DRM free at last...but wait...

I'm sure you've heard by now, but the iTunes Music Store is finally going all DRM free with higher bitrates and variable pricing. As always the case, there's good and bad here, though for me I'm seeing more bad and indifferent than good.

First off, it's a good thing that Apple and the rest of the majors finally got past their logjam to offer all the tracks DRM free. Nice to see Apple finally catch up with the rest of the world, even if they still are offering tracks in their proprietary AAC format (no surprise) which not all media players support.

Then there's the mixed blessing of variable pricing. The way things were worded, it's implied that most of the catalog will be going to 69 cents a track. New releases are scheduled to stay at 99 cents and might go as high as $1.29 a track. I see this as a mixed blessing at best.

The lower price on the back catalog only makes sense, but the higher price on new releases strikes me as an attempt to break the 99 cents standard, which the majors have been trying to do for ages. We'll see if this higher price rolls out in Amazon and other stores. Since Apple is going to be at a disadvantage here if everyone else is selling new tracks thirty cents cheaper, I can't imagine they'd have agreed to this unless that was in the plans.

Now, like last time, Apple is making the option to "upgrade" your old iTunes purchases that are now iTunes Plus...for a fee. That fee is 30 cents a track. Although this may affect a small number of people, this is the part of the plan that really irritates me.

OK, I know there's no upgrades given or implied with iTunes Music Store purchases. I get that. However, there is a prescient for free upgrades. When some of the other stores converted from DRM encoded WMA files to mp3, users were given tracks in the new formats. To be fair, there's a slight difference here; the WMA files would be useless once the DRM servers were turned off. But, that was a risk the user was expected to assume, yet after the outcry, they were switched over for free as an act of goodwill.

Let's look at the money here. Assuming you paid 99 cents a track, adding the 30 cents upgrade puts you at $1.29. Now, we've also learned that most of the catalog is supposed to drop to 69 cents. If you upgrade your tracks, you've just about paid double for them, based on the information that back catalog is going to drop in price.

The most infuriating thing is that, once again, the upgrades are presented in an "all or nothing" form. Meaning, to upgrade that out of print Quincy Jones album I really like, I'm also going to have to pay 30 cents a pop to upgrade dozens of tracks don't want. While I can at least see where the upgrade fee is coming from, forcing users to convert all their purchases rather than letting them choose the ones they want is completely ridiculous.

While I think it's good that Apple and the labels have worked out their differences, I'm still finding much to be skeptical about. The lowering of back catalog prices is good (assuming it happens,) but I fear the trend is going to be aimed more at raising the price on new releases. And while the option to upgrade is nice, forcing consumers to upgrade everything is not, especially considering they'll have almost paid double for back catalog items once the price drops happen.

Of course, as long as people's old purchased tracks still play, I doubt many are going to care about any of this anyway. And, until new release prices go up, I'd imagine most iTunes Music Store users will continue to make purchases, not really even aware of the changes.

More Amazon mp3 Goodness

Remember how I said iTunes was going to have to step it up to stay competitive with Amazon? Well, I think Amazon raised the bar again with their Black Friday Specials, which are still running, apparently. Not only that, but they are doing a spend $25 in "qualifying purchases," get $5 at the mp3 store free promotion until December. The range of purchases is pretty wide. I managed to get a credit before I even knew of the promotion, for instance.

On the Apple front, I mentioned before Apple's attempt to meet Amazon's Friday deals, which is still pretty underwhelming in my eyes. Scuttlebutt is, the talks to make iTunes DRM free rage on with WMG dipping a toe in the water. It's a start, but, again, it's ironic (and suspicious) that so long after Steve Jobs gave his anti-DRM speech, EMI is still the only major to have totally embraced iTunes Plus.

EDIT: Interesting article at Hypebot on what the hold up is. Did Amazon make these same concessions (other than the one for BMG)? Interesting that one of the main issues is an explicitly stated fear that competition will drive prices lower. Regardless, I can't see a control freak like Steve Jobs bending much.

