It's inevitable, you know. One day Napster, the online musical equivalent of post-riot looting, will be boarded up, and you'll be forced either back into the blind alleys of private MP3 Web pages for your tracks, or into the waiting arms of a legitimate online music provider. Some in the latter category are already testing the waters, trying to adopt the proper paradigm for the post-Napster consumer.
If subscription-based music-download services are the wave of the future, the standard for such endeavors might be EMusic.com. Based on a recent tryout of EMusic, it's clear that no one download service will match the free-for-all (and I mean free) quality of Napster and its ilk, but if downloaders are going to live within boundaries, EMusic's aren't bad.
EMusic boasts 140,000 tracks by 8,000 artists, which makes it an ideal starting point if your main priority is variety. It's structured to be subscribed to: You can either pay 99 cents per track or $8.99 per album; or you can pay $14.99 per month to gorge yourself. The site even offers a guaranteed money-back 30-day trial.
How satisfied you are with EMusic's selection will depend on the kind of music you like. It has something in virtually every genre, which could be a liability. I have a hunch that the most popular download services will be the ones that concentrate on a specific category, or even on a single artist--can you imagine Grateful Dead fans set loose in that band's online archive?
EMusic's interface is simple enough. It has a pretty efficient search engine, and it allows you to categorize its wares by genre, artist, label, or title. Once you find an album you want, you can get tracks separately or download the entire CD at once (the latter option requires Windows). I spent most of my trial period pigging out on obscure '60s garage-band tracks on the Cicadelic label. Beyond that stuff and a few miscellaneous items, I didn't find much that would make me want to renew my subscription, but that might not be the case with listeners who have more omnivorous tastes.
The granddaddy of downloadable-music sites, MP3.com, is now trying to portray itself as a good boy after being the target of the music industry's wrath last year. It now touts itself as a music service provider, offering the capability to stream (but not necessarily download) low-fi tracks by popular artists. But MP3.com's bread and butter is My.MP3.com, a modified version of the feature that got the site in so much hot water before. It allows consumers to gain access to an online copy of any CD they own, once they use the site's Beam-It technology to verify physical ownership (that was the bone of contention before). MP3.com calls this innovation a "musical refrigerator." I call it a "pain in the neck." But for someone who travels a lot and loves to take their music with them without having to lug just the right CDs along, it could be a godsend.
Product corner:
The age of portable players that can play standard CDs and CD-Rs as well as CDs containing MP3 tracks is finally upon us. An example of one such versatile gadget is D-Link's DMP-CD100 player, which boasts the ability to play 10 hours of compressed music crammed onto one CD. The unit ($149 MSRP, $119 street) also boasts two external jacks, one for headphones and one for line-out, which virtually turns the gadget into a portable stereo amplifier.
The Hot List:
Jimmy and Doug's Farmclub.com is becoming a top stopping-off place for listeners who want unreleased live performances, uncensored interviews, and other ephemera from their fave artists. A recent look-see netted a handful of live Beck tracks, 2000 tour video of the late and lamented Rage Against the Machine, and a no-holds-barred interview with Lil' Kim. Be forewarned, though: The site is heavy on hard rock and hip-hop, and doesn't offer much else.
