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Alternative to Napster - Virgin Digital (UK/US Only)

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Redhat:
I have been on a quest. A quest to find a good (legal) music service with the following criteria:


* Software needs to respond when I click buttons. It needs to be well designed and not take more than it's fair share of RAM.
* There needs to be lots of popular music, aswell as lesser-known artists.
* I can't afford 79p a track ($1.50, I might add) which is what most/all "buying" services charge. So there needs to be some kind of subscription service.
* The price cannot be more than £14.99 per month.
So I took a look around. I've tried emusic (http://www.emusic.com) and here are my thoughts on that:

Overall, a nice setup. Web-based, but the selection of music was just too scarce for me to consider it properly. I got a few little-known UK artists from it, but they were about all I could recognise in terms of artists. I used the free, two-week trial where you get 50 free downloads. BIG ADVANTAGE: NO DRM!

I have used napster in the past, and here are my thoughts on that service:

Selection of music is great. The software and customer support - isn't. The software is so resource-hungry on my system it became unbearable. It was even bad on my 2GIG RAM, AMD64 system. Ouch.

In terms of customer service, it was dreadful. I have had to ring them twice as they charged my card twice, two months in a row. They never apologised. They never sought to rectify the situation. They simply said "call your bank".


But I have found a new service, from Virgin! (Richard Branson & Co)

The software is smooth, fast and efficient. The amount of tracks available (1.4 mil I think) is astounding. They have a subscription service, and it's in the price range (£9.99). There is radio. There is playlists. There is music insurance, so if your system fails, you don't lose any of your music when you reinstall VD (Ooops, just realised what that says!).

It current is only available to UK and US residents. For more information, check out http://www.virgindigital.com .

A screeny:

Veign:
Check out:
http://www.veign.com/blog/2005/11/mp3-music-source-too-good-to-be-true.html

Alot to talk on the legality but seems the RIAA has yet to be able to touch it....

tinyvillager:
Hey Veign,do you use this yourself,here any horror stories? I've heard of them before.And have always itched
at the notion to try but never scratched.I use emusic and i like it but it does lack when it comes to major labels.


P.S.
I've been reading articles on digg and else where  the RIAA is trying to get the Russians to comply,lol.Gotta
love the rebellion.The Afterdawn forums are going through some changes in the new year cause of new laws passed
in Finland. 

Carol Haynes:
I have been trying it - no horror stories so far (at least there haven't been any bruisers with baseball bats beating on my door yet)!

Veign:
I will be checking it out in the next couple of weeks. 

(I see the site is 'down for maintenance' right now - will see if it comes back up)

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