Napster vanquished.

Originally posted by Rob_Gee_a.k.a _Guiny:

Originally posted by mark e smith:
I like to physically own the CD.

I couldnt agree with you more…..and wont from now on. But i do have to have the cd.

For me it depends really. Sometimes I don't really care about the physical product. To date I've bought 5 albums off of itunes. All of them so far have been new releases by new bands. I guess that when it's a band I've listened to a while and have some sort of emotional attachment to I'm more likely to want the physical product. I dunno.

Also, probably 80% of the music I listen to is via the ipod, whether at home, in the car or whatever, and since i've gotten strung out on that thing the physical cd's just seem less important than they used to.

See, I fall smack dab in the middle. I used to think owning the CD was a must, but recently, with all the burned copies of things floating through my life, I couldn't care less. In truth, if it is a CD I really want, I'll buy the real deal somewhere. Otherwise, i'll try new music, or fill in my back catalog stuff on burned CDs all day. Though, it does make my CD collection look less impressive. and isn't that what its all about anyway?

I swore I'd never pay for music over the net. But I did just purchase the sigur ros ep. $3.00 for an ep makes itunes worthwhile. And I agree with Markie, to find a hard to get single, it makes sense. And an album for $10 is still cheaper that anything this side of a used CD. I just don't care about the booklets, they are often lame anyway.

i was spoiled by the formerly "unlimited" download policy of emusic, so my sense of what the cost of an electronic version of an album is skewed.

personally, i feel insulted by being charged for $10 for downloading a album, given the fact that for not much more i can get the physical product. but if the download cost half as much as the cd, it would be more attractive.

secret machines have an interesting offer at the moment… for 8.91 you can download their new cd, which isn't due out for awhile, they'll also send you a six song sampler of other bands and a custom cdr to burn the cd to. is the wave of the future?

The stuff I download tends to be live shows, demos, and other commercially unreleased stuff. I also download a fair amount of rare singles and import bonus tracks. That was always a huge gyp for the American music fan, shelling out 12 bucks for one extra track on an import single or 35 for one extra track on a japanese import, and I have no remorse about downloading those tracks for free.

However, I feel bad downloading whole albums and I still love buying a physical CD. The handful of times I've DLed whole albums have been when one of my favorite artists' new albums surfaced before the record was released. But every time I felt guilty and bought the physical copy when it came out.

Originally posted by bellenseb:
That was always a huge gyp for the American music fan

uk artists often put extra tracks on their us releases, so it all evens out

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
i was spoiled by the formerly "unlimited" download policy of emusic, so my sense of what the cost of an electronic version of an album is skewed.

But emusic had to change because it was not viable.

It was good in some ways and terrible in others. Concentrating on the bad…..It was never going to be more than a niche service because it never had "top 50 artists" on it. Plus I have several albums missing tracks that I tried downloading 5 times or more.

We have had this debate so many times…..


iTunes overcomes those 3 flaws, but is more expensive. You get what you pay for.

Originally posted by pollard:

Originally posted by bellenseb:
That was always a huge gyp for the American music fan

uk artists often put extra tracks on their us releases, so it all evens out

But that is a double con, as if you're in the UK you have to buy the US version of the album, also, to get the extra tracks. If you are in the US, and a fan, you will have bought the album on import already.

Either way a fan ends up with two copies of the album.

I'm 2/3s over on the spectrum. I love to buy CDs, and still buy a lot. I have, however, started to exchange burned CDs of bands I don't know, want to listen to, etc. Basically, CDs I wouldn't buy otherwise. If I find a band I really like (like Sloan, when a friend gave me One Chord to Another), I buy the rest of the catalog (I bought the other 4 or 5 Sloan CDs within a year). In terms of my purchases, a bit of sharing usually benefits the artist in the end.

I still experiment and buy something because the buzz is good and it's been described as something I'd like, but I'm not going to do that for every band I hear about. Just look at this board; though I have hundreds of CDs, I don't know a lot of the bands that are faves on here…

Originally posted by mark e smith:
But emusic had to change because it was not viable.

It was good in some ways and terrible in others. Concentrating on the bad…..It was never going to be more than a niche service because it never had "top 50 artists" on it. Plus I have several albums missing tracks that I tried downloading 5 times or more.

this is true but you were trying to download tracks when the system was overloaded with users trying to grab as many albums as possible. i had the same problem, but because i'm still a subscriber i can continue to download, without it counting against my monthly limit, any album/track i've already downloaded. an itunes user can only download a track once. also emusic tells you up front what format their downloads are encoded with (192kbps VBR mp3 encoded w/LAME). I have yet to find in iTunes where it directly says this. There is mention of AAC but little else. Buyer beware I guess, and don't accidently delete a track without backing it up.

so what if it's a niche service, you've beginning to sound like the trolls that frequent the emusic bbs. emusic has a great communitiy of list makers so it was easy to find stuff that one wasn't familiar with. it's got a better selection of the stuff i listen to then itunes, for a lot cheaper.

regardless of whether or not emusic was viable ecomonic model, it will forever define what i view as what an electronic download should cost to me personally.

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
an itunes user can only download a track once.

I am not 100% sure, but I don't think this is true.

i was wrong about the only downloading once

Are you sure about the one download? If your windows PC crashes mid-download, what happens? I would have thought it would let you download multiple times. It does keep a list for you of what you have downloaded via the store, right?

You can burn as many CDs as you like though, for backups and whatever.

I checked apple support, if your pc loses power it continues downloading from where it was at the time, there is a whole support document saying you can only download once.

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:

regardless of whether or not emusic was viable ecomonic model, it will forever define what i view as what an electronic download should cost to me personally.

This is the essentially the same argument people use about napster and Kazzaa. It is a fallacy.

Originally posted by pollard:
I checked apple support, if your pc loses power it continues downloading from where it was at the time, there is a whole support document saying you can only download once.

I couldnt find it very quickly, thanks.

So that is quite cool to be able to do that.

Download Restarting
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93015

Downloading Once
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93050

Originally posted by mark e smith:

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:

regardless of whether or not emusic was viable ecomonic model, it will forever define what i view as what an electronic download should cost to me personally.

This is the essentially the same argument people use about napster and Kazzaa. It is a fallacy.

i'm currently paying .22 cents a track and therefore think .99 cents a track is a ripoff… no fallacy about it…

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:

regardless of whether or not emusic was viable ecomonic model, it will forever define what i view as what an electronic download should cost to me personally.


i'm currently paying .22 cents a track and therefore think .99 cents a track is a ripoff… no fallacy about it…

You appear to be saying two different things. In the first I presumed you were talking about the old model. In the second you are clearly talking about the new model.

22cents, but you pay less because you have to subscribe, for one. I bet there are plenty of people who subscribe who do not download their full quota.


For the casual music fan who wants the darkness and hey ya by outkast Emusic would be a lonely place. However cheap the downloads were, it wouldnt make a difference.

I bet there are more albums I want, especially in the top 10 download section, in Emuisc. But then I am probably more than a casual music fan.

Originally posted by mark e smith:

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:

I am probably more than a casual music fan.

braggart

If it was boastful, or empty I would not have said probably in front of it…..

I am probably the smartest person I know.

Oh and my point was, I hate the darkness, if find the whole thing derisible. And outkast has a catchy song, but I can find better fluff somewhere else, probably my navel. But both of those make the itunes top 10