Then there's the oft rumored, would you please get it over with already, Beatles on iTunes talks which have apparently stalled again. I guess they need another dump truck full of money for that one. But, I'm still unconvinced that it's really that big a deal. Sure it'll be good for impulse purchases but are there really that many people waiting for the Beatles music to be available on iTunes to buy it? I have to wonder, with the availability of the Beatles catalog on CD, the ease at which one can find dozens of fan remasterings and "needledrops" of every Beatles record ever made on the web and the looming end of the 50 year copyright protection period in the EU, what exactly is the value of this catalog for a digital retailer like Apple.

Regardless of what sales will be, I just wish they'd get it over with and do it already.

Apple Steps It Up A Little

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about Amazon's mp3 deal of the day and their 5 for $5 on Fridays? Well, it looks like Apple has quietly started doing something similar with a few albums and movies at $4.99. Good step in the right direction, though there's one thing where we're not exactly comparing equals. Four of the seven albums currently available are the lower bit rate and DRM encumbered regular iTunes files. The movies are a little more promising. There's ten available now and if you're a Schwarznegger fan, you're in luck as almost half of them are his films.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of stuff comes up in Apple's store. So far, the titles aren't that interesting, but I'll keep an eye on this to see if there's any must haves offered up. Considering the quality of daily deals Amazon has been throwing out recently, they've got a long way to go.

Dear Amazon and the Record Labels.

Hiya. I have a confession to make, I've become completely addicted to the Amazon mp3 Store's mp3 Special Deals. Specifically, I check daily to see what the deal of the day is. These deals of the day are albums on sale from .99 cents to $2.99, compared to the usual $5 and up.

Here's the thing about it, these bargain prices, combined with the quality of Amazon's downloads and the ease of using the service have gotten me to buy more music via download than I normally would. For instance, today I bought Jay-Z's Vol. 3. I think I have most of this album floating around on my PC somewhere, but it was .99 cents. At that price, it was a total no brain decision. I've also bought several other albums that I wouldn't have touched at full price or even some that I might have already acquired through less honest means. And I've even bought one or two on the Friday 5 special for the slightly higher price of $5.

My point is, the combination of lower prices and the quality of product and ease of use has made this guy buy more than he normally would, even when he knows where he could get the stuff for free. Perhaps it might be worth trying this with more than just an album of the day (and five on Friday) and seeing what happens?

Yours,

Rob Guernsey

8 Simple Rules for Selling Music in Today's Market

The music blogsphere is all a twitter having a good laugh at slotMusic, this month's savior of the recording industry. Once again, this is an idea so silly, so outdated (not to mention they've already tried, and failed, at selling music on a memory card once before,) and so clueless that any half interested school kid could tell you why this isn't going to work.

Since I've already missed the first wave of specific slotMusic bashing, and since I'm getting tired of making a post every couple of months outlining all the same reasons whatever new thing big content is trying to roll out is going to fail, I'm going for a more general approach to this post. I feel pretty confident these rules apply to slotMusic or the next download store or whatever else they want to cook up.

So here they are, in a rough order of importance:

1. Your music must be iPod compatible. While other mp3 players are making inroads, the iPod is still the market leader and probably will be for a long time. Tying files with non-Apple compatible DRM or making the files much more difficult to transfer to an iPod than pushing one button is an almost certain trip to the dustbin of history.

2. You are competing with free.The big companies see Apple's .99 cents per track/$9.99 an album as a good starting point, but the truth is, it's pretty much the end of the line. When it's as easy (if not easier) to find an unauthorized free download for a vast majority of the music out there as it is to actually buy it, the closer you are getting to free, the more likely you are to have people turn to legit music services rather than blogs or torrents.

