paying for music and downloading from the net!

[Jimmy Little]

so does anyone do this yet? there are a few singles i would not mind getting, how good is this service? and who have you used and so on...

[Aaron]

The only one I've used is Bleep, and that's because they offer a lot of stuff which isn't available on CD anymore and they offer fully DRM-free high bitrate mp3s.

Bleep isn't much use if you want the latest Westlife single though.

[Flibb]

Have used Itunes and think its a good service. I wouldnt bother buying full albums from there as I oculd get the proper cd for an extra quid from a local shop. But for indevidual tracks its ace. You can listen to an intro of ach track then decide to buy or not. Download is quick and painless. The the interface software is a little clunky on a pc but works, its also catalogs all your other music. Wish they did a bulk buy where price dropped if you got 10+ tracks, allowing diy albums. Might get an mp3 type player after using the service, wouldnt get ipod but sommit similar. Also plan to try some other services when I get a chance.

[Jimmy Little]

thanks guys, so you need the software with itunes? thats what i don't want really, as i have mp3's and so laid out in a crazy order, i have over 5,000 mp3's and don't want them mixed up, i would just like to be able to download the track i want and be done with it,

[Butuz]

Aint ever gonna use these services. I want my music on a permanent CD thats relativeley hard to destroy and can be backed up easily.

There no way i am paying for what is essentially a load of compressed, low quality binary digits. A CD i can hold in my hand, a MP3 doesnt exist in the real world.

Yuk

Butuz

[Jimmy Little]

yeah that's true, but they are only possessions you can't take them with you!!

i only want this one single so i'm thinking of paying for it seeing as P2P is gone duff!

[ajbrun]

Yeah - I might start downloading IF it's cheap enough (I'm not that big on music) and IF there's no software involved. I just want to download and dump into a folder, but I am open to persuasion if the software's good enough.

[Flibb]

As I said I wouldnt buy entire albums I prefer to get the odd tarck here and there. The cost of dloading an album isnt much cheaper than getting it from play, or my local dealer.

[Jimmy Little]

Yeah - I might start downloading IF it's cheap enough (I'm not that big on music) and IF there's no software involved. I just want to download and dump into a folder, but I am open to persuasion if the software's good enough.

yeah same here! anyone else got any good links!

[ajbrun]

Someones already said this, but I think the only reason I would download is to get a "custom" album. It would be nice (as someone also said) to have a site that charges you less per track the more you buy.

[directhex]

i don't think it's been made clear enough, so a quick online music 101.

there are 2 mainstream systems, itunes, and od2

itunes requires you have the itunes player app installs, and sells copy-protected mp4 files for use on itunes or ipod.

od2 is a back-end resold by lots of uk stores, basically pretty much any store using wma (such as napster). some require separate apps (like napster), some just piggy-back into IE using activex (such as mycokemusic). od2 files use copy-protected wma files, for use on windows media player, or wma-capable portables. the copy-protection is stricter on od2 purchases.

you can't buy big-label music outside these two big-record-industry-approved schemes.

like aaron, i've bought from bleep.com, which sells unrestricted high-bitrate mp3 files direct through any (firefox) web browser - note that bleep is run by warp records, and only carry warp acts or friends of warp (such as planet mu records). a good way to get aphex twin, but not a place for teeny pop.

and before anyone posts to it, allofmp3 is _NOT_ legal.