Music Service Mini-Review: eMusic and Microsoft Urge
Just a little something to get the blog rolling again...
Recently, I reluctantly ditched my old Rio Karma MP3 player in favor of a Sandisk Sansa. My Karma was a nice player, but crippled by absolutely terrible transfer software. I bought 3rd party transfer software, which did not hard-lock my machine, but was still not terribly elegant. Beyond the general mp3 player capabilities, I wanted a built-in FM tuner and was unwilling to pay the iPod markup, so after some research I went with the Sansa.
The player itself has worked out well so far. When I bought it, I knew I would want to try a music subscription service. A virtually unlimited selection for $15/month sounded like a fine deal on music to me. So I signed up for Microsoft's Urge and gave it a try.
My first impression was OK. Urge integrates into Windows Media Player 11, which seemed like a good thing at the time; no totally separate application for transferring music from the service. The amount of material available was huge and there were some interesting looking playlists.
Then reality set in. The site/application is slow. Not just slightly annoying slow, but dial up modem style slow. Navigating through pages and finding music became a chore that discouraged any real exploration.
Windows Media Player also kept thinking that I had dropped my internet connection. I was on a wired connection and IE, Firefox, etc. would be doing fine, but Urge would be refusing to load anything since it thought I was not connected. Still, I managed to load up my Sansa with a bunch of "Super"/big playlists of different genres and away I went.
Unfortunately, the playlists themselves were no treat. I would have preferred listening to a radio station's mix of songs then these ones. However, that is a relatively minor point of taste; I was more annoyed to discover that one of the playlists had not transferred completely to my player. Apparently I had tried to sync too many songs and Media Player had kindly not told me, instead just truncating the list.
Basically I had a music service that I didn't want to browse extensively because it was slow and flaky, and I did not think I could count on it to choose songs for me via a pre-generated play list. This is when I started thinking the DRM stuff: about not being to be able to play songs I downloaded because I did not sync up my player on time or deciding in a year that I wanted a different mp3 player and being stuck with making sure the new one was compatible with this service.
Also, some songs were not even included in my "All Music" subscription, but had to be purchased anyway for 99 cents. What happened if these songs happened to be part of a list I wanted to sync? Did I just automatically purchase them?
So I started looking for alternatives. eMusic had a nice trial offer, which I am currently taking advantage of. I get a bunch of free downloads, in regular old mp3 format and then after a month, I get switched into a $10 plan that gives me 30 downloads a month. Again in a format I can keep and use on any device.
eMusic focuses more on independent artists, classical and jazz music, so the selection is very different from Urge. As is the experience of using it. eMusic installs a small download assistant application to manage multiple downloads, but beyond that has a web based store front. The website is snappy and well laid out. The number of downloads I have remaining is displayed prominently across the top of each page.
As I select songs or albums, eMusic shows me its recommendations for similar music, as well as other user's recommendations. I just hook up the Sansa as an external drive, transfer over the music and I'm done. So far I've found a few great new classical albums, as well as some independent rock/alternative tracks. I'm actually growing my collection, instead of avoiding it.
Do I miss the idea of an utterly huge selection of mainstream music, like with Urge? In a sense I do, but I am more than happy with eMusic and its eclectic selection. Why? Because sometimes "less" can be more, when less just works and more is just a slow and confusing mess.