Before yesterday, I had never bought music online. No, I don’t download music off p2p networks either (except the occasional Bollywood song that I wouldn’t be able to buy in a store where I live anyway) I still love music and I listen to all the latest songs off streaming online radio stations, but I have no desire to drop $15 or so for a CD which would end up forgotten in some dusty corner once I had ripped it to my iPod. I could buy the same songs online, but that has two major things going against it:
- The songs from iTunes or any other mainstream online store are encumbered by DRM that restricts how and where I can play the songs. If I can get DRM free versions of the songs for the same price if I buy a CD, why bother?
- The songs are not lossless. Okay, not everyone is an audiophile (myself included), but if I am paying the same price as a CD, I expect the songs to be have at least the same quality. 128kbps is just not good enough.
So what made me buy music yesterday? Curiosity. With all the bad publicity that allofmp3.com was getting this week, I felt compelled to try it. I expected some seedy website selling discounted songs, but not only was I wrong about that, I was absolutely delighted by the time I got my songs. Here’s why:
- They have a great catalog of songs. Even the RIAA ones, unlike the DRM-free indie music stores.
- Songs are available at a variety of bitrates, which can be customized according to one’s needs. So I can get mp3s from 128 kbps all the way to 320kbps (and sometimes even more), or I can get it as WMA or even Ogg Vorbis with a variety of other encoding options, and yes, there’s even a lossless option! Isn’t that kind of choice the whole point of having an online music store!
- The price of a song/album depends on the bitrate used for encoding. Which makes perfect sense – I should be able to get a 128kbps song for much less than a 320kbps song.
- Price! Gone are the days when people would be content to have a collection of 100 cassettes, or maybe 50 CDs. You can download a ton of music through less than legal sources for free, and that has changed public perception of how accessible music should be. Allofmp3 hits a sweet spot by providing entire albums for ~$2-3 and individual songs for ~11 cents. Which means that not only can you indulge in guilt-free buying, you can purchase more songs without busting your wallet. Music players come in 30-60G models now. Does anyone really spend $10,000 to fill up those 10,000 songs?
I don’t want my music for free, but the price should be reasonable (considerably less than a physical disc) and I want plenty of freedom to choose how my music should be encoded, along with zero restrictions on how and where they can be played (the same freedom I would have if I were to rip a physical disc). When that is possible with iTunes/Napster, I will buy from them, but until then I am happy to spend my money at allofmp3!