. Most importantly, it made me laugh :

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1943255,00.asp

 

[pugpaws2]

Well, I think emusic is a little different then that. Because with itunes you are paying $1/per song. With emusic you are paying 25 cents a song. Plus, you really own it. And it is a real MP3 file, that you can put on any media you want. Thanks for the article.

 

[mattclaptongad]

I signed up for eMusic.com and I am so glad to be increasing my massage music library. Thanks for the link. I like monthly memberships because I am so bad about not spending money. So if I know every month it's already being spent then I am more apt to get what I need instead of waiting until the last minute before I spend money on something. Really I'm an idiot that way, so having $10 drafted from my checking account helps me out in just getting the stuff already. Maybe I should set up something similar with all my suppliers!

 

[Sea Of Love]

i dont have any personal experience, but my kids use LiveWire.com....it is a free music download service...they download the music to our computer and then copy it to their MP3 players.

 

[Marlena C]

eMusic.com offers a free 2 week trial, so I decided to give them a try. I have a "wish list" of music for home listening as well as new massage music for the office. eMusic doesn't let you browse their music library if you're not a member, so I joined in the hopes they'd have at least some of the CD's I wanted. They had none of the ones on my list. (By the way iTunes has them all.) This is why I dislike membership music sites so much! t012

Since I already joined, I thought I'd do a little research for y'all. I looked up a lot of popular "massage music" artists to see how eMusic's selection compared to iTunes. eMusic has about half as many artists & albums as iTunes. So, if you don't have a specific shopping list and are happy to browse eMusic's selection, you'll probably find plenty to choose from. (You'll also have the benefit of lower prices and no restrictions for use of the songs, as GinaT pointed out in her original post.) However, if you have specific music in mind, or you want access to all artists and albums, iTunes has a much wider selection. You pay more, but there's a lot more to choose from. (For me, that's important. I don't like iTunes' proprietary format, but I can live with it. I can still burn their songs to CD and play them at the office. And someday soon I'll have an iPod anyway).

So, that's the scoop! Hope that helps everyone make an educated choice. There's no right or wrong answer here. It just depends on your own goals & needs.

FYI, here are the artists I did a quick search for:

eMusic had music by the following artists:
R. Carlos Nakai
Peter Kater
David & Steve Gordon
Coyote Oldman
Medwyn Goodall
Steven Halpern
Kitaro
Loreena McKennitt
Deuter
Chet Baker
Moby
Mary Youngblood

eMusic had NO albums by these artists:
Shastro (no albums)
Govi (no albums)
Hilary Seforum.xxxg (no albums)
Wayne Gratz (no albums)
Anugama (no albums)
Kevin Kern (no albums)
Kohala (no albums)
Will Ackerman (no albums)
Enya (no albums)
RoseWynde (no albums)
Secret Garden (no albums)
George Winston (no albums)

iTunes had multiple albums by all the artists in both lists above.

 

[Jedi Knight]

I just read an interesting article by Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) about why iTunes uses a proprietary format for the songs they sell. It turns out Apple would love to sell open format songs, but the music companies won't let them. They demand the protection, which is why Apple provides it. That's also why their music selection is so much bigger than the open MP3 music sellers. Here are some quotes from the article:

Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the ³big four² music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world¹s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices. Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods.

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven¹t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy....In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves....So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small perceneforum.xxxe of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none.... Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.

Doesn't sound like iTunes is evil after all. Here's a link to the whole article:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic

 

[Horror Movie Addict #7]

Bumping this old thread. I've signed up for emusic.com, and have dl'd my limit already. LOL!

Blisss is right, the selection is limited, and many of the things they have are very obscure, but they do have a lot of "massage" type music. Browsing is quite limited, their user interface is clunky, though the "search" function is fine.

The nice thing is the cost is low for trying new music. My "massage" music was getting seforum.xxxnant because I HATE paying $10 for a new CD then discovering I really can't stand it after the 3rd listen. (I dislike a lot of "new age" music in general - my only significant gripe about this profession. )

I've picked up some Ciabbura, Gabrielle Roth, DeJohnette (which I got tired of after 3 listens, but it only cost me less than $1, so *shrug*), Al Petteway, Jesse Cook, Jonathan Adams (who sounds like Christopher Parkening,) and some other classical music.

I've also dl'd some indie artists just for me, not for massage.

If you're looking for big names or major labels, they probably won't be here, but it's a good lowcost way to explore some different music.

It's a little more expensive than previously ($9.95 for 30 songs, $14.95/50, $19.95/75.) but if you want to help a fellow therapist out, pick a name from this thread list and get an "invite." Your inviter will get some free tunes.