We’ve analyzed the services that sell digital music (iTunes and its competitors). This Part 1 focuses on the pay-per-download services. In Part 2 (now posted) we’ll compare the all-you-can-eat subscription services.
While compact disc sales have declined 19 percent since 2001, online music sales have started to boom. According to a recent report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, revenues from digital music sales almost tripled in the last year, to $1.1 billion in 2005. Apple’s iTunes accounted for over 85 percent of the single song downloads, but Apple is not alone in the online music space.
Legal downloads now account for about 6% of record companies’ revenues, up from practically zero two years ago.
We’ve signed up for just about every music download and subscription site out there and prepared a two part feature and pricing comparison of the best. We’ve divided the sites into “rent” v. “buy”. “Rent” sites are subscription based, all-you-can-eat services where you get to listen to all music in the catalog as long as you continue to pay the monthly fee. “Buy” sites are pay-per-download services, like iTunes, where you can also burn the song to a CD, and then rip the CD back to a computer and strip out any digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.
The Music Download Services
There are eleven total sites that sell downloadable, CD-burnable music. However, two of these sites, AOL Music Now and Virgin Digital, require a paid subscription to their all-you-can-eat service in order to download songs (downloads cost an additional $0.99 each on both services). We’ve therefore left them out of the comparison chart.
Another, eMusic, is focused on independent labels, and we’ve removed it from the comparison even though it offers DRM-free music at an attractive price ($0.25 per song). eMusic is an awesome service – the side by side table comparision didn’t give it the credit it deserves.
The remaining eight services are AllofMP3, BuyMusic, iTunes, MSN Music, Napster Light, Real Rhapsody, Walmart.com and Yahoo Music Unlimited.
All but iTunes use the Windows Media Audio (WMA) file format. iTunes supports the AAC format. The only reason this is important is that Apple iPods won’t play WMA files, and non-iPods can’t play the iTunes AAC format. So your selection may largely be determined by which music player you choose to use.
The choice for best overall service is dead simple. The best service by far is AllofMP3.com. Music costs $0.02 per MB (about 9 cents per song at medium quality levels), and it can be downloaded in any common audio format and quality level. It is so cheap and easy to use that many people choose to download music from AllofMP3 in lieu of ripping their own CD collection.
The problem is that AllofMP3 operates under a different set of rules (Russian copyright law) than the rest of the companies. The service has been around for years and has many loyal users; however, its continued existence is in question. Some people have ethical concerns with using the service since no money makes its way back to the artists or labels.
Of the remaining services, the first question is what music player you will use. If you want to use an iPod, you need to use iTunes (or AllofMP3). If you want to use a non-iPod device, any of the others will work. The clear winner of the non-iTunes services is Real Rhapsody. They have one of the largest selections of music, quickly include new music, and have the cleanest user interface on the store. Rhapsody also has the highest quality downloads, at 192 kbps.
At $0.99 per song, though, Rhapsody is not the cheapest provider. That honor goes to BuyMusic at $0.79 per song. If you are price sensitive, BuyMusic may be the best choice for you.
Additional comparison information for all services is included in the table above.
Considering that digital music eliminates the need for the manufacturing and distribution of a real good, it would seem that the price for music would be considerably less. I still believe that 99 cents is steep for a digital track. Although sales for digital downloads now account for 6 percent of all music sold and this will continue to grow, I am sure that the music industry could actually open up and expand the marketplace with a significant decrease in price. People would probably buy more music and fence riders would probably begin to spend and the industry would do more volume.This is just like selling licensed software when you are in the mass consumer market. Keep the price low and sell volume because once the software is ready to ship..or in this case MUSIC is digitized..your cost structured is fixed and sunk. Lower the price and do some volume..also people would be less likely to go through the trouble of using file sharing networks if the prices were lower.
I am a Musicmatch fanatic,obvously you forgot Musicmatch.
Although more of a niche service, http://bleep.com/ is my favourite by far.
There’s no DRM, they go to the trouble of saying exactly how they encoded the files, and some tracks are available as FLAC rather than just compressed audio.
I’m pretty sure AllOfMP3.com downloads at 320kbps end up costing more than 9 cents a song, so your table is a bit misleading. Perhaps you could list 128-320kbps and the price as $0.09-0.27 to make it fairer?
yes, allofmp3 is mislabeled because I believe 320kbps songs cost around .24 cents or so, depending on length obviously.
allofmp3 is the best, if they have what you’re looking for. They don’t have a lot of the best new music (indie stuff, electronic stuff, international stuff). But if you’re looking for anything from 1995 on that’s super popular, or anything old, they are a great option.
Why was emusic dropped again? Best site out of the lot, simply for universal compatiblity.
