Pressplay, eMusic, Etc..

Hello! I know you people sit in front of a computer all day! Don't tell me there's no one out there without some information on this. Just sad, folks.

Pressplay, eMusic, Etc..
I don't burn cd's but I left Kazaa some time ago to go to Bearshare. Go to www.download.com. you'll find a number of sites including Bearshare. I found a popular song that on Kazaa had 6 users at one time. The same song had 176 users. this means that the possibility of finding a faster download (and complete) is better. Try it. Good luck.

Here's some research notes in case there's anyone out there who needs some info.

Kazaa - Like Napster, Kazaa is a free peer-to-peer music sharing site. Meaning, it doesn't actually store MP3s, but is rather a connecting point to other people's MP3 shared files. Like other free sites, it's against copyright laws and it's as slow as all-get-out. On a dial-up it can take one hour to download a 4 minute song, and you run the risk of a poor quality or partial recordings.

Pressplay - This is a pay site that offers 3 levels of service. For $9.95 a month you have unlimited access to stream music directly from the site or download sounds, but the downloads can't be burned and can't be listened to after your membership expires. For $17.95 a month, you get the same service plus 10 Portable Downloads a month, which can be burned. The third plan is $179.40 per year, which includes the above plus 120 Portable Downloads a year. You can also buy additional Portable Download Packs, $18.95 for 20 more downloads, for any plan. Now, after all that, I know what you're thinking. Why would I pay $1.49 per burnable download on a yearly plan but only $0.95 per burnable download if I just buy a Service Pack? I have no idea.

eMusic - Now, this company almost has the right idea. I say almost because they offer unlimited downloads, all of which can be burned, but I've never heard of any of the bands they offer. So, if you're really into indie music, this is the site for you. The rest of us will just continue to suffer.

iTunes - This is Apple's new endeavor into the music world. The good news is that they're Apple, so the selection should be fantastic, all of the songs are $0.99, and they are raring to go right onto your snazzy new iPod. The bad news is that they only work on a Mac at the moment, so us lowly PC people are just going to have to wait.

Sugar,

IMO the premium P2P services or download services are not yet ready to be worth money.

The recording industry is still not confident their digital media can be safely sold and the end user still doesn't see a reason to stop free downloads.

IMO the only service that will work will be like this:

A) it will not be limited to one label and certainly won't be underground junk

B) it will offfer cheap downloads without huge restrictions on what you can do with it. To be honest I don't think they will succeed until they offer plain MP3 or WMA files with no restrictions, nobody wants to pay for restrictions when the free illegal services offer better quality (as opposed to just price).

D) it will have to be popular. It's a catch 22, unless it is popular it won't be cheapo and won't losen the restrictions. Unless it is cheap it won't be popular.

My call: you might have to wait a few years until there is a decent legal service available.

The latest version of KaZaA also installs spyware on your computer. Amongst other things you're not waiting for, it uses this for sheer pirating (which I guess is a kind of weird justice since you'd be using KaZaA for sheer pirating) - the one example that pissed people off was the way KaZaA would replace the ads on websites you visit by its own and would make Amazon think you came from them instead of from the site you visited - allowing KaZaA to cash the money it would otherwise get. All that and of course all the ads KaZaA gets you make it undesirable ware.

A good alternative is KaZaAlite, though. They in their turn 'stole' the Kazaa programme, and if you install it you get access to the same network of users and you use the same program - but without the ads and the spyware. Use www.kazaalite.tk or www.kazaalite.nl, for example, but not kazaalite.com.

Long live anarchy.

Just don't use the super trick, they guy who made super trick didn't make it with the way Kazaa usues it in mind. Or if you use it make sure to use your own list for your hosts file. Their list sometimes censors sites that are their choice to censor and not yours.

I use Musicmatch and RealPlayer, and I'd say Musicmatch works better.

Hope this helps.

L