Legal music downloads...

[Existentiality]

Well... as obviously illegal music downloads aren't something I want to deal with, I was wondering - what legal music sites do you all use? I've heard of napster and iTunes and eMusic and Rhapsody, but I've never used any of 'em, and I'm considering getting a few songs that I've recently heard.

[Raiden no Kishi]

I use iTunes presonally ~ it's nice and easy to use.

.rai//

[Puguni]

Sometimes indie bands or little known bands have mp3s on their site; that's what I use XD

[Existentiality]

Sometimes indie bands or little known bands have mp3s on their site; that's what I use XD

I'd love to do that, but regrettably my tastes aren't restricted to indie bands

[Zilch]

I've heard from my sister tha Itunes is fairly easy to use, so I guess I'll recommend that.

[Puritan]

iTunes is good and reasonablly priced, but the music is in a special format that you must either play with an iPod or in iTunes. To play it elsewhere you have to first burn it to a CD, which isn't bad, just a hassle sometimes.

[EireWolf]

I use iTunes.

[Existentiality]

Hmm. iTunes uses a specific music format? Mmm... Does napster use .mp3 or some other weird format? I think I'd sort of rather .MP3 than something that won't be fully 'mine', in that sense of the word

[Puritan]

As far as I can tell Napster does the same thing as iTunes with a copy-protected format. However, both services allow you to back up songs you purchase to CD (or download them to supported MP3 players), and with the burned CDs you can listen to the music wherever you want.

[psychooys]

i don't use itunes because it is run by apple and apple has the worst tech support ever (don't make me talk about my ipod) also has a limited amount of music when compaired to napster or something like it.

[Existentiality]

As far as I can tell Napster does the same thing as iTunes with a copy-protected format. However, both services allow you to back up songs you purchase to CD (or download them to supported MP3 players), and with the burned CDs you can listen to the music wherever you want.

Hm. That's good news. So napster or iTunes are both decent. Psychooys brings up a good point about iTunes... Any other ideas?

[TrigunX89]

I'm a huge fan of PureVolume.

[RobinSena]

I'm a huge fan of PureVolume.

yay.. I was going to suggest that..

Lots of bands have a few songs you can download, so check there before you pay for Napster or Itunes.

[Existentiality]

Wow, that looks awesome. Not entirely sure how it works.. Looks like napster's system, but both less spammy and less versatile.

...Though it seems to be a selection limited entirely to volunteers, so that's nice when you have bands who are willing to volunteer music, but... not so nice when there's something i wouldnt' mind paying for.

Still, very cool...

[Mr. SmartyPants]

i don't use itunes because it is run by apple and apple has the worst tech support ever (don't make me talk about my ipod) also has a limited amount of music when compaired to napster or something like it.

I don't know what tech support you've been using. But my experience with apple has always been an outstanding one. They are one of the best tech supports I've ever encountered.

[Mithrandir]

Yeah, I've had good support from apple, too. My friend had an iPod die and he just took it into an apple store and they gave him a new one. It was totatlly flawless. They looked at the serial and just handed him a new one.

Anyway, it really depends on what you want to do with the music. I suppose if one really wanted to play an itunes song on a non-apple iPod kind of player, one could always download the song to a local machine, burn a CD, then rip that. It's clunky, but it would work. That way you end up with all your music in the same format. I'm not a lawyer, however, so I wouldn't presume to say whether this is technically legal or not. CAA is also probably not the best venue for a debate on the subject either.

If you want to avoid Apple altogether, though, you should definately steer clear of iTunes, though. YMMV

[glitch1501]

this is an interesting new service that is becoming available soon

http://vegas.burnlounge.com/

i heard one of the promotional guys talking with disciple at a concert at my church last week about it, it seems really cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Arnobius]

iTunes is good but I don't like their incompatible codec. I used to use it in the pre-6.0 days when a program called JHymn allowed you to convert the files to mp3 so they could be played on any player. But under 6.0 it doesn't work so I haven't bought any music recently. I hate iTunes as a media player, and prefer WMP10. Now if iTunes allowed their codec to play on WMP, I'd consider buying songs again

[Mithrandir]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I like the layout and ease of use of iTunes. I like having my music in one place, the ability to do playlists and the ease of disabling certain songs/cds during random play.

We probably shouldn't derail the topic into a general discussion of players, though, when the topic at hand is legal download sites.

[Arnobius]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I like the layout and ease of use of iTunes. I like having my music in one place, the ability to do playlists and the ease of disabling certain songs/cds during random play.

We probably shouldn't derail the topic into a general discussion of players, though, when the topic at hand is legal download sites.

No problem. I just meant to say why I didn't use it currently.

When I had the ability to convert songs, I was buying them from iTunes all the time, because I think their system for purchasing is the easiest I've come across. I just wish the codec was more versatile

[Scarecrow]

Yea I'm not a fan of iTunes either. Hate the player and I hate burning with it. I just buy from there whenever someone gives me one of those gift cards then I just burn those songs to a CD and then rip em if I want em on my computer.

[Existentiality]

Psychooys was probably referring to the way that ipods were originally designed to break, and apple - at first - WOULDN'T replace them.

I assume it's better now, from your statements.

I'm wondering, though; after looking through these different services, I note that almost everything they do is very similar - except Napster's 'napsterlinks' thing - not useful for the purposes I originally was looking for a legal downloading mechanism, but I've found it becoming more useful when I want to show music to someone on IM. (of course.. it has to be AVAILABLE there, so meh..)

Do any of the other ones do this? I suppose I don't need to pay for it, so I could just sign up to something else - I just found it interesting.

<shrug>

[everdred12a]

Try this site:

[url]music.download.com[/url]

It's a branch of cnet, which I've been using for years now. It's not like iTunes where you can download whole albums, but you can usually find a band's singles there.