Jefflog

I’m checking out eMusic.com today and am so far enjoying what I see. $10 a month gets me 40 song downloads, all in the MP3 format with no DRM attached.

What’s the catch, you might ask? Aside from the downloads being 128Kbps MP3’s (which sound okay but definitely not as good as the original CD), all of the albums come from independent labels.  Don’t go looking for the big names here. Although you can find some famous musicians on the site, most of the albums are from smaller outfits. This doesn’t bother me, since I generally listen to stuff out of the mainstream anyway, and there seems to be enough there I enjoy. I’m listening to Echolyn’s The End is Beautiful right now and loving it.

Oh, and if you’re using Linux, you’re out of luck; you have to use a special downloader application that only runs on Mac and Windows. That’s a shame, although once you download your tracks, at least you can transfer them to your Linux desktop and listen to them now that the MP3 codec has been licensed for GStreamer.

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Update: I have learned that the MP3’s that you get aren’t 128Kbps, but have a variable bit rate that is typically between 160Kbps and 220Kbps. They are also encoded using the LAME encoder, which is generally considered to be the encoder with the best quality. As a result, the files do sound quite good.