Five Reasons to Switch to EMusic from ITunes

Anybody that loves music and spends any time online knows that Apple's iTunes is the top dog when it comes to legal music downloads. Apple's ubiquitous iTunes service boasts of over 4 million songs as well as hundreds of feature films and television shows available for its handheld video players. iTunes features songs from mainstream major label artists as well as a number of larger independent labels, but make no mistake about it -- iTunes exists primarily to sell iPod players.

On the other hand, eMusic was designed with the music lover in mind. Second only to iTunes in the total number of songs sold online, eMusic is beginning to nip at Apple's heels as even the major labels are beginning to take a second look at this independent digital music retailer. I've used both iTunes and eMusic over the past couple of years, and have no affiliation, past or present, with either service except as a consumer.

For the avid music fan, however, especially those of us that buy a heck of a lot of music - both digital and on compact disc - eMusic is a great place to rapidly build a digital music collection. Here are five great reasons to switch to eMusic from iTunes.

1) INDEPENDENT MUSIC

Standing alone among its peers, eMusic champions independent music, offering over 2 million songs from thousands of small-to-large indie labels, including much of the CD Baby catalog. The service bills itself as the "world's largest digital retailer of independent music," and it reports its sales to Nielsen's SoundScan system. Indeed, behind only iTunes, eMusic sells nearly 5 million songs monthly, more than all of the other download services combined. Their roster of indie labels outstrips anything that you can find either online or in the real world of "bricks and mortar."

For instance, it's a safe bet that your local neighborhood record store isn't stocking the ESP Disk back catalog. Founded in 1965 in New York City by Bernard Stollman, the label specialized in free improvisational jazz created by the likes of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra. Before the influential label ran out of money and closed its doors in 1968, it had also introduced avant-garde groups like the Fugs, Pearls Before Swine and Octopus into the rock music lexicon. You'll find all of these artists on eMusic, as well as releases from indie labels such as Victory Records, Dischord, Epitaph, TVT Records, Secretly Canadian, SST Records, Steamhammer and Arhoolie, among 4,000+ other labels.

2) LOTS OF MUSICAL CHOICES

The 2 million (and growing) songs found on eMusic represent a wide range of genres. No matter whether you prefer rock, pop, punk, metal, blues, jazz, country, classical, hip-hop or something else entirely, you'll find them all through the eMusic's "browse" screen. Because eMusic goes to great lengths to include the widest range of music possible, they offer some pretty obscure tracks and albums from little-known artists and labels, and they're happy to admit that they're the only digital retailer that focuses on pleasing the 25-year-and-older consumer.

No matter your tastes, there's something you can find to listen to on eMusic. Are you a heavy metal fan? eMusic offers classic albums from legendary bands like Napalm Death, Entombed and Morbid Angel as well as more notorious headbangers like Judas Priest or W.A.S.P. If punk rock is your preferred poison, how about tracks and albums from hardcore heroes like Rancid, the Dead Kennedys, Green Day or Bad Religion? Do your tastes run more towards country music? eMusic features downloads from both new stars like Taylor Swift and country legends like Charlie Louvin and Townes Van Zandt. There's plenty of new music from tomorrow's superstars to be heard on eMusic, as well as thousands of dusty, vintage tracks to be discovered, the digital equivalent of "digging through crates."

There are also hundreds of rare live tracks that are available exclusively through eMusic. The service has agreements with nearly two-dozen venues across the US, famous clubs like the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey; and The Metro in Chicago. These clubs supply eMusic with dynamic live performance recordings from artists like My Morning Jacket, Taj Mahal, the Gourds, the Hold Steady and Little Feat, among many more, which are then made available for downloading only through eMusic.

3) CHEAP TUNES

Apple's iTunes sells most of its individual songs at a cost of 99¢ each, albums at $9.99 each. eMusic works on a subscription basis, with monthly fees beginning at $9.99 for 30 downloaded tracks (an average of .34¢ each) and topping out at $19.99 for a fanatical 75 songs (averaging .27¢ each). The cost of albums on eMusic depends on how many songs there are on the disc. The service doesn't differentiate between a single song and an album's worth of songs, so a 10-track album will run you $3.40 under the basic subscription rate, a 15-track album would cost $5.10 - still quite a bargain. You can also listen to 30-second samples of the tracks on the service if you need to make up your mind about a song or artist.

The one drawback is that eMusic restarts the counter each month on your billing date, so you've got to grab the songs while you can or lose them. For most of us, however, this is not a problem - running out of downloads is, and eMusic offers low-cost "booster packs" if you need extra downloads to round out your month. eMusic also offers plenty of introductory offers through music magazines, web sites and record stores that give new users anywhere from 25 to 50 free songs to try eMusic for the first time. You also get free songs if you get your friends to join.

4) EASY TO USE

Once you're set-up with eMusic, you'll need to install their "Download Manager" software (DM). This program has a smaller footprint than does iTunes, won't interfere with your other programs, and is a snap to use. The eMusic Download Manager creates a folder on your desktop called "My eMusic," which it uses to organize the files that you download. Now I personally download mostly entire albums, and the DM puts them each in their own individual folder, making them easy to find when it comes time to create a playlist or burn a CD. The DM does the same with individually downloaded tracks, as well, which makes them easy to locate -- a feature I like better than iTune's search function.

eMusic also keeps track of the songs that you've downloaded, so if you need to switch computers or your hard drive crashes, you can download them again without affecting your download balance. Best of all, eMusic has buttons on every album page that allows you to add an album or artist to your "playlist" or you can hit "save for later" and go back and download a song or album next month, when your track count refreshes itself. Easy-to-use menus break music down into categories, genres and even time periods (i.e. 1950s, 1960s, etc) so that you can specialize your browsing.

5) NO DRM COPY PROTECTION

Songs on eMusic are offered as basic mp3 files with no "digital rights management" (DRM) copy protection, which means that they'll play on virtually any mp3 player on the market (including your iPod). They can be moved from computer to computer, and can be burned to CD without any problems. Apple's iTunes uses the AAC file format, locked up with their "Fairplay" DRM, which limits what you can do with the music you've purchased, as well as the players you can load it onto.

The tracks offered through eMusic are encoded as DRM-free 44.1 kHz, variable-rate mp3 files. Most of the songs average out at around 192-Kbps, which is considered to be "near CD quality" and more than good enough for listening to on your computer, your portable device or burned to CD for playing in your car. Quite a few of the tracks that I've downloaded from eMusic were created at 320-Kbps, which, in many cases, surpasses the quality of many CD releases (especially some of the older CD titles that were made from inferior, second-generation sources).

There are plenty of other reasons to switch from iTunes to eMusic, like a monthly newsletter and the site's editorial content written by some of the best music writers and critics in the country, or the fact that eMusic adds dozens of new labels and artists to its roster each month. For the rabid music fan, however, the only reason you need to change is the promise that eMusic will satisfy even the most eclectic of musical tastes.