I downloaded this today to check it out, and it's really pretty neat. You pay $0.99 a song, or you can get a whole album for $9.99. The interface for the program is pretty spiffy and the search features and such are very helpful.
The only problem I have with it is that the selection of music they have is a little bit mainstream. I didn't find any of the selections I was searching for on it. However, it is in it's infancy and hopefully they will be adding on some smaller record companies later instead of just the major ones.
"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." - John F Kennedy
And that is precisely how the record companies will get me to buy music again. It's funny, I used to buy shitloads of cd's before I actually had a real job. (read: high school and early college) Then, in like '97 when CD burners became affordable and the halfway intelligent could find music on the internet, my consumerism dropped off. Not because of the money, because I'm lazy. Why go all the way to a store when I think of a song I'd like to hear when I can just walk 3 feet to my computer and download it?
They get a solid catalog of songs encoded in high quality and some reasonably speedy throughput, I'll definitely be spending money there.
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."- Barack Obama
Been waiting for ITunes to be available for PC, my friends use it on their Macs and it's really good. Now I'll probably have to go and get an IPod as well.
Crav Veladorn
Darkblade of Tunare
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
- Albert Einstein
I downloaded it this afternoon, pretty spiffy... damn I wish they would release OSX for Intel... but that is another issue.
Xou is right that it's pretty mainstream but... hopefully it will get better. I too just hate having to get out to get music when I can download it. Wife wants the new Sting CD so we might get that one tonight for our trip tomorrow and see how it goes, if we do I'll let you know about the quality.
I also got Napster 2.0 today and it seems to have a better collection. (of alternative stuff anyway)
Update: I would advise against using Napster. All of the files you download are protected by a deal called 'DRM' or Digital Rights Management. The files you get are a .wma format file that only plays in Windows Media Player 9. I had no luck trying to convert these files to .mp3 for use in my car and on my xbox, which is the main reason/method I listen to mp3's. The .wma file is completely useless to me, and it is very restrictive in the ways in which you can listen to it.
I looked for a way to disable the DRM portion of the file, but there doesn't seem to be any yet.
"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." - John F Kennedy
since i got my ipod ive been using musicmatch, since thats what it came with
i got itunes when i first heard it was avail for windows, deleted it the next day because i couldnt figure out how to find files withtout scrolling for days(didnt see the browse button)
and itunes loved to add whatever mp3 i played to my library AND ipod, real sucky for auditioning songs/groups/versions of songs, having to remember whatever it was, and remove it from itunes/ipod etc..
decided to give it a 2nd chance after playing with it on my friends ibook
well, first, when installing itunes on a pc with musicmatch, itunes take the liberty to disable the ability to synch with musicmatch... like on purpose....classy
then, it went ahead and reorganized my whole music collection(each artist into its own folder, each album into its own folder in that), seems like a cute idea no?, well, not when you ask for that(mind you, i didnt use the consolidate function in itunes just for this reason), i have a specific way of organizing my DLed files with my existing ones and this fucked everything up
but heres the part that literally took my breath away,
it seems that itunes uses folders/directories AS id3 tags, when i first got my library regoing in itunes, about 20% of my songs became of the genre 'other', annoying, but no biggie
but this... this was complete and total id3 obliteration
just imagine, 3k songs, with no fucking tags, its taken me almost 6months to convert my cds to mp3s, and collect my music from kazaa etc..
im trying musicmatches 'smart-tag' thingy now to see if that saves my files(though i doubt it, since i have a lot of obscure shit)
if this doesnt work, my last hope(this one really frightens me) is to delete my whole music library, and hope that itunes didnt fuck up the id3 tags on my ipod too, so i can just upload my music from ipod to PC
knowing my luck, musicmatch would think im trying to add my PC to ipod, and replace all my files with freeportn.mp3 or something awful like that
Trying to find a way to get the iTunes mp4 files to play on my old copy of Winamp... or at least, to be able to play it in EQ through the mp3 player.
And yes, I checked.. double clicking on the file tells me "Windows cannot open this file".. ect.
Akaran of Mistmoore, formerly Akaran of Veeshan I know I'm good at what I do, but I know I'm not the best.
But I guess that on the other hand, I could be like the rest.
Kriista, download EPHPod from http://www.ephpod.com. It's freeware and worlds better than the musicmatch garbage the ipods come with. I've been using it for close to 2 years now, and have had no problems whatsoever with it.
the good news is that musicmatch supertagging is somewhat decent, only gone thro 1/4 of my collection and its snooped out about 70% of the track names/artists
However, it is in it's infancy and hopefully they will be adding on some smaller record companies later instead of just the major ones.