3. Convenience is key. Music blogs don't require the use of a convoluted download manager. Most torrents have files properly tagged and organized. Both bring the music straight to your desktop, ready to load on the mp3 player of your choosing, without having to leave the house. A surprising number of the legal download services I've used miss one or more of these things. When you make people work for something they've already paid for, it tends to push them back to the people offering it as they want it, for free.

4. If you don't have it, they can't buy it. As much as I love eMusic, I don't see anyway a new music service could survive without the full support of the four major labels and a healthy selection of the biggest indies. The iTunes and Amazons of the world have conditioned customers to expect pretty much anything they want, when they want it. If you don't have it, they will find it elsewhere.

5. Physical media is dying. The problem isn't that customers want a shiny new format. They aren't asking for a successor to the CD. They don't want gimmicky memory cards and, once the trend/nostalgia dies down, they won't be buying vinyl. People don't want anything they have to go to the store for. They don't want anything taking up more space. Aside from a dwindling number of holdouts, people just don't want stuff. All they want is the music and it is entirely possible to have one without the other.

6. Less DRM, not more. Ahh, digital rights management. How those on the Internet do love to hate you. Well, that hatred (or at least awareness of what you ever are) is starting to spill over from a small, but vocal, group of people to a more mainstream consumer. (See the Spore backlash on Amazon for instance.) With Yahoo and Microsoft announcing shutdowns of their authentication servers, more people are experiencing the worst case scenario with DRM encoded files and vowing to have nothing to do with them in the future.

7. It's time for bitrates to go up. When the iTunes Music Store launched, the 128kbp was justified by the fact that it created smaller files and boadband was just starting to cut into dial-up's domination. Now that really isn't as much of an issue as the number of users still on dial-up is small. Consumers are also starting to expect higher quality, as the novelity factor of the format has worn off. Devices can store more in smaller packages. There's no reason not to take advantage of this.

8. If you are keeping up, you're falling behind. What I mean is this; look at the market leaders Apple and Amazon. They have a huge market share and I think people are mostly satisfied with the service those two provide. If you are doing less than what they are, you're already dead, but even if you are providing something similar, people are going to need a little more to convince them to check you out. Improving on any of the previous seven rules I've mentioned is a good start, but I'm talking about going above and beyond even that.

For a start, how about bringing album art back? Yes, I know some albums on the iTunes Music Store come with a digital booklet but I think there's plenty of potential to improve on what they've done and make it more common.

Then there's all the extra stuff they've been throwing in with CDs to try to make them more appealing. I'm talking about videos, ringtones, etc. Instead of seeing these things as additional profit centers, how about bundling them with albums, like they do with the physical CD? Give the consumer a little extra reason to buy the album from you (and DON'T raise the price.)

I could go on, but I think I've done enough of the music industry's work for them already today. So, these are my 8 Simple Rules for Selling Music in Today's Market. What do you think? Did I miss something? Am I crazy? Or is it already too late? (I'm still considering that last one as a very real possibility.) Drop a comment and let me know what you think.

Rhapsody in DRM-free mp3.

Last week was the debut of Real Networks' Rhapsody MP3 store. To celebrate, they offered a $10 credit to the first 100,000 people to sign up. Yours truly was among the people who ended up downloading an album (and then some) on Real.

I didn't even know Real was entering the DRM-free mp3 sales arena until I heard about the sign up offer. And, I'll admit, the $10 credit offer struck me as either ballsy or desperate, I still haven't quite decided, though I'm leaning towards the latter.

The question is, who is Rhapsody trying to reach? At this point, they are the fourth of the five biggest major label download music sellers to go the mp3 route. Their site, which, to be fair, is listed as a beta, isn't all that user friendly. Trying to search for a specific album title may or may not net you what you're looking for, though the artist search seems a bit more fleshed out. The keyword search is just about useless though.

One thing that shouldn't be in beta is their customer support, which needs some serious work. Unfortunately, I've already needed it and clicking through the customer support pages is a frustrating maze which leads you to help for every service Real offers except the mp3 store. I was able to get on the live chat through a page for their subscription service and my issue was resolved. However, it took about a half hour in the chat to get a simple matter cleared up which, if there had been a email address like everyone else has, I wouldn't have had to hang on and re-explain the issue to who or whatever I was talking to over and over.