I have to throw in my support for emusic. They may not have all the mainstream artists but for inexpensive, legal, non-DRM’d music, it’s the best.
It’s a shame that you didn’t feel eMusic deserved to be reviewed. They are by far the best service available. Their tracks are 192 kbps MP3 format. They have the best selection of indie music out there and a tons classical and jazz.
Yeah, the omission of emusic was pretty weak, and I don’t even use it. Dropped just because I can’t download the latest pop garbage?
Can you provide some pointers confirming that money indeed does not reach the artists? I believe that this has been covered a number of times — a good place to start is here.
I agree, eMusic offers a very admirable service. They employ a unique subscription based “buy” model that is DRM-free. However the service is focused solely on independent music and therefore not a good choice for the average music listener looking to find the latest James Blunt, Jessica Simpson or Prince tracks – it was left off to compare apples to apples.
Thanks for reviewing this stuff for us; it saves us time and time is money. Looking forward to part 2.
Your review text says If you want to use an iPod, you need to use iTunes. but your chart shows AllofMP3 is an option. Personally, I use AllofMP3 with iTunes and my nano: their file quality is the highest, no DRM burden or burning limits. The price cannot be beat. Just drop the downloaded music into your iTunes library and away you go!
What about Sony Connect? Does it suck too much to be included?
You forgot Audio Lunchbox– the service is quite good, and DRM-free.
http://audiolunchbox.com/
Where were you a year ago? I too went with MusicMatch to download WMA files onto my MP3 player. MP3 player broke down. I then purchased a video Ipod and “Sorry Charlie” you just wasted a good chunk of change on useless formats that cannot be converted to play on your iPod.
For someone trying to do things the right way, I feel slighted. Let the buyer beware. AllofMP3 is looking good right now.
Looking forward to #2
The only service I’ve ever used (pay, that is), is iTunes, and I doubt I’ll ever change. While the DRM is a pain, I love the simplicity of iTunes and how easy it is to use my player of choice with it (an iPod naturally). They have most of the music I’m interested in buying, the store is dead simple to use, the quality is good, and the downloads are quick.
I don’t see how any service can hope to compete without reaching the dominant portable mp3 player. Are there any easy ways around the restriction?
Another chime in for Audio Lunchbox, which I’ve used several times. In addition to DRM-free 192bit mp3s (which work just fine with the iPod and any other player) you sometimes have the choice of downloading FLAC files.
My wife and I use eMusic.com, and we think it’s pretty darn good! I wish you’d included it in your list of reviewed services.
AllofMP3.com is a quasi-legal site – I can’t imagine the artists are getting properly paid for their music at $0.09/song, and I don’t know if they even signed deals with the site. While the price may be tempting, I have a feeling that site will get turned off or made to charge more at some point in the future.
eMusic.com at least has deals with each of the artists on the site, and they’re completely legitimate. The downloads are fast, the selection is growing, and the music is not hamstrung by silly DRM schemes.
I believe the record industry association actually took allofmp3 to court… and lost. Although, it was due to technicalities in russian law rather than the actual legitimate use of music.
So while questionable, allofmp3 may still be around for a while yet.
In Soviet Russia, you screw RIAA!
Most of the music I like is euro-based electronics with vocals. But I use slsk mostly, because I really don’t want to have to signup for a service without being able to search it’s database first. Both emusic and Itunes are that way…and I’m guessing they don’t have what I want anyway. I’m into collecting entire album sets of artists…so unless you have the whole thing I’ll just get it somehow else. I have many of the albums I d/l, and I try to replace the d/led songs with rips.
What I would really like to know is how much out of say iTunes (Non-Techie-Popularity-Folk) is how much each artist gets from the digital download. If out of the $0.99 that iTunes charge, the artist only receives $0.04 per download and AllofMp3 gives them the same amount then I will use AllofMP3. I purchase my music with the view to that I am supporting the said artist and not the company offering the download. Thus I am yet to purchase a single song from any of the above (or eMusic) simply because I want to support the artist and no one else. The music I purchase online is ONLY from the artist web site directly.
Mike, find some popular artist’s and find out how much they get from iTunes and how much they get from AllOfMP3. I will then decide based upon that metric who I will buy online from.
I care absolutely nothing for any of the above mentioned services; I only care for the artist making the music who I would like to continue making more or the same for my pleasure (And their’s) and thus supporting that said artist.
I personally hoping that iTunes will offer a subscription all-you-can-eat model soon. It sucks the iPod is not compatible with the subscription model sites.
I use emusic as well. It’s much more cost efficient for non-major label releases and doesn’t use DRM.
TYPO!
