Thursday, October 16, 2008 Ng: Downloading music from Web By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
IN the last few weeks, I started listening and studying different kinds of music, primarily instrumental and classical.
I looked at websites that offered downloadable music. As you know, Napster and MP3 have changed the way people sell music. In fact, music sales have declined in the last few years because of these websites.
Before, the only way to buy music is to go to the music store and get a CD, now most songs can be downloaded through the Internet.
Apple iTunes changed the way you get legal music. They had a great price at that time, which was 99 cents per song, and they are now selling music by the millions. Of course, millions of songs are also available through file sharing networks without any licensing.
The greatest offer came from providers like Zune.Net and Real Rhapsody. I was very tempted by these. They offer an unlimited number of songs (they say more than a million songs) for download for about $12 to $15 a month.
However, you have to pay each month, and the songs have usually DRM ( digital rights management ) limitations. The songs you download can be played only in about two or three computers or designated mp3 players.
The good thing is as long as you are paying every month, you can listen to the songs as many times you want. But once you stop paying, you can no longer play any of the songs you downloaded!
Still, I got so excited about it. After all, we have to get over the fact that we cannot own the songs perpetually, but just be able to listen and study it.
I was disappointed, however, because the music subscription service is open only to United States residents. Maybe record companies want to release the music but are still reluctant to release it to the whole world even with DRM.
This goes to show that we are at a disadvantage because the Philippines is known for intellectual property rights violations. All these great deals are not available to us.
After some queries, I decided to register to emusic.com. It is not an all-you-can-listen-to model but they have more than a million songs. You can listen to a segment of a song (usually about 30 seconds), and if you like it, you can buy it.
Emusic.com has several product packages. I chose the one for $15 a month, which allows me to download 50 songs every month (that means each song is about 30 cents, which is cheaper than iTUnes or Amazon.com).
I have been very happy with it.
I also found out that myspace.com has a very rich music library. If you do a search on most tracks, you can find most selections. But while you can listen to the songs, you cannot download it.
Many of the songs were registered and uploaded by users themselves, so some are not properly labeled or not so nice. Nevertheless, if you just want to know some music group and check out their songs, myspace.com has probably one of the biggest selection, including those by Philippine artists.
Facebook members can also loan an application called Music Player, which allows them to listen to more than hundreds of thousands of songs. But the music, though free, is not very high quality.
I am sure millions of people go to the Internet for music, and there are lots and lots of other resources on the web. Years ago, the Internet allowed me—with a click of a mouse—to buy and listen to almost virtually any music that I’ve listened to.
But this is not the case anymore so please feel free to inform me if you find a good one.