And then there's the issue of what they are offering. Their selection leaves quite a bit to be desired. At times the albums available almost seemed like a random assortment of an artist's catalog. While they are offering all four major labels and a smattering of indies, Amazon's selection is much better.

Their prices are pretty standard. .99 cents songs and $9.99 albums, which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that a lot of their content can be purchased cheaper through Amazon. Oddly, there is an apparent mis-pricing of a bunch of box sets, mostly from the Rhino catalog. While it's possible that these prices could be correct (and I would certainly welcome that,) I find it a bit unlikely that a set retailing at Amazon for $97 is correct for $9.99 at Rhapsody.

So, other than a free $10 credit and fishing for cheap, but sure to be price corrected, box sets, what exactly does Rhapsody have to offer in this crowded market? As best I can tell, nothing. I can't really find a single reason to continue using this service. The site is clunky, the normal prices aren't anything special and the selection is smaller than Amazon.

While I'm all in favor of competition, there needs to be something different going on to make it happen. Competition is more than just a different name on your billing statement. It's surely not offering a lesser version of what the market leader is doing. But, unless they have some drastic changes in store, that's exactly what Rhapsody's mp3 store is, at the moment. Time will tell if Real can come up with something to make their store stand out, but personally, I'm doubtful they will.

iTunes to add subscription service?

Usually I don't pay much attention to Apple rumors, but this one caught my eye. According to the Financial Times, Apple is in talks (with whom?) to add an "all you can eat" subscription service to the cost of a new iPod. What I've seen on the article (it's hidden behind a subscriber login,) it seems they would do something similar to the Nokia/Universal deal.

Now, I think i've mentioned it before, but I'm a big supporter of the subscription music thing. Well, at least I'm a supporter in principal because as of yet, I haven't been able to take advantage of one of the few in operation. And this leads me to the criticisms that people always trot out when you bring up subscription bases music services and why I think they're off the mark.

One of my favorites is the ever popular "it's doesn't work/it's a failed business model." This implies that there has been some large scale subscription music service out there that people just don't want a part of. Well, there are two companies offering such a thing, Napster and Rhapsody. Both of them only offer tracks as protected Windows Media, which won't work on the iPod (or Microsoft's own Zune.) So, is it really fair to declare the whole idea a failure when the only companies to try it have made their product incompatible with the most popular music player out there (and completely incompatible with an entire computer operating system as well.)

Then there's the "people want to own, not rent, their music" crowd. Sure, there's a lot of people who feel that way. For many things, I agree with them. But, I think the reality of the current music biz doesn't play this one out. Sales are dropping. Used CD are glutting the market. People are still downloading music though.

OK, I'm one of those people who doesn't equate downloading with owning the music, especially when it's DRM laden. To my eyes, if people really cared that much about owning the music, CD sales would still be climbing, not falling. People wouldn't be ripping and tossing their CD collections. I just don't think it's all that important for most people to "own" their music as long as they have access to it, which is what the subscription thing is really about.

And let's take a look as the kind of stuff people are buying. Something like fifty skadillion people downloaded "Crank That." How many of those people do you thing really feel the need to own that one? How many will want to hear it five years from now? This time next year, I guarantee that CD will be clogging used bins.

Now, let's say those people were offered a chance to download that on a subscription basis. They could listen to it as much as they wanted as long as they were paid up, and they could listen to millions of other songs too. When they were sick of Solja Boy, that track disappears and they never have to think about it again. Unless they want to hear it and it's just a click away.

I think the people making this argument are also creating a false dichotomy. The existence of subscription based music service does not mean CDs are going to disappear. I'm sure the music industry will be more than happy to accommodate, for an additional fee, those who wish to "own" all the Solja Boys and Nicklebacks and whatever else. As I understand, even Napster and Rhapsody's subscriptions allow one to purchase tracks if they want.

