Tunes on the Cheap
There are lots of different music services out there, but allow me to highlight some of the most hawesomer ones I’ve come across:
- AllofMP3 - I’ve blogged about them before, and I’ll do it again. AllofMP3 continues to be my favorite music service because of they’re insanely low rates - just $0.02 per MB or about $1.25 for an entire album. Compare that to $0.99 per song on iTunes and it’s easy to see why I love AllofMP3.
- Pandora - It’s kinda like radio, but kinda not like anything else you’ve ever seen before. If you’ve used Yahoo!’s Launchcast service before then you probably understand how a radio can “learn” what you like by your ratings, etc. Pandora takes that philosophy and truly goes beyond to learn what you love and make new recommendations. Oh yeah, it’s free.
- Lala - If physical CDs are your thing, Lala is for you. It’s like a community based Netflix or Blockbuster Online for music - send in your CDs to share, earn points, and spend your points on other CDs. I haven’t used the service myself, but the premise sounds cool.
- Mercora - Dubbed “the world’s largest jukebox”, Mercora’s music is comprised of a P2P database connected to tons of custom playlists created by its users. While it is P2P, it’s all streamed - since it’s not actually downloaded to your computer and Mercora pays royalties, it’s both free and legal. I haven’t used it, but Eriq has; maybe he could elaborate on Mercora’s services.
- Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Though it’s not free, YMU has a ton of music available for streaming and also offers tracks to download (though they’re significantly more expensive than AllofMP3). YMU incorporates Launchcast as well, so you can listen to a wide variety of music as the program learns your tastes.
I would recommend AllofMP3 over any other service because of three main reasons: 1) it’s hella cheap; 2) you keep the music you buy, and; 3) you pick the format and bitrate for your tunes. It really comes down to what you wanna do with your music, specifically, whether or not you wanna be able to take it with you, access it at any time, or just let the randomness of streaming radio take you where it will.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:09 am
My only complaint with AllofMP3 was that I found what they ripped for me wasn’t exactly at the rate they claimed. They offered -aps MP3s, but the ones I got back were actually just high VBR.
I cannot complain too much. I managed to get MP3s of some pretty hard to find (at least in my experiece) bonus CDs for musicians such as Local H and David Bowie.
June 20th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
I wound up joining La La… so far I’ve been happy with it. It seems very well ran.
June 20th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
So how exactly does la la work? Do you get the CD with the album art and everything, or just the CD itself? Do you think it’s a better investment than AllofMP3?