Author Topic: tech crunch article comparing music services (Read 84109 times)

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #25 on:** April 11, 2006, 02:51 AM »

May be a more major point in the days of Ebay - go out buy a CD on the cheapest store you can find, copy it at bit-perfect quality, sell it on Amazon or Ebay and probably make a profit; I'm sure it happens all the time these days - otherwise how do individiuals sell so many second hand CDs and DVDs ?

Aside

I can't believe some of the second hand prices people pay on Ebay and Amazon - I'm sure some people switch off their brains. I remember watching an auction I was interested in once for a DVD and I stopped bidding at £2 short of the cheapest price I could buy it for new, but the auction went on and someone paid twice as much as the new price !!!

One further thought about AllofMP3 - it is really useful for older CDs that are no longer available, and I don't have any reservations about copyright: if you can't buy a CD in the shop you aren't doing any harm to the artists whatever AllofMP3 do re. royalties. I have certain found a few deleted classics over there.

slave138 · « **Reply #26 on:** April 11, 2006, 08:27 AM »

I don't know about AllOfMP3, but SearchMP3.ru had a pretty good collection of older releases. In some cases they also have bootlegs of live shows and unreleased studio demos. (Now if they would just get Bowie's 50th birthday show...)

allen · « **Reply #27 on:** April 11, 2006, 01:00 PM »

Emusic is where I get most of the music downloads I use on my portable devices -- but I do have a Rhapsody subscription.

They offered a free trial, and I want to try most things free. I didn't expect to like it, though, as a long time hater of Real Player -- but I've gone ahead and paid my monthly dues. While the review hits them for their $0.99 price per track, that only applies to songs you want to transfer to your portable or burn to a CD. Your subscription allows you to listen to and/or download unlimited music on your home PC -- which works really well for me. I can listen to virtually anything I want.

I haven't touched iTunes -- does iTunes do this as well? I know Napster has a similar program.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #28 on:** April 11, 2006, 01:06 PM »

Not sure about elsewhere but iTunes is generally 79p a track or £7.90 an album in the UK (presumably ~99c and $10 in the US?). You can listen to a clip to preview tracks but they are very short - otherwise you buy it or don't is there moto.

One really annoying thing about iTunes is that you can't redownload a file if it gets lost or damaged so you do have to back up your library religiously (you can in MSN etc). Also iTunes only provides AAC format which can only be played in iTunes and on iPods.

In the UK Tesco is OK too, and at least you get MP3s rather than WMA or AAC with DRM crap.

AllofMP3 lets you stream the whole album before downloading if you want to so you could just treat it as a free jukebox, especially with the AllofMP3 Explorer software (which I only discovered yesterday and is really neat).

allen · « **Reply #29 on:** April 11, 2006, 01:15 PM »

Ah -- precisely what I like about Rhapsody -- unless I need to burn it or put it on my mobile device, I can listen to virtually any album in their library any time I want -- 9.99/mo US. For 14.95/mo US, I can do that and copy them to my portable device -- so I only have to buy the tracks if I want to burn them to CD. If you have the 14.95 plan, you get 10% off purchases. Since I'm generally a homebody, the basic plan works great for me.

Rhapsody allows you 3 additional re-downloads of purchased music -- which is better than no-chance

Hirudin · « **Reply #30 on:** April 18, 2006, 12:57 AM »

RE-Downloading is one very nice thing about emusic! They used to have 128kbps tracks, reciently they upgraded their collection to Alt-Preset-Standard using LAME. I was able to re-download every track that I downloaded before, but with higher quality. I think it added up to about 5gb of music when I was done.

nudone · « **Reply #31 on:** April 18, 2006, 01:32 AM »

well, i've not had any response from the emails i sent regarding whether the labels/artists embrace what 'allofmp3' are doing, so i guess that means they don't object or just don't care either way. great.

or, even if they genuinely do care, i certainly don't now - i'll probably use 'allofmp3' next time i want something.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #32 on:** April 18, 2006, 04:57 AM »

well, i've not had any response from the emails i sent regarding whether the labels/artists embrace what 'allofmp3' are doing, so i guess that means they don't object or just don't care either way. great.

or, even if they genuinely do care, i certainly don't now - i'll probably use 'allofmp3' next time i want something.
-nudone (April 18, 2006, 01:32 AM)

Once you have an account set up make sure you download the AllOfMP3 explorer software. It works great and is so much more convenient than downloading from the webpages as it can automatically create the correct folder structures (where you want and fully customizable) plus it adds the correct track numbers to files as they are downloaded and provides an easy resumable download system - even checking for when your files are ready.

nudone · « **Reply #33 on:** April 18, 2006, 06:37 AM »

thanks for the tip, Carol.

allen · « **Reply #34 on:** April 18, 2006, 07:45 AM »

RE-Downloading is one very nice thing about emusic!
-Hirudin (April 18, 2006, 12:57 AM)

Definitely -- it came in real handy after reformatting my hard drive. Didn't even bother backing up my emusic

Deozaan · « **Reply #35 on:** April 18, 2006, 09:15 PM »

This has been a wonderful discussion. Let me ask this: When signing up for allofmp3, do they start sending you junkmail?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #36 on:** April 19, 2006, 07:40 AM »

Not that I have been aware of. You could always use a throw away email address though just for that purpose.

mouser · « **Reply #37 on:** April 19, 2006, 07:42 AM »

carol is exactly right.
people need to stop worrying about getting junk mail.
everyone should have an email address they use for nothing but signing up for stuff.
then you will not care about receiving junk mail or spam.
stop worrying about getting spam, just use an email designed for it.

nudone · « **Reply #38 on:** April 19, 2006, 08:10 AM »

wise words, wise words indeed.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #39 on:** April 19, 2006, 09:24 AM »

Actually I am just getting started (after too long) using Yahoo's service which provides 500 disposable emails per account.

