Music services

My daughter is looking for a music service where she can not only d/l and listen but to burn to a CD. I was hoping for some shared experiences on this.

I have been to a few sites and it seems they are vague or I'm just missing it.

 

Well, there's always mp3drug.com... but that's sort of an illegal way of obtaining files (although not illegal to listen to the music on the site). Basically, you can listen to any song, and then choose do download it. I'd rather use a service you can pay for thought. Damn, those Russians don't care about copyright laws.

 

They cared when they were forced to tear apart AllOfMP3...R.I.P you beautiful website. On-topic, there are several places to find cheap MP3s, but they generally make you upload a certain amount of money to your account per month (around 25 dollars or so). You always have the option of Rhapsody and such, but prices per song vary wildly, depending on what the label forces these services to sell certain artists/songs for.

Edit: Wow, mp3drug sucks, lol.

 

I agree, it's not a good site... but the only one I could think of based on what the creator of the thread searched for.

 

Any legal site that allows burning to CD as well as d/l.

She wanted to do it the illegal way and I told her "NO".

 

She'll find one, once she gets friendlier with Google and other places On topic though, for doing what she needs, iTunes, Rhapsody are her best bets. Something for both of you to be aware of, recently licensing deals were re-negotiated again between labels and services. In the process, lots of artists (well, labels, but artists take the heat) removed their material either completely or made it "buy only".

I had a Rhapsody account and promptly quit it when, after merely 24 hours, a major portion of several hundred artists/songs I had in a playlist were wiped, and was given the message that streaming them was no longer possible. So, just be aware that she may find content rather lacking if she has specific tastes.

 

Wow, thanks for posting this.

 

Actually they're still alive, take a look at mp3sparks.com. If you had an account at AllOfMP3.com, your username and password works at mp3sparks.

You ain't whistlin' Dixie, that's really horrible.

 

Lol, I'll be, they are still alive, thanks

 

I have been using soundike.com. Pretty good collection and when you put cash into your account they give you a gift of more cash that you can use to buy more tracks. Each track costs 10 cents. Right now if you contribute $50 they will give you an additional $35. At times they will match the $50 so your cost per track drops to 5 cents. If $50 is too much they have smaller amounts you can put in with smaller "bonus" dollar amounts. I have been using the service since allofmp3 lost the ability to add to your account via Visa and Mastercard and have not had any problems (also your $ remain in your account until you spend them, no monthly or yearly time limit).

I also am using mp3skull Its a music search engine of mp3s on the web. Very good. Type in the name of the artist you are interested in and you can listen to and or download the track of your choice.

 

The thread title says "Music Services"

But the OP want to be able to download, and burn to CD's.
Wich I don't do, so I can't recommend a service that makes that possible.

But. I can say that the only music service I use is GrooveShark and I got no need for anything else. And if I don't find what I am looking for on there, usually I will find it on Youtube. And the streaming quality is not that bad from my experience.

 

Eh, Grooveshark is nice until you dig in and use it more. Then you find songs that either are mislabeled, cut off in the middle of the song or have parts cut out and other flaws. For what the OP wants, again, Rhapsody, iTunes and such places are the best choice (legally).

 

I can live with that with a service that is Free.

Though I have to say that it's a long long time since I found a cut-off, mislabeled etc.. song. So things are improving for sure. But if I find one, I just right-click on the song and report it to them.

When was the last time you used GrooveShark?

But we also got justhearit.com (not a huge song base) and deezer.com (wich is unavailable in my country , so I can't say how good it is at the moment)

 

I last used Groove about a month ago, same old problems. I thought Deezer had long been abandoned, actually, lol. I've never heard of justhearit...you've just turned into my source for music services, lol.

 

I just came across an excellent 2-part, in-depth comparison between Spotify and MOG, here:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/

It sounds like MOG's service allows downloads for off-line use.

 

IMO Spotify was good in the early days during a tryout period in Sweden.
At that time (in the free version) there was commercials between every 10'th song that was played, and I was very fine with that. But now they have cut it down to "ex amount of hours per month" that one is able to use Spotify in the Free version. And that I dislike. They should have continued with the commercials.

