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[JimH]

Anyone using any of the subscription services?  Your impressions?

[zevele1]

Emusic=ONLY PRAISES

[eso]

I once had an Emusic subscription. They are offering some interesting artists but the MP3 encoding quality was very bad in many cases. When I mentioned that to their customer service they just tried to blame it on my audio equipment, so I finally cancelled my subscription.

[Harry|PLS|The|PLS|Hipster]

Both EMusic and Rhapsody from Listen. Commented on each at some length in prior threads, won't repeat it all here. Haven't experienced the quality issues eso_ mentions, tho I probably would get the CD version of anything I felt strongly about. An important factor with each is that the frequency and volume of access isn't limited.

Rhapsody's big negative is I have to keep subscribing to retain any rights of access; should be some permanent benefits once I've maintained my subscription for a minimum period of time/paid a minimum amnt in subscription fees.

HTH

[JollyJim]

Does anyone use WinMx ?

Jim

[KingSparta]

WinMx

i tryed it last year just to look see, and i did not think much of it, i am sure it has changed.

[Harry The Hipster]

WinMX - pretty thin right now.

HTH

[NY40Male]

can i be the dissenter?..
i love WinMx and have been
using it for a year now
get 90% of my songs there

[zevele1]

HO FRIENDS!JimH would like to know the ones with a subscription at any music service,not about where we get  non subscription  music

Once,Emusic had a full album with problem: after end of song one 1 second silence and start of song 2  before starting to play song 2.All the album like this
I sent an email and they did re encode the album,sending me an email when they had do it
They have a very good support service.Quality of the 128 mkbs are ok.With one or two with some problem every 5 000 songs.But according toMp3 Test,means i cannot hear where is the problem
If more than $10 a month,i would not have take a one year subscription

[veken]

I've tried all of these.

Emusic is great, the only problem is they didn't have any music i wanted.
also the mp3 files arent' the greatest quality. but overall it was a good service without any popular music.

Pressplay was slick and easy to use, although with far too many holes in the catalog to be truly useful. even many universal and sony artists weren't there. like cable tv, they didn't have too many current hits, and sometimes only one song from an album. The download countdown is just annoying and prohibits you from exploring and discovering new music.
I don't think anyone is ever going to go for a service with a set number of downloads per month. the best part of these things is to discover new music, but when you only have so many it kind of prohibits you.
and the streaming is terrible.

Musicnet was awful, impossible to use, slow, and annoying. I hate the new realone player, it's prettier than mj but that's where it ends.
again the catalog was tremendously incomplete. and with the download countdown right there on the player, how can you not think about it.

musicmatch is just a custimized radio with artists you like, kinda like launch.
the sound is good, it's ok if you like radio. for me it seemed to play just the same 10 artists all the time, of which i already had all of their cds.

Rhapsody was by far my favorite. It makes the music feel free. I wasn't ever counting downloads or listens.
It's a streaming service (although not really since the files are stored locally in a cache on your hard drive)
The sound was pretty good (128WMA).
It was the closest thing to listening to my music on mj.

I cancelled my subscription becuase there just wasn't enough content, everything on there that i liked i already have on my harddisk. If there were some more real music on it i would have so much more fun discovering new music.
If this service had all of the music and current and new albums, i would easily subscribe today.
Unlimited listening to whatever i want however many times i want.  In my opinion this is the model that should win. It's the closest one to the free napster experience. It's even easier than emusic because you don't have to download any files. you have easy and instant access to everything.
the only problem is portability. but for $10/month to listen to any song would be a good deal. anything i wanted to own i could buy a cd of. most of the cds i buy i don't listen to that often after a few months anyway, and even if i did want to listen, it would always be there for absolutely no incremental cost if i was still a subscriber.

hope that was useful.
Veken

[claudio]

I currently subscribe to MusicMatch Mx. As a radio service I like it a lot: good sound quality, (with the subscription you get nead cd quality), large selection and reasonable degree of personalization (i.e. create your own radio station based on preferred artist or playlist, "era" station etc).. Reliability is good.. only a handfull of time in the last couple of months I had the stream skipping/or disconnecting (don't know if it was my cable connection or the streaming server)

One thing that would improve the service is being able to replay one of the streamed song listed in the playlist window, instead of just skip to the next.

I've tried Rhapsody but I haven't subscribed: the catalog is reasonably good in some areas, but not in my favorites. Their radios, altough seem to have quite a lot of selection, have orrible metallic sound. If the radio quality was good, I would have problably switched from MusicMatch to get the added benefit of on demand streaming

My ideal subscription service would be essentially a combination of the best aspects of these two: streaming radio with good sound quality and selection, combined with illimited on-demand streaming from a good catalogue.. within the price range that these two service are being offered now

I'm kind of ok with not downloading, as I generally tend to get the CD of my favorites to rip at full quality...

I know that this still leave a big hole with portables (at least until a generation of serious wireless streaming portables comes along) where you woundn't be able to listen to the music from the subscription service..but for now I personally can live with it.

Claudio

[elgibby]

Add another vote for Emusic. (I won't even try a service that won't allow me use the music I've purchased any way I want to, such as burning CDs.)
Emusic is perfect for me: I don't care about the Top 40 big sellers. But it has lots of great alt-country, roots, blues etc. by well-known artists (at least in those genres).
I've had my subscription for a few months, only one album download has been unsatisfactory (end of each track has a second or so of next track; then that track is cut off at the beginning.)
Sound quality has been good, at least to these middle-aged, concert- and club battered ears.

[zevele1]

The album was a Volebeats one?

[elgibby]

Yep, it was a Volebeats album.

[MWGilbert]

I currently subscribe to emusic (although we'll see for how long):

Pros:

- good selection of esoterica, at least by comparison to the other 'top 40' type services. I listen to a lot of jazz, folk, 60s, electronic. etc. and their lack of current big name popular music is no problem.
- reasonable flow of new additions
- no restrictions on use/access/cd burning etc.
- reasonably priced if one uses frequently enough

Cons:

- need a better codec! Seriously, some of the encodes are OK, a few are not. My long term future with such a service might depend on a) improved mp3 encoding, and b) availability of higher bitrate, say 192K

The other services seemed like a joke.

[Jazzwolf]

I use E Music all the time, I am a big Jazz fan and they have a fantastic library. Classic Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins etc.. all the Fantasy/Prestige classics. Where else can you find the complete Creedence Clearwater Revival library?.. along with GREAT Dead Boys, Wolfe Tones, Clancy Brothers, Bob Marley stuff (yes, I love all different types of music). I don't care for streaming radio and I would NEVER subscribe to that crap.. hell, I'll listen to real radio or listen to my CD quality music on my satellite dish before I subscribe to that rip off nonsense. If I want to listen to streaming music then I'll listen to Spinner 4.0, it's not bad and it's FREE

[zevele1]

yes,Spinner is great,have a try at the rockabilly chanel

[Harry the Hipster]

Jazzwolf:

Agree with you on EMusic. Great book. But Rhapsody has a big chunk of the Blue Note catalogue, pretty strong stream, decent audio. Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Donaly Byrd, mcLean, etc.

HTH

[sekim]

Don't use any of them. I'm with Jazzwolf on the satelite TV stuff. Hooked up to the stereo you can't hardly beat it. Plus I'm already paying for it anyway. I kinda of like the blues channel, first time I ever heard Lightnin' Hopkins was on that.