Now, there are a few things I think are valid. The big one is who is making money off this and where it is going. I'm already skeptical about how much money actually goes back to the artists in the current download system. If things change to a one time fee of $20 - $80 (as the Times article mentions,) how is anyone making anything out of this? Specifically, how does that filter to the artists actually making the music? My guess is, like the RIAA settlements, it doesn't.

And when the industry is moaning about lost profit etc., doesn't turning over the keys to the shop for a one-time payout (and a small one at that) seem counterintuitive? Far be it for me to cry for the major labels, but I find it curious they would even consider something like this when it seems like every other day we hear about how in the crapper they are. (Of course, business decisions like this might have something to do with it.)

The other thing that I think needs to be addressed is, will this be optional? Let's say you are someone who really has no interest in downloading stuff and you're only planning to use your iPod for your own rips. Why should you be charged for a service you'll never use? (Let's face it, the Times article makes it sound like Apple is paying for this, but we all know it will come back to the consumer. Apple is not a charity and they don't need to take a loss to add something like this, even though I think it would totally decimate the competition if they could pull it off.)

So there's my take on this whole thing. As a consumer and music fan, I think it's a great idea, if they can make it work. As a musician, I'm a little concerned about following the money.

Et tu, U2?

U2 manager Paul McGuiness thinks the technology industry is to blame for the record industry's woes. He things they should do more to filter and spy on users. He thinks Dell and Apple should be be paying money to the music companies for (alleged) lost revenue*.

I could go on for days about the number of faulty pretenses this bozo is basing his screed on, but why bother? If you're reading this, chances are, you could do. What I will say is this: people like U2 and Paul McGuiness could eliminate a large chunk of illegal tomorrow if they really wanted to. But it would involve rich rock stars (and the parasites feeding on them) finally saying "we're rich enough."

U2 made news with the first digital download "boxset", The Complete U2. Though they opened the vaults and collected some tracks, there wasn't anything really that new there. They threw together a digital booklet. No physical product was made. Expenses to put this thing together were pretty low, I'm guessing.

The set cost $150, for which you got 398 unique DRM encrusted 128kbp AAC files. Some might look at that as a great deal, at about 38 cents a track, but I'm saying, if you really want to kill illegal downloading, you can do better.

$150? How about $30? I can go out and buy The Complete Spiderman, all the issues from '63-2006 for less than $50. And those weren't in a digital format to begin with. I'm going to guess it was a lot more complicated to transfer hundreds of comics to the digital domain than essentially ripping stuff already digital to AAC.

Don't like $30 for the whole shooting match? Well, how about this: let's drop the album prices. $10 for a download of The Joshua Tree? How about $5? $3? $2? Make it so ridiculously low that one would be stupid not to purchase it legally.

And let's take an album like The Joshua Tree. At this point in it's life, it's pure profit, if we're getting in the download world. The recording expenses have long since been recouped, there's no physical product and the cost of delivery is very small.

Anyone want to tell me why back catalog albums from megastars have to sell for close to the cost of a physical CD? OK, I know, I know. It's because they are pretty much pure profit at this point. I can't say I blame a person for wanting to get fat checks rolling in for doing nothing.

But the system isn't working like that anymore. Rather than finding creative new ways to work within it, these dinosaurs are making fools of themselves whining about technology and suing their fans.

It's funny. I am a musician and a huge music fan, but everyday someone opens their mouth and makes me a little less sympathetic to the plight of the folks at the top.


*Sidenote: anyone else choke on the irony that this guy comes out railing against Apple when Bono was (and still is, to an extent) the poster boy for the friggin' iPod? Come on, there was a U2 signature model iPod fer gawdsakes!

Someone gets it.

Or more ranting about Doug Morris, CEO of Universal.

This cNet article makes a bunch of points a little better than I did. Read it here.

