your music or emusic?

[BobbyT]

I currently have an account with your music. It is $5.99 a month and you get 1 CD a month. But you buy as many CDs as you want for $5.99 as long as your a member. But I've been thinking of switching to emusic. You get 30 downloads a month for $9.99 and they have a lot of the indie bands I like where your music doesn't carry them. They encode at 192 VBR. My biggest hang up is getting mp3s instead of CDs. What do you guys think? Stick with CDs oor get over it and get more of the music I like?

[skonopa]

I personally have eMusic (I was able to sign up back when it was still 90 downloads for about $20/month - in November, they reduced the number of downloads at the pricing tiers, but still "grandfathered" in existing accounts, thus effectively raising the prices on new sign-ups)

Anyway, I personally love it! I found all kinds of awesome stuff on there that I just simply could not get through the "traditional" channels. As far as the quality of the MP3's, people can say all they want about the MP3s, but the quality of the ones I got off of eMusic seemed to be very good. They sounded awesome on my setup (and as I discovered from that "how to have fun when alone" thread, we both have nearly identical systems), so I am willing to bet they will sound excellent on your own system. I stream mine off my server through my Roku SoundBridge M1000 device, and does indeed sound good. Also, there is one distict advantage to the MP3 downloads - as soon as you see something you want, just click the "download" button, and in a matter of minutes (assuming you have a fast connection), you got your music - no waiting for a CD to arrive in the mail (still would be awesome if somebody would setup a mail-order outfit where you can order the CD, download the music while waiting for the CD to arrive)

The other beauty is that eMusic does not DRM thier files like just about every other download service (unless you go into the very grey-market Russion ones such as allofmp3.com) - these are straight-up MP3s that you can legally copy and play on any device that'll except them.

I went and checked out that Your Music site. The only problem is, it seems to be mostly BMG affiliated labels, so you are only basically getting only the BMG and affiliate's catalog, whereas eMusic is all indepent, so you are likelly going to find a much wider breath and depth of selection on there. I did browse around a bit on that Your Music site, and did find alot of good stuff there, mostly in the realm of the old-school metal, such as Iron Maiden, Judest Priest, Dio, Queensyche, and so forth. They even had Dream Theater!

However, with eMusic, you are not likely going to get any of the "big names" that you'll find on Your Music, but given the current sad state of the mainstream music scene, I frankly really don't care that I cannot find, say Beyonce's latest. And the few that I am interested in, such as Iron Maiden's new one, I just went to the local record store and got it, although it was more than the $6 that it was offered for on the Your Music site. eMusic does indeed offer quite a bit of difficult to find, independent music. You'd be surprised at just how much talent is there.

However, if you are happy with the both of them, why not stick with the both?

To cut to the chase - yes, I definitly recommend at least giving eMusic a good try. I've been very happy with it myself, especially since most of what I listen to these days is from independent labels anyway. Just not to impressed with what I see on the mainstream these days, plus most of the stuff I was interested in, I already have, such as the old Iron Maiden and Queensryche.

[BobbyT]

Thanks Steven. I'm really leaning toward emusic, especially after reading that. So far only 1 indie band I searched for was not listed, which is amazing to me. I do have a fast braodband line. And I can stream through itunes to an airport express that is plugged in the receiver/pre pro via optical cable. Yourmusic is raising the price to $6.99 in January so there is only a $2 difference between 9 songs and 30. Plus DL.TV has a code to start off with 50 free downloads instead of 25. The DL.TV guys, Patrick Norton & Robert Heron, really like the sound quality of the emusic mp3s too. And they are more about sound quality than convenience.

Funny thing about our identical systems. When I thought about it you were one of the guys who really helped me in the final days before I purchased it all. The big differences between our systems being the sub and you use a Denon where I went with a Yamaha. Both are very nice though.