Today, I decided to try the emusic service again. I’ve tried the service a couple of times before (apparently, I tried it for the first time in August 1999 according to my account information). In the past, I never found the service worth paying for, but all that has changed now.
With a quick search of the emusic site, I found some of my favorite groups. I also found a lot of songs that I’ve already purchased through Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The big difference with emusic is that the songs are in high quality mp3 format without any DRM! This means that I can play the songs on all of my mp3 players and computers without any problems. With Apple’s DRM, I can’t play my purchased music on Linux or on my iRiver player, and that really stinks!
Emusic was nice enough to give me a new free trial membership (apparently my other one was so long ago that it doesn’t count). I was able to get the brand new album from Dashboard Confessional, The Rocket Summer’s first album, and 5 single tracks from some other bands I want to check out … all for FREE! You just can’t beat that deal.
I think I’ll go ahead keep my account with emusic this time. 40 tracks for $9.99 a month is just a great deal, especially since emusic’s catalog of artists is so huge.
The tracks are also much higher quality than those offered through iTunes. Emusic uses variable bit rate mp3 files, and all the tracks I downloaded were encoded at rates above 160 kbps. It’s also easy to re-download any tracks that you’ve purchased in the past, something you can’t do with iTunes.
Emusic is a winner!