I know that I can pay a fee per month but I am not willing to do that at the moment. If they want my money then I want better quality than I can find on GS or even YouTube for that matter.

 

That's the price these businesses have to pay for coming to the U.S. It's incredibly difficult to launch a service here, and incredibly expensive to get licensing. As an early tester for Spotify (using a VPN to avoid the country restrictions), Spotify is a shadow of its overseas self. I had it for a week and bailed.

 

Yes I guess that's the issue. And I agree Spotify was good once but not anymore, unfortunately.

At the start it was an innovative product that everyone in Sweden was talking about "hey have you heard about Spotify". But if you start at the top you can't go anywhere else but down. They should have started at the bottom with hour restrictions, and later introduce the commercials. But they did it the other way around, the wrong way

Though Sweden still got Skype to be proud of

 

You start at the bottom, and you'll find yourself without customers. The restrictions of the services are one reason they've had a hard time getting that "boom". Pandora had it, but they've become much more restrictive than they were just a few months ago. The music industry hates these services, even though if they'd loosen the noose a bit around the necks of providers, they'd make a killing.

 

Maybe you are right about starting at the bottom.

But they can't put in too many restrictions, wich is exactly what they have done think.

Yes Indeed the Music Industry is all against this kind of service, wich is sad. They should settle down and make an agreement that all partys the customers, industry, and the artists of course, will like.

At the moment there is a similar service like Spotify in Sweden on a sort of "try-out period" but this time it's for Movies.
And no I don't like it Spotify was way better at this point in time.

 

One improvement that can be made is "skipping" restrictions. Make me listen to a commercial or two, whatever. make me do that and restrict my skipping ability, and you've ticked me off. There's nothing freaking worse than getting one crap song after another, skipping them, and after 4 or 5, being told I can't skip anymore..and giving me another crap song...which is preceded by a commercial.

Another thing that drastically needs to get done is ending this nonsense of having one labels music, but not another. And, worse, having labels who don't put all of their artists in the deal. The problem artists face with these services, is that they get almost nothing out of it. Just like in the CD business, the labels take the most profit. With songs at 99 cents or so, you might as well hand some artists Monopoly game money.

It's a hard business to balance. Yes, we as customers love cheap rates and streaming ability, but the "gotchas" for both customers and artists are still too much for it to really take off. Once again, it's the labels. They drove brick and mortar stores out of business with stupidly high pricing, and now they're holding back likely the one thing that, if done right, can bring the business back with a bang.

 

I agree fully with you dw426.

Yes it's huuuge problem that the artists get so little from this. But it doesn't need to be so if they start to talk with each other instead of complaining all the time, too much money, too little money, balance is the answer.

FYI. I don't know if you know this, but I think it was a Swedish artist (or from somewhere else) that had been available on Spotify from the start. But He/She got so little income from Spotify that the artist requested that all of the artists content to be deleted from the database, it was simply not worth it. Sad isn't it.

The labels of course are the ones that can make magic happen, if they want. But I am not sure that they want to. The bosses are to lazy and they don't understand what the customers want. And when a service comes around that the customers like, like Spotify they make it as hard as possible for the service to get the most music out to the customer. Yea one labels music but not another labels music stupid it is.

And yes it's not yet total shutdown time for Spotify, but if they want to stay in business they need to change and that's ASAP.

 

I apologize if my comment above opened a floodgate that is in danger of getting the thread off-topic; I respectfully request others to consider this before posting further, so as not to provoke the Gods of the Thread Lock Mechanism.

 

Floodgate? Afaik we had a lovely discussion

You don't need to be sorry. In this thread it's OK to discuss about Music Services and since Spotify is one of them why exclude it?

And I think that we are talking very calmly about the Good and the Bad stuff concerning these services nothing wrong with that.

 

Oh let 'em lock it, who cares. We're not veering that far off topic.