best online music store (iTunes, Napster and now Yahoo)

[thecavemankevin]

Well, of course there is iTunes that seems to give the end user the most rights over all. They allow you to truely own the file and burn it or whatever you want. However, it is expensive to download large amounts of songs at a buck a piece.

But now we have Napster, and Rhapsody both at $15/month, and now with Yahoo at $7 per month for unlimited downloads. However, these services will only allow you some rights to the song. in fact it is more like leasing the music file rather than owning it. You can only upload the files to specific MP3 players that have certain capabilities. Or of course play it in the specific media player they provide you with on your computer, but if you stop your subscription you loose your songs. plus you have to pay extra if you want to burn the song (but it is a little cheaper than iTunes).

i would really like to use one of the subscription based services, but none of them support my little mp3 player, thus i'd need full ownership to the file in order to put it on my player.

so out of all of them, which ones do you guys use and why? are there any programs that can "crack" your (insert download service here) and gain full access/ownership to the songs?

[Lohman446]

.99 per song is a "fair and reasonable" price in my opinion, I use I-tunes

[Timmee]

I use iTunes, and my roommate has a subscription to Rhapsody. I personally prefer iTunes, as it's simpler, but Rhapsody does have some stuff on it that iTunes doesn't (so it serves its purpose). One thing that Rhapsody does that makes them a decent subscription service, they can transfer songs to the iPod (using the new Rhapsody 3.0 software).

[LudavicoSoldier]

iTunes, though I have sworn off wasting my money on AAC/mp3 files for the sake of musical fidelity. Must...buy...CDs

[Jakedubbleya]

Rhapsody has everything I-Tunes has. Once you buy the song its yours, no restrictions. And its 30cents cheaper per song i think.

It also lets you store infinite non-purchased music in your rhapsody library for the included 9$ a month or whatever.

Either rhapsody or napster, rhapsody if you want all the rights to the music, or napster if you want to just save money and pay a monthy fee.

MMMMM napster hack....

:headbang: greetings from canada :headbang:

[stupiddogg]

I like bear share myself

[Boski51]

iPod but i am a digital music noob.

[personman]

I got one of those 20 free song cards to napster for easter, and there is a way to get the mp3s on unsupported players.

Google holds all the answers to your questions :)

[JrnyFan1985]

limewire or soulseek for me over any of these "services"

[MrWallen]

Probably just depends on how much music you're going to be downloading. If you download all the time, then Napster or Rhapsody works better.

However, if you mostly rip from CDs or obtain music...uh..."other" ways, and only need to infrequently purchase music, iTunes is a far better choice.

[bam wannabe]

i personally use limewire. though i hear bear share is alright. i had winmx, but it was so freakin slow.

[p8ntball365]

Limewire's ok once you get past the viruses...

I use Limewire, I tried WinMx but it took min's to d/l 2 songs. I'm gonna be getting an Ipod so eventually I will have to get Itunes but until then I'm a :argh:

[Bluestrike_2]

iTunes when I need something fast.

However -SHAME ON YOU ALL. The quality from a CD is better than anything that could EVER be offered off of ANY of the music services. I rip into Apple Lossless and you can tell how much better it sounds than iTunes or any other music download store.

[Jakedubbleya]

Im pretty sure rhapsody is the same quality as you will find on a CD. Although you do have the option to lower the quality so you can fit more songs in a smaller space or whatnot.

yeah, the cd is full after i burn a rhapsody album onto it.

[Bluestrike_2]

I'm sorry that you've been led to believe that by the extremely intelligent marketers, but you COULD NEVER BE MORE WRONG!

It is NOT THE SAME QUALITY even though you have filled up the CD. Here's a little piece of knowledge FYI - The CD is based on minutes!

Just do yourself a big favor and don't trust the marketers with "CD Quality" bull****. It's all a crock.

[j.t.]

Couldn't you simply just burn the protected songs as a standard music cd, and then rip the cd as whatever format you want? If the protected format allows you to burn it like this, you should be able to do that.

I prefer to just buy the cd. You get alot more for your money. $1 for a song really is not a fair price if you include everything that comes with a typical cd. Say you want to buy one album online and it has 12 tracks on it. That costs you $12, and you get some poor quality, 128 kbps, mp3/aac files that are in a protected format. Now if you go out and buy the cd, which will probably cost your around $13-$14, you get the entire cd at a super high quality, which is usually over 1000 kbps, the stuff that comes with the cd (album art, lyrics, liner notes etc.), AND the freedom to rip the music to your computer and do whatever you want with it.

Ill stick with buying cd's...

[p8ntball365]

Or you can borrow a friend's cd. Upload it to Itunes and put it on your mp3 player.

EDIT-J.T. you live in scarborough. Are you going to AO NE Day?

[Maggot6]

When is google gonna come out with music. I mean, they are expanding so much they might want to get into that..

[Timmee]

Couldn't you simply just burn the protected songs as a standard music cd, and then rip the cd as whatever format you want? If the protected format allows you to burn it like this, you should be able to do that.

I prefer to just buy the cd. You get alot more for your money. $1 for a song really is not a fair price if you include everything that comes with a typical cd. Say you want to buy one album online and it has 12 tracks on it. That costs you $12, and you get some poor quality, 128 kbps, mp3/aac files that are in a protected format. Now if you go out and buy the cd, which will probably cost your around $13-$14, you get the entire cd at a super high quality, which is usually over 1000 kbps, the stuff that comes with the cd (album art, lyrics, liner notes etc.), AND the freedom to rip the music to your computer and do whatever you want with it.

Ill stick with buying cd's...

The problem with your example (the way I see it, anyways), is I rarely want ALL the songs from an album. Usually, my only exception to that rule is comedy albums. Also, I can live with 128kbps.

[j.t.]

Timmee- I guess I don't listen to music that way. When I listen to music, I expect to be able to enjoy the entire cd. If a band/artist cannot produce an entire cd worth listening to, I wont listen to them anyways. This is just my opinion though...

And no, I dont feel that comedy albums need to be in super
high quality, obviously. I only own like 2 of them anyways (RIP Mitch Hedberg :( )

p8ntball365- Im still unsure about going to AO NE Day. Will Wood has been trying to pursuade me to go, but I dont post much on AO anymore, and I don't shoot a mag anymore either. It also conflicts with my teams practice that day. I will see what happens I guess...its a maybe