Legal and/or semi-legal download services

*Icy Mt.* · 09-11-2007

I'm feeling lazy today. I only spent about 30 minutes looking before I posted. I had an account at MSN music (ugly but serviceable) and another at allofmp3. Obviously, I don't download a lot and I have not tried to download any music lately, since both are gone as sources and I need a new account somewhere. Anyway, I've got maybe an album full of singles rolling around in my head that I'd like to download. None of them are worth buying the whole album.

Can you guys give me a recommendation for legal or even questionably legal (like allofmp3) site to download a few songs. Needs to be DRM free or at least burnable to standard CDs (thus making it DRM free). I can't torrent stuff due to respect for my IT guy, but he will allow me to use bandwidth after hours if I'm downloading from a halfway respectable site.
Thanks, ICY.

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*Icy Mt.* · 13-11-2007

Now I know why I got no answers. I spent the weekend looking and trying to find something with crappy results. Look, I only download a couple dozen songs a year. That's not worth $10 per month subscription (extra if you want to burn to CD).

So, all I could really find was walmart, amazon and buy.com. Most of walmarts crap is 128kps WMA, plus I avoid walmart like the plague. Amazon has a pretty cool model for DRM free 256k vbr mp3s at $99 cents but it appears that many record companies are avoiding that like the plague. I am looking for 3 songs, by Sponge, Toby Keith and Nickelback and none of them were on Amazon.

So I tried buy.com. Jebus, Maryanne and Guisseppe! What a mistake. Oh, sure, my three songs are available. That's right, only $2.77 total for 256k WMA files. First, downloader required from buy (not bad though only 233kb, keeps track and restarts if interrrupted). Second, update to WMP11 required?! to support buy.com DRM. First pass, no connection accepted from inside WMP to buy.com to acquire digital rights. Email tech support. Blah, Blah, Blah. After setting IE as default, turning off every single bit of pop-up blocking and internet security, I was able to log in and download the rights for the brand new Nickelback song. As for Sponge and TK, forget it. The DRM licenser appears to point to a broken link on buymusic.com. Email tech-support. Blah, blah, blah.

Overhaulin', sumbeeatchin, assspirin licking, dog farking, queen nuts, pickle rip beaver dammed, up the pollin' sons of two head hounds of hades!!!!!!

I am totally and completely done with this feces. I am going to my local used CD store right next to university. I'm going to buy used CDs, EAC to HDD, then sell em back. You artists, record companies, publishers, distributors, internet merchants and all you other two-fisted money grabbers and whoremongers can pound sand! When you give me the product I want I might come back.

Anybody want to help me buy a small island in the Caribbean? One with a complete lack of existing law and a big honkin' optical pipe to the internet? CDfreaks will be given first choice for citizenship (computer with optical burner required).

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**jwill427** · 13-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icy Mt.

...
Overhaulin', sumbeeatchin, assspirin licking, dog farking, queen nuts, pickle rip beaver dammed, up the pollin' sons of two head hounds of hades!!!!!!

I am totally and completely done with this feces. I am going to my local used CD store right next to university. I'm going to buy used CDs, EAC to HDD, then sell em back. You artists, record companies, publishers, distributors, internet merchants and all you other two-fisted money grabbers and whoremongers can pound sand! When you give me the product I want I might come back...

well said

I totally agree

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*Icy Mt.* · 14-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwill427

well said

I totally agree

This is what you get for trying to play by the rules. I have been waiting 2 days now for an answer to my 2nd email explaining that I followed all of their suggestions and can only license 1 of 3 songs purchased. One of my buddies told me I was "stupid" for buying. He downloaded and burned these three songs in about 10 minutes.

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Liteon DH-20A4H(QP53), BenQ DW1655 (BCIB, no mods), Liteon SOHD-167T (9S1B) The rest of the equipment.
Because you have to sleep, put your computer to use overnight: Team CD Freaks @ The World Community Grid
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eigger · 16-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icy Mt.

This is what you get for trying to play by the rules. I have been waiting 2 days now for an answer to my 2nd email explaining that I followed all of their suggestions and can only license 1 of 3 songs purchased. One of my buddies told me I was "stupid" for buying. He downloaded and burned these three songs in about 10 minutes.