In short, while Matt Rosoff won't call Morris a liar for claiming the industry was caught with their pants down on the downloading front and didn't know where to go, I will. As Rosoff points out, UMG had an early (failed) strategy and threw their lot in with Sony's Pressplay. When that didn't work out, they tried to sue the pants off everyone.

How fast they forget.



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Now playing: Lionel Hampton - The Lamplighter
via FoxyTunes

Apparently Abraham Simpson is running UMG.

Hat tip to reader Sean Coon for pointing me in the direction of the Doug Morris Wired interview. Though it just hit today, I feel like I'm about the last person on the fact of the earth to comment on it. Regardless, here's the link and, if you haven't already read it, I highly encourage you to check it out.

Yesterday after I hit post, I was kind of wondering how those excerpts would play out in context. I guess I was just having a hard time wrapping my mind around how anyone running the biggest (I think) of the big four could be so clueless and lacking basic curiosity about technology directly impacting his industry.

Yet the excerpts were a good indicator of the interview. Morris comes off as a cranky old fart who can't accept the fact that the world keeps moving forward and is rapidly leaving him behind. That's all fine and good when you're sitting at home writing letters to the editor complaining about how you can't get a good nickel candy bar anymore and how they should bring back Matlock, but Morris is the CEO of a major multi-national. This is someone who's job is to be on top of the new, not ignoring or cursing it.

Now I will say this for Morris. At least he is a music guy. He's been in the business since the 60s. But you'd think for someone with that many years under his belt, he'd have noticed how technology is intrinsically tied to the recording industry. He's seen the LP, cassette, 8-track, quadraphonic sound and a few others come and go. You'd think if some schmoo...err...schmo who has never worked in the industry and wasn't even born until 1975 can figure out that each advancement in technology has affected the way people purchase and listen to music, someone with decades of experience might be able to see it too.

Isn't that what they're paying this guy to do?

I'm not a business major, but I always though the CEO was supposed to be the man, the brains of the operation. According to the article Morris seems to think "his job should simply be finding and breaking new acts." I thought that was the responsibility of the A&R folks. You may remember them, these are the folks that UMG laid off in huge numbers over the past ten years.


Artist's rendition of UMG CEO Doug Morris

I know this is the head slappingly obvious thing to say here, but the the problem with the music industry isn't college students illegally downloading music. It's the fact that the industry is run by dinosaurs like Doug Morris. These people don't just "not get it", they have no interest in ever getting it. They don't seem to understand that while they could throw their weight around in the past and were successful in forcing their will on consumers, those days are long since past.

And this is what I think is the central thing here. It's ego, plain and simple. These people are used to being right. They're used to being important. When they talk, people listen.

But the "digital music revolution" changed all that. Consumers didn't have to accept the format, pricing or album structures anymore. Digital files made these things obsolete. And considering the industry killed the single, forced the CD on everyone and continued to bump the prices (and profit margins) upward, there was a budding consumer backlash just waiting for the moment to do an end run around the Doug Morrises of the world.

Because this was something that didn't need them, they tried to ignore it. Because this was something they couldn't control, they tried to legislate it. Because this was something that would fundamentally change the nature of their business, they wanted it to be gone. So now you have a situation where the industry is trying to play catch up, but I think it's already far too late.

And Morris, you think Steve Jobs is the enemy? Sorry man, Jobs should be your best friend as he's about the only person doing anything right at the moment. You could have had your own Steve Jobs, Mr. Morris. Tech guys were literally everywhere in the mid-90s. Lest we forget, Napster was cooked up in a dorm room. If you couldn't figure out what was real and what was bullshit, shouldn't you have found someone who could? Don't you have people under you who you can trust?

Instead, we get to watch UMG and anyone else wanting to topple the Apple juggernaut throw their lot in with Total Music or whatever ridiculousness they will throw at the wall next. Sure, the subscription based music rental thing was tired before and failed, but, gosh darn it, this time the technologically ignorant Doug Morris is behind it, so I just know it's going to be different. (Side note, Memo to Morris: if it doesn't work with an iPod, it's going to fail. Period.)

