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Music downloads

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 10:55
by Dog Pants
There's so much music I like and I never get to own it because I can never find anywhere decent to get it from. Ideally I'd like an online store that sells MP3 downloads, as I can pick the song I want and usually it's only about 70p. I can never find anywhere with a decent selection though that doesn't use WMA with DRM, and I refuse to buy anything with DRM. Anyone any suggestions? I'm not interested in file sharing because I've had more bad experiences than good with slow download times and endless serching for decent seeds, I just want a straight download.

For dance music I've found https://www.beatport.com/ to be very good and with a very expansive selection (although it does weird things like not let you buy certain tracks if you're in a certain area).

Older (mainly 80s) music seems particularly hard to find, as Googling it just pulls up loads of 'zomg downlaod for free!!!1!' sites, which I don't trust.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 11:09
by Joose
http://www.allofmp3.com

legal? ish.
You going to get in trouble for using it? no.
Filesharing? not at all.

Plus is supports many options for mp3 flavours, various bit rates etc. and its cheap. and it has a pretty reasonable selection. Go there now!

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 11:31
by Dog Pants
Isn't this the dodgy Russian one?

*investigates anyway*

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 11:45
by Roman Totale
I've never been able to get that to work. Whenever I try to set up a payment it says they're not accepting credit cards at the time.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 11:53
by Dog Pants
Roman Totale wrote:I've never been able to get that to work. Whenever I try to set up a payment it says they're not accepting credit cards at the time.
I'm getting this too.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 11:55
by cashy
OiNK? *Shrug*

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 11:58
by eion
cashy wrote:OiNK? *Shrug*
:above: This, hard, although it is BitTorrent. Also, it's very hard to maintain a decent ratio on Oink.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 12:01
by Dog Pants
This is whay I've not bothered with it. I don't leave stuff like that on all the time so I'll never have a good ratio, and I can't be arsed with the half-downloads and appalling times you get from torrents. It seems like unless it's less than a couple of weeks old you're going to end up disappointed.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 12:03
by spoodie
Yeah, Oink and what was said previously. It works well enough.

I mostly buy CDs still but get the odd track from sweepage.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 12:07
by eion
Dog Pants wrote:This is whay I've not bothered with it. I don't leave stuff like that on all the time so I'll never have a good ratio, and I can't be arsed with the half-downloads and appalling times you get from torrents. It seems like unless it's less than a couple of weeks old you're going to end up disappointed.
Downloads from Oink can be a little slow at times, but half-downloads are extremely rare (I've never had one on Oink, and I've been a member for quite some time). The quality from Oink tends to be very good, too. As to selection, I've only had one request that went unfulfilled, and that was for something super-obscure. My other super-obscure requests on there have all been filled, much to my surprise.

I just checked my Oink profile, and I uploaded a torrent on September 6th, 2005, that still has 26 seeders!

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 12:11
by cashy
Also: free leech at christmas, this is the secret to good ratio. (Unless you want to actually upload something... ew)

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 12:20
by spoodie
cashy wrote:(Unless you want to actually upload something... ew)
If you can actually find something that isn't already uploaded.

Posted: April 21st, 2007, 20:41
by FatherJack
I've recently discovered http://djdownload.com/ - it's geared towards new dance music - which is fine by me. At £1.25 for 192kbps and £1.5 for 320kbps it's a bit more than most, but it's a good site to browse on even if you're not buying - it has preference matching which seems to work quite well for me, a lot of upcoming tracks which are hard to get a listen of elsewhere (although you have to wait til release to download them). I find it especially useful for determining the correct full name of remix tracks, as very often there 'll only be one I particularly like, and swept versions are often mis-named.

Posted: April 22nd, 2007, 9:39
by cheeseandham
Wikipedia wrote:On April 2, 2007, Steve Jobs and EMI anounced DRM free music for EMI's complete music library for a $0.30 premium above the standard price. This begins in May 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay

Posted: April 22nd, 2007, 10:49
by spoodie
http://www.bleep.com/ - another music download site, DRM free and 0.99 a track or cheaper for groups of tracks. I haven't visited for a while but they seem to have expanded beyond the purely electronic music they had when it started a few years ago. Worth a look.