I agree with you too.... but thats what america is all about.... greed and bs... Oh and your buddies are wrong. Your not stupid, your just sticking to your principles. I can't say I am as honest as you, but bravo to you.

*Icy Mt.* · 16-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by eigger

Oh and your buddies are wrong. Your not stupid, your just sticking to your principles.

I'm not so principled to be stupid, I've been listening to his CD in my car all week! Next question: Is it illegal, immoral, unethical or maybe just OK to pay 99 cents per song to some fishmonger on the web and then D/L a good, DRM free, MP3 from "wherever"?

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Liteon DH-20A4H(QP53), BenQ DW1655 (BCIB, no mods), Liteon SOHD-167T (9S1B) The rest of the equipment.
Because you have to sleep, put your computer to use overnight: Team CD Freaks @ The World Community Grid
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*Icy Mt.* · 19-11-2007

Next update. I just received an email from buy.com telling me that they have credited me $1.98 for the two songs to which I cannot acquire media rights. That's right, they gave up trying to sell me music!!!

I think I shall give up trying to buy music.

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Liteon DH-20A4H(QP53), BenQ DW1655 (BCIB, no mods), Liteon SOHD-167T (9S1B) The rest of the equipment.
Because you have to sleep, put your computer to use overnight: Team CD Freaks @ The World Community Grid
If your PS3 isn't on the CDFreaks Folding@Home Team 13505, shame on you.

**Seán** · 19-11-2007

Assuming you're not totally against iTunes, it may be worth a try for these particular songs. Glad to see Buy.com were able to refund for the faulty songs and just adds another example of why I'm against DRM. If you do get a few tunes from iTunes, write them straight away to a rewritable disc to rip back as MP3 audio tracks. As far as I'm aware of, the hymn project still works to take the DRM infection out of the songs to make it easier to convert to another format for MP3 players other than iPods.

As I regularly service computers and do data transfers from old PCs to new PCs, this is where I find DRM a real pain to work with, particularly if the old PC has had a major crash or hardware failure, as recovering their data and documents is straight forward with a USB to IDE adapter, but trying to recover DRM-infected music (for which no audio CDs have been created from) ain't so simple.

*Icy Mt.* · 19-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seán

Assuming you're not totally against iTunes, it may be worth a try for these particular songs.

Thanks, Sean. I'm not opposed to iTunes on general principles. My biggest problem is dial-up at home and high-speed at work. I don't trust DRM at all. As long as I can free the music by burning to CD as soon as I buy, I don't care where they come from or how they're protected.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iTunes Plus

Burn the music you buy to an unlimited number of CDs for your personal use, listen to it on an unlimited number of iPod players, and play it on up to five computers. Now, download iTunes Plus songs for the new, lower price of just 99¢. These songs feature higher-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding — twice the standard bit rate — and no DRM (digital rights management). With one million indie tracks just added, there are up to 2 million iTunes Plus songs to choose from and play on any iPod, other digital music players, and an unlimited number of computers. For no extra charge.

As near as I can tell this is not a subscription based deal. Just pay your 0.99 and you've got a song. This may be the ticket.

Does the standard iTunes let you burn songs to CD?

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"Sorry everyone, I push buttons too fast. I am often confused." -Icey tm.
Liteon DH-20A4H(QP53), BenQ DW1655 (BCIB, no mods), Liteon SOHD-167T (9S1B) The rest of the equipment.
Because you have to sleep, put your computer to use overnight: Team CD Freaks @ The World Community Grid
If your PS3 isn't on the CDFreaks Folding@Home Team 13505, shame on you.

**Seán** · 20-11-2007

The standard iTunes DRM-infected songs can be burned as an Audio CD. However, even though Apple limits the number of times a given playlist may be burned to CD, once you have them written once to an Audio-CD, the audio has lost the DRM, so it is just a matter of ripping them back off.

While I'm fairly sure iTunes can write to a rewritable disc (allowing the same disc to be used repetively per batch of 20 or so songs), I would suggest that for every 15 to 20 additional songs you get that you write these to CD-R as this way you'll have backups should the PC ever suffer from a HDD crash or require a complete reinstallation which can effectively make DRM-infected files as useful as microwaved audio CDs.

