Music Subscription Services

I've decided to look into the monthly subscription model for music- $12.95/month for as much music as I can listen to sounds like a better deal than $.89/$.99 per song or buying full albums. Anyone out there use one such as Napster or Rhapsody? I've googled it a bit and most of the articles are a couple years old.

I did a 7 day free trial of Napster and really liked it. The only two flaws were 1) that some songs are designated as purchase-only, meaning that if I was paying $12.95/month I would have to pay another 99 cents to get one song and 2) There is no way (that I know of) to play songs in your library straight through, you have to create a playlist for every sequence of songs you want to play. The latter was incredibly annoying.

Any thoughts?

 

I'd rather pay the $.99 a song/full album for $9.99 and know I own it. As soon as you stop subscribing to Napster or Rhapsody, you lose all those songs. You can no longer listen to them. So you're paying way more month-to-month than you would just to buy it.

 

Pandora. Freeeeeeeeeeeee

 

Oh, fuck that.

The first time you don't pay your fee, you no longer get to listen to "your" music. You cancel, you no longer get to listen to "your" music. And if the company you're paying decides to shut down the service, you no longer get to listen to "your" music. Ask former customers of the defunct subscription music services from Yahoo and Microsoft how that works.

At least if you cancel your magazine subscriptions, you still get to look at old copies you kept. Can't do that with an "online music subscription."

Save the $13 a month. In the long run you'll be glad you did.

And I googled "subscription music" and came up with this article from last Monday: http://technologizer.com/2009/02/06/please-world-like-subscription-music-wont-you/

From that link: I found this story at CNet:

From that link: I found this story at CNet:

Subscription music makes sense if and only if you're running a company with huge amounts of corporate overhead whose primary business is distributing music. For anybody else -- musicians, fans, the world in general, you in particular -- the idea is too stupid for color TV.

Never rent music.​

 

eMusic is great -- I get 100 downloads a month for $24.99 -- though the selection certainly doesn't cater to mainstream audiences.

 

= a long way to say what I said in the first reply.

 

Beat me to it. If you listen to indie stuff, eMusic is unbeatable.

 

torrents.

 

IJAG, your new avatar is ... strange.

 

Ditto, though I'd feel like an ass if I stole ALL my new music.

 

Could be problematic ...

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/13/1433250

 

Thanks!

I tried to do dancing Nappy D, but it didn't show up. So I went with "Do they have large talons" Nappy.