Really, I don't know what else to say except I hope the shareholders of UMG take a long look at this interview. The captain of your ship doesn't have a map, wouldn't know how to read one even if he could find one and wouldn't know where to look for one, if he cared to, which he doesn't. And he seems to think he should be in the ballroom coordinating the evening's entertainment instead of navigating through all these icebergs.

Good luck and good riddance Mr. Morris.

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Now playing: Amsterdam Funk - Turn
via FoxyTunes

Thinking Inside the AudioLunchbox

OK, I promised I'd get back around to the mp3 sites, and here we are. I feel a little more confident talking about AudioLunchbox now as I'm into my fourth month with the service, but I have to admit, I don't know how much longer I'm going to stay there.

First off, like eMusic, AudioLunchbox (which I'm going to refer to as ALBX for the rest of this bit) offers DRM free mp3s files at about 192kbp VBR encoding. Once upon a time, I believe ALBX offered Ogg Vorbis files, but they no longer do. ALBX is also a subscription based service and the cost is a little cheaper than eMusic. You can also purchase music ala carte at 99 cents a track for most things, if you wish.

Now, they pricing gets a little weird here. One thing ALBX does that I really like is they don't charge more than 10 credits for an album. So, if you're downloading something like this Stravinsky album I downloaded and it has 23 some odd tracks, it only cost me 10. That's kind of nice.

On the flip side, ALBX has some labels on a variable price scheme whereas Matador releases (to name one) are four times the credits of everyone else! So a Guided By Voices album would run you 40 credits even if there were only a dozen tracks.

Interestingly enough, ALBX still has Epitaph releases (though there haven't been any updates in a while) and they are still at the one credit a song/ten and album rate. I'm kind of surprised by this, considering they just left eMusic over wanting a higher rate. It'll be interesting to see how much longer their catalog stays at ALBX or if they go to the higher rate.

This brings me to the biggest problem I have with ALBX. If you can't find anything to download at eMusic, don't even bother with ALBX as their catalog is even smaller and features even fewer large indies. Like I mentioned, there is Matador (at the higher rate) and Epitaph, but even then, the releases tend to be older and they haven't added anything new in a while.

Unlike eMusic which is constantly adding labels and albums, ALBX's catalog seems to be pretty stagnant. And it's kind of hard to put a finger on who I could recommend this site's selection too as it's kind of all over the map. Plus, most of what I've downloaded from ALBX, I could have gotten at eMusic.

The other problem I have with ALBX is their site is nearly a nightmare to use. The navigation is slow and awkward. Searching for an artist will sometimes reveal albums that might not show up the next time you look. Not to mention, I've had the unfortunate experience of trying to download an album that isn't actually available but hasn't been pruned from the catalog yet.

I will say, ALBX's customer service has been really responsive and quite generous with issuing credits for problems, but I've had to contact ALBX's customer service more times in my three or four months with them than I have eMusic's in my nearly two years using that service. They are good about setting things right, but too many of the issues shouldn't have happened in the first place.

I really don't feel I can recommend ALBX. It seems to be kind of direction less and just hanging on. In the end, that's really the impression I get from the site. It's like a store you go in and just can't understand how they're still keeping the lights on. With a better site and better selection, I'd be quite a fan, but as it stands, I'd suggest if you want to check it out, do a monthly subscription rather than buying an annual package.

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Now playing: The Great Jazz Trio - My Funny Valentine
via FoxyTunes

Saddle Creek gets it.

Though I'll probably never buy anything they put out, it's really wonderful that they are offering the digital download of an album with the purchase of the vinyl. I love owning records, but the sad reality is, I have to listen to mp3s more often. This is a great idea and I hope either more labels follow or Saddle Creek starts putting out music I like (not bloody likely.)