More mp3 goodness: eMusic
Well, the lure of 25 free songs did it’s job. I am currently signed up for a trial period with emusic, which will probably segue into a full subscription next week. One of the biggest dealbreakers was that the client runs quite happily under Linux. The other dealbreaker was that they have a load of audio books. This doesn’t come under the same payment umbrella as the music does, it’s $9.99 extra per month (for 30 music tracks a month it’s an additional $9.99) which lets you download a full book each cycle. You also get one free book when you sign up for a trial.
Of course, the absolute most bestest important thingy (am I overdoing it?) is that all the downloads are proper, un-DRM-crippled mp3s. You can copy them to whichever device you like, burn them to mp3, whatever. They’re properly yours.
The book obsession is linked with a gym revival. It’s about twenty billion times easier to zone out on the cardio machines when you are having a story read to you, especially if you limit listening to it only to gym periods. That way, if you want to know what happens next you have to keep on running.
There is also a pretty wonderful selection of classical CDs to download, though I haven’t explored this in enormous detail yet. The only one sitting downloaded currently is something by Balada, which hasn’t received nearly enough attention to be validly and/or verbosely commented on.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I wrote here about how the pricing scheme at eMusic drives me crazy, but if you’re interested I created a playlist there of some particularly long tracks, which are always a bargain. I stayed on for about five months.