Works with
All iPods and iPhones
The good
Flat fee per month, no per-download cost
Great independent label selection
Growing major label selection
No digital rights management restrictions
The bad
Light major label content
The Price
$6.50/month - $200/year
Updated: 9/21/09
There are really only three music download stores/services that iPod owners need to concern themselves with: the iTunes Store, AmazonMP3 and eMusic.com.
EMusic is the less-well-known rival to iTunes, but its affordable pricing, wide selection, and lack of digital rights management restrictions make it a terrific service that most any iPod owner should check out.
EMusic has to two chief differentiators from its competitors: pricing and the music available.
Whereas iTunes and AmazonMP3 sell individual songs and albums on a per-download basis, eMusic offers an a la carte service for a flat fee. For anywhere from $6.49 a month to $200 a year, eMusic lets you download from 12 to 240 tracks over various periods (more downloads can be purchased in a given month using a "booster pack"). Though the unused downloads don’t carry over month-to-month, this system not only ends up costing less than iTunes on a per-song basis (about $0.36-$0.54 per song versus $0.99-$1.29 at iTunes and Amazon), it also allows you to sample new songs and bands at a much lower risk if you don’t like them.
The other major difference between the two stores is that eMusic mostly offers songs and albums from artists whose work is available on independent record labels. A mid-2009 update added the Sony music catalog, bringing such major artists as Bob Dylan, The Clash, Bruce Sprngsteen, and Run DMC. The addition of the Sony catalog has substantially improved selection at eMusic.
Still, you won't find artists from majors like EMI, Interscope, Warner Bros., and many others that put out CDs by chart-topping artists. But even without major labels, eMusic sports a catalog of close to 6 million songs from artists such as Johnny Cash, Sleater Kinney, Neko Case, Bad Religion, Willie Nelson, John Coltrane, and thousands of others.
Though the selection is a little limited for those whose tastes are mostly mainstream or Top-40 radio dominated, for the wide-ranging music fan, eMusic is heaven. Whether you like country, punk, world music, jazz, blues, folk, or electronica, eMusic has enough content to keep you busy for months.
One other small note: eMusic doesn’t employ any digital rights management technology to limit how its customers use the songs they download. This is a small virtue for most users, but it’s a nice touch.
So, if you’re a fan of indie music, a heavy downloader looking to save a little money each month, or just willing to try new artists and discover new bands to love, visit eMusic.com to discover the best music-download value going for iPod users.
