I learned today that e-music: the indie music online store is has some major label music and is getting more and more of it. I had subscribed to the rhapsody service for a couple on months now and have been liking it. The only drawback of course, is that the music is DRM'ed, and I can't put it on my ipod. With e-music, everything is DRM-free, which is a major plus for me, since, after all, I am an ipod user(we actually own 4 ipods, if you count shuffles).
e-music has 3 plans:
- Basic: 30 downloads for $9.99 per month
- Plus: 50 downloads for $14.99 per month
- Premium: $19.99 for 75 downloads per month
compared to rhapsody:
- Unlimited: unlimited downloads/listens for $12.99
- To Go: you can also download it to your non-ipod mp3 player for $14.99
But how do they compare in terms of their music collection? I search for some of my favorite artists:
- e-music: 19 albums
- rhapsody: 50 albums
- e-music: 14 albums
- rhapsody: 38 albums
- e-music: 37 albums
- rhapsody: estimated about 200 albums
- e-music: 1 album(under booker little and max roach)
- rhapsody: 3 albums
- e-music: 3 albums
- rhapsody: 8 albums
- e-music: 27 albums
- rhapsody: estimated over 200 albums
Clearly rhapsody has the edge. But the situation isn't that bad for e-music, and if they are still working on expanding their collection they could always catch up, since I think all the major music labels have pretty much dropped their DRM requirements. I shall check back in a couple of months and see if any of these numbers change.