For those who don't know it works like this ...

You have you main account id which provides you emails address.

Withing the options section there is "Address Guard" in which you register a different id (say eg. nospam .... but that's bound to be gone!). Then you can set up up to 500 email addresses in the format [email protected] where xxx is a chosen address for the service you are signing up for. For example if you were singing up to DC for newsletters you might choose [email protected].

All of these throwaway address you create are automatically delivered at your main address and can be filtered like ordinary mail if you want. You can even post using the dummy address.

Now you sign up with that address to DC only. If spam starts to arrive on that address you know where the address originated from and you can simply delete the dummy address. It doesn't affect any of your other subscriptions and because the email address doesn't contain any details of your main account name it can't be used to spam you mail inbox.

Works great - just wish I had started using it a while ago.

tsaint · « **Reply #40 on:** April 19, 2006, 08:06 PM »

Following on from the disposable email addresses (veering OT I spose), here are links to a list of disposable email services:
http://www.tipmonkies.com/2005/10/04/disposable-e-mail-address-services and
http://email.about.com/cs/dispaddrrevs/tp/disposable.htm

I've been a long time user of spamgourmet but recently have started using mailinator.com for one time use addresses. It allows to just make any email address on the spot - eg [email protected] and then email is retrieved from mailinator.com. The email is only retained for a limited time, and if someone else happened to choose junk4me besides you there'd be a problem, but within those limitations it works very well, with no prior planning required.

Hirudin · « **Reply #41 on:** April 21, 2006, 10:46 PM »

Actually I am just getting started (after too long) using Yahoo's service which provides 500 disposable emails per account.

For those who don't know it works like this ...

You have you main account id which provides you emails address.

Withing the options section there is "Address Guard" in which you register a different id (say eg. nospam .... but that's bound to be gone!). Then you can set up up to 500 email addresses in the format [email protected] where xxx is a chosen address for the service you are signing up for. For example if you were singing up to DC for newsletters you might choose [email protected].

All of these throwaway address you create are automatically delivered at your main address and can be filtered like ordinary mail if you want. You can even post using the dummy address.

Now you sign up with that address to DC only. If spam starts to arrive on that address you know where the address originated from and you can simply delete the dummy address. It doesn't affect any of your other subscriptions and because the email address doesn't contain any details of your main account name it can't be used to spam you mail inbox.

Works great - just wish I had started using it a while ago.
-Carol Haynes (April 19, 2006, 09:24 AM)

Wow! That is awesome!

Do you have to "sign up" for the dummy address, or can you just put nospam.anything@yahoo.com and mail will be delivered there?
To ask another way: Say I want to set up a DC account, can I just tell them my address is [email protected], or do I have to pre-register the ".donationcoder" portion of the address with yahoo?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #42 on:** April 22, 2006, 08:36 AM »

You sign up for a yahoo email address (I'm not sure but I think this service is only available if you have a paid subscription email service - but it is still cheap ... I get mine free from my ISP). Once you have an account in options you can go to "address guard" and set up a prefix for all you guarded addresses and then each time you want a new disposable address you go to the address guard page and enter the email address part you want. You then end up with an email address of the form [email protected] which you can keep and use as long as you want or ditch.

You can have up to 500 of these addresses active.

Rover · « **Reply #43 on:** April 22, 2006, 10:20 AM »

Gmail (it's not a bad word!) allows spontanious disposable email. for example:

[email protected] where +sitename can be ANYTHING you want. You can even setup filters to route based on the incoming address you created.

So [email protected] could be routed into my Read First Folder
and [email protected] could be routed into my SPAM folder.

(just kidding carol)

Hirudin · « **Reply #44 on:** April 23, 2006, 01:14 AM »

Something else in the same category are completely open e-mail servers. Like Dodgeit and PookMail.

When you don't want to use one of your own email addresses you just us anything@dodgeit.com or anything@pookmail.com. You don't have to register or anything. Then you just go to the website and enter the address you used, there are no passwords involved.

nudone · « **Reply #45 on:** May 15, 2006, 03:54 AM »

anyone still using 'allofmp3.com'?

no, i didn't think so.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #46 on:** May 15, 2006, 04:59 AM »

??? It says down for maintenance (which has happened before) - do you know differently?

Saw this (I can't find anything more recent on legal issues via websearches or on standard Newsfeeds - like Reuters) http://news.bbc.co.u...chnology/4328269.stm

nudone · « **Reply #47 on:** May 15, 2006, 05:19 AM »

this is the 2nd link i found http://www.techdirt....050222/1258255.shtml

i first read the rumour over at digg.com

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #48 on:** May 15, 2006, 05:23 AM »

Interesting but I found this article published on 12th May

http://www.theregist..._uk_download_demand/

and I have certainly used the service since the techdirt article was published.

Also the BBC article was a response to that police investigation ...

Digg clocked this article at Reuters but what is said at Digg is supposition of what may happen as a result of Putin's declaration. Given that Putin only said it 3 days ago it is very unlikely that any law has been changed to affect AllofMP3 one way or the other at the moment. Of course they may be running scared.

If it goes it will be sad news but good while it lasted.

tsaint · « **Reply #49 on:** May 15, 2006, 07:51 AM »

mp3search.ru is still operational, which makes me wonder whether allofmp3 has been closed down or their "closed for maintenance" sign can be taken at face value.
It's not unknown, in allofmp3 history, for suspensions of operations to occur with minimal explanation.