Okay guys, i’ve been using eMusic for a couple of days now, so i figure it’s about time to deliver my verdict. i gave the service a try, first just going thru the trial service (sign up, and get 50 songs for free, cancel at any time – no charge), but quickly signed up once i downloaded more than the 50 allotted to me. below is my full review. Signing Up when you visit the main page, most of the info is already right in front of you.
genres at the top, “my recommendations”, and “my stash” on the left. these two features are really cool, as they help you a) queue up some music to get later, and help you find new, related artists. after signing up (you get a 14 day trial period, where you can download up to 50 songs for free), i entered in my credit card, selected the 3 month trial @ $14.99 a month, and submitted.
you also have the option to pay $9.99 a month if you commit to an entire year, which i think i will do now, but at the time i figured i’d just commit to 3 months. after this process, you’re sent an email welcoming you to the ‘club’, giving you details on how to download the “emusic download manager” (basically their way of getting mp3s to your desktop from their service), and some of the membership info. Searching for Music once i had all of this done, i decided i’d just start entering in some bands that i couldn’t find on the iTunes music store, and that i wanted to own.
first, i tried some fairly popular bands, and found 8 of the 10 i tried: boysetsfire face to face alkaline trio dashboard confessional bad religion taking back sunday hot water music saves the day the two i could not find were The Ataris (except 2 songs off of a comp) and BoxCar racer (same thing, a few songs from a comp, but that was all). here’s what the search results look like. as you can see, it basically lists all of the albums by the artist, then any other album that may have songs from that artist on it. i went ahead and selected “the Places You Come to Fear” by Dashboard. you have the option to “stash it” (aka queue it up for a later download), or simply view the album info and either download 1 track, or the entire album.
Downloading! to make things simple, i tried to download just one song. the great thing about eMusic is that they offer almost all of their songs encoded @ 192 bitrate (VBR), encoded with LAME, which is widely regarded the best mp3 encoder in town.
also, there is NO copy protection or ‘permissions’ to deal with, so these are yours to do whatever you like. burn them, put them on your iPod, or share them if you so desire (but we all know that’s illegal, so don’t.) so, you’re getting pretty much CD-quality music here, for a great price. i selected the first track off of Dashboard’s CD “The Places you Come to Fear” – The Brilliant Dance.
a small . emp file is downloaded to your desktop with the song name. if you so choose to download an entire album, the . emp file is the album name instead. upon double-clicking the . emp, the eMusic Download manager opens up, and you’re on your way.
the song is downloaded to a location that you choose in the prefs of the download manager, and also sorts the song into an artist folder, then an album folder, so it’s easy to find that one song once you’ve got it on your computer. after that, you’re done! the song is yours, no restrictions, and at great quality.
Final Verdict plusses so far, i love eMusic. it seems that they are improving their service every time i log in, adding new features and making the site feel faster. i’ve downloaded around 400 songs, all for 15 bucks (and it’s only been a week). it’s a great way to sample new artists you may not have gone to the store and paid for.
what more, the artists get their money this way. you get the satisfaction of knowing that you’re actually SUPPORTING artists who deserve it. furthermore, the sound quality is amazing. i don’t have the best speakers in the world, but i can’t tell any difference between these mp3s and a CD, or songs i’ve ripped myself, either in mp3 or AAC format.
negatives there’s still a few things that i don’t like. the “recommendations” section will quite often recommend you an album you just downloaded, or will at times offer you something completely off the wall. all in all, it’s a nice way to find similar artists though.
also, i hope they come up with a way to rate the albums you have downloaded. just because i download a song doesn’t mean i’ll automatically like it. what if i hated it since i downloaded the song, now eMusic uses that to help suggest future songs for me to listen to. i think there should be SOME way to let the system know not every song i’ve tried out is a song i liked. also, the “my stash” section could use some work.
if i choose to download an album i’ve queued up, it makes sense to remove it from the list. oh, and the ID3 tags don’t have genre or year listed, so i had to manually look up the year the album was made to put that in the ID3 tags. yea i know, i’m anal.
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