Your graphic shows BuyMysuc at $0.99 per song and MSN Music as $0.79 per song, but the article states:
“That honor goes to BuyMusic at $0.79 per song.”
BuyMusic* :/
“There’s no DRM, they go to the trouble of saying exactly how they encoded the files, and some tracks are available as FLAC rather than just compressed audio.”
FLAC is compressed, too. It’s just a lossless compression rather than the normal lossy compression that MP3/OGG/AAC use.
Of all these shops, only AllOfMP3 uses MP3. Could that mean that in a few years time, MP3 will become irrelevant?
I’m not sure if this was said in earlier comments, but Rhapsody does transfer files to iPods. Simply drag the files into the Transfer (to device) tab, while your iPod is connected via USB, and Rhapsody will transfer them properly.
Considering that apple has 80% and upwards of the Mp3 player market, every service with a brain would be catering to them.
When you do a review of subscription services, please include what happens when you don’t sync after a few weeks after near your anniversary date.
I owned one of these players and was disturbed that even though I bought a year’s subscription on yahoo, the player created a no license error while I was on vacation and I couldn’t listen to any music cause I hadn’t sync close to my monthly date.
This is an unreported aspect of reviews that many sites ignore.
Yeah. emusic.com is what you need. High bit rate, no DRM, universal MP3. Rock it!
Assume for a minute, that in the future, a band will keep 50% of the revenue it generates. A mid-tier, regional band may generate $500,000 in annual revenue from all sources including music sales, merchandise sales, touring, and publishing. $250,000 dollars will go toward the cost of doing business and the other $250,000 will go into the pockets of band members. If the average band has four people, if some band members have families, if they pay taxes, work full-time in music, desire benefits, own cars, and want to own a home in America, $250,000 divided between four or five people barely covers the costs of existing comfortably.
Now let’s look at the annual cost of doing business – this is the other $250,000 not going into the pockets of artists, but into the pockets of industry service providers. The question is: can you create songs, distribute songs, promote songs, manage artists, transport bands, buy equipment, and generally support a small business that needs to consistently generate $500,000 in gross annual income for $250,000 a year?
Anyone that thinks that .99 cents a track is expensive then you should consider what it costs to run these small businesses called bands. If the track price drops below .99 cents, the world will be under-funding the value chain of music creation and promotion, and the consequence of this will be to further stifle creativity and innovation. The next time you can’t stand FM radio, think about all of the great talent that went to work selling insurance because the industry does not support the other 95% of artists we have never heard of. The digital music revolution is going enable an entire middle class of musicians to flourish, but if we under-fund this middle class, then we can expect more of the repeat radio swill we have all come to loathe.
I’m curious as to why mp3spy.ru was not included in the comparison. I’ve been using them for some time now and they have by far the greatest prices. I think they have two qualities, 320kbps and 192kbps. Most albums can be bought for about $1.00 and individual songs each at $.10.
all of these services could be on the ipod if they would have only embraced the open standard of MP4. instead they all went for microsoft’s proprietary WMA because they didn’t want to join the ipod revolution, they all wanted only to kill it… not to mention these sadist love to snuggle up to microsoft. so whatever fate they fall upon, they brought it themselves for the most part. sure they can’t use apple’s fairplay DRM, but they can use MP4. anyone can. it’s open and free. and for the person who asked about MP3s becoming irrelevant. they should already be. i haven’t had MP3s on my computer for 3 years now AAC (another term for MP4) and WMA are approxiamately half the size for the same quality (or twice the quality for the same size, depending on how you look at it). there’s really no advantage to MP3. most people just don’t know that the technology has moved on.
I am price and quality sensitive. I also own an ipod(actually 4 in our household) and refuse to pay money to any service that uses DRM. We only buy music from emusic because they have well over a million songs in their catalog,the price can’t be beat (except for allofmp3) and it is of unquestioned legality. But more than anything it does feature lots of music from indie labels. Thanks to podcasts I have discovered more great music in the past 18 months than I did in the previous decade. And thanks to emusic I have been able to buy more music than in the previous decade and actually support the artists. No matter what genre you are interested in, emusic has a great selection. Who needs that top 40 drek that they play on commercial radio.
Lets forget about which music service to use (whether its Napster, Yahoo, etc). Lets forget about what kind of portable music player you have.
Here’s the simple solution to everyones problem.
Subscribe to Napster To Go service ($14.95/month). Go and download as many songs as you want with the ‘renting’ subscription model.
Purchase a program called TubeBite (www.tunebite.com) for $14.95USD. Install TuneBite on your computer.
Convert all of your Napster downloaded WMA files to DRM free MP3 format.
Delete every Napster song that you’ve converted.
