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[JimH]

About every 6 months I've asked what you're using, if anything, in the way of music subscription services.  It's been at least 6 months since the last time I asked.

Do you use any?  If so, what?  Why?  Would you recommend it?  etc.

Examples are:

MusicMatch's Radio service
RealNetwork's goldpass or similar
MusicNet
Pressplay
Emusic
Rhapsody
Others I probably forgot.

So?

[KingSparta]

No - MusicMatch's Radio service
No - RealNetwork's goldpass or similar
No - MusicNet
No - Pressplay
No - Emusic
No - Rhapsody
No - Others I probably forgot.

[LisaRCT]

Tried MusicMatch MX subscription once . . .  not really impressed.

Had it been free I may have a little less unimpressed.

Have tried no others.

Rather put the cash towards more CD's

[mwgilbert]

I use Emusic. Lots of jazz, roots, electronic & ambient, in general a good level of esoterica, which I am much(!) more interested in than mainstream stuff or top 200. By my count I have more than a hundred albums worth, which I just spent quite a few days re-downloading to benefit from the sonic upgrade (128k -> VBR).

Most importantly, I consider their license/cost model acceptable, and feel it has been worth the money, all told.

[phelt]

Emusic is the only one that I find tempting, because of the recent upgrade mentioned by mwgilbert (welcome to the board, BTW).

But yet another monthly subscription is not in my plans ATM.

[dragyn]

I would subscribe to a service offering .ape files or any other lossless format but until that happens, you can put 'no' down for all of them.

[iCamp]

Until they follow Apple's lead and stop the subscription deal...I won't be joining any.  I think someone should trup Apple and try a .50 per download (maybe for more obscure artists).

[rocketsauce]

EMusic.

Re: Emusic subscription vs. per track cost of AMS

EMusic is $9.99 a month for a year contract. Compare that to Apple Music Store at $1.00/per track.

If you download at least (or more than) 10 tracks a month from Emusic (which is extremely easy to do), it is really a huge bargain. Even if you think about $0.50/track compared to $9.99/month, EMusic is still a bargain. Of course, this is dependent on whether their selection of less mainstream, more obscure artists/genres is what interests you. One thing I like is that they seem to get their hands on a lot of older catalog stuff. For example, they recently released just about every Kinks album from the 70s and 80s. I like The Kinks, not enough to buy all their CDs, but certainly enough to download all of their old albums.

Rob

[Cmagic]

Well, no I don't use any music subscription service althought I'm not totaly relecutant about  the idea. The future will tell.

For now I rely on my favourite CD shop and continue digitizing and restoring my vinyl collection. At the rate of about an album or two / week-end I have about 3 to 4 years of restoring to go !

Wish a nice day to you all,

Christian

[kcorbett]

Emusic.com - I agree with others here, their subscription model works for me. Selection leans toward esoterica but I've found a lot of great stuff.

Real.com - I subscribed for a while, not gold pass but the one below that, lots of video clips, music samples but not downloads. Basically I was paying them to show me ads!  Not worth the price of admission.

/kmc

[ThomasB]

I use "Emusic" for similar reasons as already mentioned by others. Annual subscribtion is a very good deal.

In addition I use "Weblisten" on a case by case basis (monthly or weekend subscribtion) as they also have a very attractive offer.

rgds, Thomas

[Warlock]

I am in the same camp as Dragyn.  Until a service starts providing downloads in a lossless format (or at a minimum high bitrate MPC) I probably won't subscribe.  Since I hooked up MC to my home stereo, I have really noticed the limitations in lower bitrate MP3s.  

[lee269]

My 1 year emusic subscription runs out in June/July. I havent downloaded anything in ages, and I should probably hammer it between now and then to get my moneys worth.

I like the emusic model, I can deal with 128Kbps for 'non-essential' tunes, Im happy with the price and Im content with an emusic library that doesnt contain Britney or Justins latest, but my heart just wasnt in it after they started providing certain songs to USA customers only. Always the ones I wanted to download. It certainly made me wary of making such commitment again.

I havent tried anything else.

[rocketsauce]

I can deal with 128Kbps for 'non-essential' tunes

I was also somewhat ambivalent about the 128kbps when I first joined. Just in case you weren't aware, though, EMusic has upgraded the majority of their music to high quality VBR (LAME 3.92 --alt-preset standard).

Rob

[Deivit]

Weblisten
I'm using Weblisten since 1999. It's very popular in Spain and has a wide catalogue of mainstream music, with daily additions of new releases. The downside is 128 K encoding only, but the diversity of subscription plans make it very attractive. Currently I'm in a 6-month agreement for ~ $120, unlimited downloads of the full catalogue.

Musicmatch
I was a Musicmatch user before I came to Media Jukebox/Center so I signed up for the stream service.  The fact is that I never use it... Have already sent notice to cancel at the expiry date.

EMusic
Never heard of the service since I read this forum, so it's something I have to be grateful to you guys . Signed up 5 months ago for a 1-year agreement. The Jazz catalogue is unbelievable and almost 90% of my downloads are Jazz. At $9,99/month and with new vbr quality it is a must for any jazz fan.

Media Services
Another good service I knew thanks to this forum... in fact thanks to Zevele (thank you very much, Zev). A good companion to weblisten with an important added value... high rate vbr encoding. Signed up about 1 month ago. Perfect service to complete discographies of the big names.

Never tried anything else. Most of the other services are for US-customers only.

-----
Listening to: 'What Do You Say' from 'So Good Together' by 'Reba McEntire' on Media Center 9.0

[PK_NYC]

I've been pretty happy with EMusic, especially since they finally started using lame --eps for encoding. Most of my downloads from them are jazz, blues, and classical, and for these their collection is very good. And at the price of one CD a month, you can't beat it.

[Galley]

I used PressPlay for awhile, but its interface is crap.  I have been using Rhapsody for several months.  They have more than 350,000 songs, adding hundreds of CD's to their library each week.  I'm looking forward to see what Real Networks (who just bought out Rhapsody) comes up with to compete against Apple's offerings.