*Icy Mt.* · 20-11-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seán

The standard iTunes DRM-infected songs can be burned as an Audio CD. However, even though Apple limits the number of times a given playlist may be burned to CD, once you have them written once to an Audio-CD, the audio has lost the DRM, so it is just a matter of ripping them back off.

Perfect. I can live with that. I download all new singles to one directory and burn a CDR when I get enough to fill it, then rip back to my library directories. After that, all DRM infected music goes into a "cover my a$$" directory that I never use. With D/L albums, this process happens immediately.

It looks like I'm going to have to download the iTunes software to do anything though. That's what has kept me from taking the plunge so far. Is this Apple's version of Windows Media Player, that is, required as an interface to download music, licenses, and make their DRM work for player sync, CD burn, etc.?

__________________
"Sorry everyone, I push buttons too fast. I am often confused." -Icey tm.
Liteon DH-20A4H(QP53), BenQ DW1655 (BCIB, no mods), Liteon SOHD-167T (9S1B) The rest of the equipment.
Because you have to sleep, put your computer to use overnight: Team CD Freaks @ The World Community Grid
If your PS3 isn't on the CDFreaks Folding@Home Team 13505, shame on you.

**Seán** · 20-11-2007

Unfortunately, iTunes is required for the purchasing and burning of iTunes store music. It also handles the DRM, syncing with iPods, etc. It is a media player, much like how Windows Media Player handles and syncs the WMA protected tracks.

So far, I have not actually purchased any tracks through iTunes yet, so am unsure what the process is like to initially set up the DRM licensing, etc. But I would imagine it is a lot more smoother than that of Windows Media player, particularly with the iTunes store accounting for most of the market share of online music download sales.

Only thing to watch out for during installation is file associations, as it will associate audio files including MP3 with iTunes by default. To prevent this, uncheck the box "Use iTunes as the default player for audio files" during installation.

Just be warned that iTunes 7.5 is a hefty ~52MB download, so I would not recommend downloading this via dial-up, unless you are happy to leave your PC online overnight or while at work. iTunes is also bundled with QuickTime, which likely explains its bulky size. The following screenshot shows what it looks like with the store section open if you've not seen iTunes before:

Attached Images

iTunes_Interface.png (59.2 KB, 105 views)

du2vye · 06-12-2007

emusic.com seems to be the leader for legal drm free music. Major labels won't work with them, but who needs em anyway?

mp3fiesta.com replaced allmp3. along with a thousand other russian sites trying to fill the gap. i haven't used them yet. visa blocked allmp3 or they'd probably still be going strong.

i'm more of an opportunist and watch what's posted at www.totallyfuzzy.blogspot.com

*Icy Mt.* · 07-12-2007

mp3fiesta. Muy agradable, muchas gracias.

__________________
"Sorry everyone, I push buttons too fast. I am often confused." -Icey tm.
Liteon DH-20A4H(QP53), BenQ DW1655 (BCIB, no mods), Liteon SOHD-167T (9S1B) The rest of the equipment.
Because you have to sleep, put your computer to use overnight: Team CD Freaks @ The World Community Grid
If your PS3 isn't on the CDFreaks Folding@Home Team 13505, shame on you.

mmelen · 01-08-2008

Mp3Fiesta may be legal, but it has bad reviews compared to other mp3 shops.

http://www.aom3.org/forum/f48/mp3fie...view-2454.html

"I will only use now when I have no choice and to top it all their rep does not appear on here anymore, not recommended."

cdanddvdpublisher · 02-08-2008

emusic is the best site i've found for a wide variety of music that doesn't require a specific player. they do offer the sign up for a free trial option if you want to check it out at least.

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mmelen · 14-08-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by cdanddvdpublisher

emusic is the best site i've found for a wide variety of music that doesn't require a specific player. they do offer the sign up for a free trial option if you want to check it out at least.

emusic actually has a great rating: http://www.aom3.org/forum/f48/emusic-review-2441.html

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