You know own 100% DRM free, iPod compatible music in either MP3 or Vogg format. No need to worry about compatibility with portable players…no need to worry about future upgrading to different hardware/software.
I am shocked that not too many people use this technique, or just dont know about it. I’ve downloaded and converted over 19,000 songs so far. This is 100% legal as you are just making back up copies of music that you legally downloaded. All songs can be imported into iTunes for organization and transferring to your iPod.
For an initial cost of $15 bucks for TuneBite, and a monthly fee of about $15 you can obtain an unlimited number of songs that you OWN, are DRM-free, and can be used on any device.
I can’t believe that no-one talks about the itunes bait and switch. Once you download your songs on an ipod, you’re basically locked into using an Ipod, as it’s the only recognized AAC player. Basically, Apple are doing a MSFT, but with online music (and not Os). Sure, in the future, there will be easy-to-use software to change this, but at the moment the average user is stuck to using ITunes and the Ipod once they start downloading from Apple. That’s why I say that the best downloading service is the service that let’s you download as an mp3.
Saul, yeah but iPods are so great…I have no problem with the lockin.
Just because a website is charging money for music downloads doesn’t make it any more legal that pirating it off bittorrent or eDonkey.
allofmp3.com is illegal in the EU and USA.
Buying music from allofmp3.com is a violent reaction to the RIAA’s anti-consumer stance. Unfortunately, the artists still get nothing for their work, and the middlemen (Russian “entrepreneurs”) get paid for taking advantage of the legal ambiguity. It’s super dirty, but the RIAA has made it an attractive “well, f- you then!” choice.
But don’t kid yourself. If it’s technically legal (it seems to be), then it’s still morally equivalent to any of the free methods of copyright infringement.
Typical recording contracts are seven records long. We’re only a few years into mainstream digital music distribution. Labels know they have time, with the mega-stars, to milk the status quo for a while yet. When the balance shifts, they’ll suddenly come to the epiphanic conclusion that a new model is needed. But not until then.
The only chance consumers (and artists) have is for a new model to be strongly and visibly championed by someone else first — to the point that artists can’t wait to switch when their contract runs out (remember though that seven records is much longer than most artists’ careers, especially bands’).
But that takes a lot of money. There’s a reason there are only four major record companies nowadays. They all recognized that they had to be huge to compete with the others…so they bought, sold, or merged to attain that critical mass. (Cf. banks, insurance companies, telecom companies, etc).
Honestly…if someone plans to use Allofmp3 they’d better save some bucks and head to Emule directly
I look forward to being able to buy mp3 files and being able to do whatever I want with them. Like Emil said, many of us are just waiting. I have not more than one cd a year for a long time, maybe two. I used to buy almost every week. Give me a reasonable mp3 and a reasonable price and I will buy more and more. I want music that is mine and that I can do what I want with it. Like the old days.
Something you guys didn’t talk about at all but that is important to me is how I can share my music. I love using the Yahoo! Music Engine because I can share what I’m listening to over IM, I can show a playlist over IM/email and I like the LaunchCAST stations and it’s ability to create personal stations for me based on my ratings and listening habits. All of these are part of the package you get with this subscription based service so I think it’s important to keep all of that in mind even if it gets a little off topic. Great start though! I enjoyed reading the findings!
There is a mistake on the comparison table. It says that BuyMusic costs $0.99 and MSN Music costs $0.79. In the body of the article it says something different. I assume the text is correct so you might want to correct the table.
Michael, I agree. I own 2. My only question to you is this: What happens when Apple stumbles? What will folks do then? Music players are nowhere near the ipod right now, but I doubt it’ll remain that way forever.
Let’s also not confuse ourselves about the moral stance of the average music-purchasing consumer. A majority probably don’t care if they bands get paid so long as they save a few cents, and the only thing keeping them in check is fear of legal retaliation from the RIAA.
The music industry simply cannot completely embrace online music distribution for one simple fact – there’s an entire offline industry that depends on them, such as Tower Records and ilk. They would isolate an entire industry, jeopardize jobs and decades-old business partners, which is no easy pill to swallow. You simply can’t shift the entire paradigm of your business because a small, maybe moderate, percentage of consumers demand it.
The same thing is happening to the movie industry right now with last weeks announcement of life-long ownership of downloadable movies. They’re considerably more expensive then their offline counterparts, despite the fact that they don’t need manufacturing or distribution.
“I’m curious as to why mp3spy.ru was not included in the comparison. I’ve been using them for some time now”
Avoid any russian mp3 download sites at ALL costs. This was covered on last week’s dl.tv (or the week before?). Lots of other charges are starting to appear on people’s credit cards after they bought music from russion mp3 sites. Beware, and avoid!