aviationwiz used our news submit to tell us that Yahoo have given a review of three Windows based online download services: Apple's iTunes, MusicMatch and Roxio's Napster. While all three services charge 99 cent per single and $ 9.95 to $ 9.95 per album, there are many features and drawbacks to each service. aviationwiz wrote "It appears to me that iTunes is the best service of the 3, especially when using an iPod."
None of the services offer their music in the popular MP3 format, but in another format crippled with DRM restrictions to an aim to reduce piracy and prevent their music from being shared online. Apple use MPEG-4 AAC which can only be transferred to an iPod portable player and the other two use WMA audio encoding which can be transferred to several WMA compatible players. Apple and MusicMatch's Plus version also allow each song to be recorded to CD up to 10 times while Napster only allow 5 CD recordings per song.
Napster expects to stock more than 500,000 songs while Apple currently offer a selection of 400,000 songs and MusicMatch with 250,000 songs. Even with such a large selection of songs, all are missing many minor-label artists as well as several well known name-brand artists such as the Beatles due to refusal to allow their work to be sold online. To playback music on more than one PC, the music must be re-downloaded (free) with Napster while Apple and MusicMatch allow transfer with the owner's User ID and Password for authentication.
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That it's taken this long for an otherwise functional capitalist system to go after this market is an embarrassment. But here we are in October 2003 anyway, and three online services are prepared to sell major-label music to Windows users on terms that wouldn't be laughed out of a regular music store: 99 cents a song and $ 9.95 or $ 9.99 an album, with no subscription fee required. Apple's iTunes Music Store opened for business in April to Mac OS X users, and it added support for Windows last week. Musicmatch Inc.'s Musicmatch Downloads service launched Sept. 29, and Roxio's Napster (the name is the sole remnant of the pioneering file-sharing service that debuted in 1998) arrives on Wednesday. Fine-print warning: None of these downloads come in the popular MP3 format, and all of them come with usage restrictions that CDs never required you to think about. Apple's MPEG-4 AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) files and Musicmatch and Napster's Windows Media Audio files can be copied to audio CDs and to some digital-music players an unlimited number of times but can only be stored on three computers at any one time and can't be shared over a network with any of the new crop of digital-music receivers. And you can burn a playlist to CD only 10 times in a row (five in Napster's case). They also can't easily be lent out to friends, nor are they even available for sale outside the United States. And except for Musicmatch, which supports Windows 98 Second Edition and newer Microsoft operating systems, their PC compatibility only extends to Win 2000 and XP. In exchange, though, music listeners can choose only the songs they want instead of having to buy an album's worth of filler. They can browse among hundreds of thousands of songs and hear brief samples of each. Each song includes a thumbnail image of the CD cover, but not lyrics or liner notes.
By inventory along, Napster does best -- it says it will stock more than 500,000 songs, compared with the 400,000 Apple plans to carry by the end of the month and the 250,000 Musicmatch offers. But you're probably going to find that all these services miss at least one song you desperately want, especially if that song was by a minor-label artist or one of the remaining name-brand artists (for instance, the Beatles) who have yet to allow their work to be sold online. Finding and buying songs is easiest on iTunes and Napster; both offer multiple ways to dig through their collections beyond simple artist/album/song searches and genre-by-genre browsing. Napster offers the intriguing option of looking through other users' playlists (the only way it evokes memories of the old Napster, with which it shares neither personnel nor programming code). Musicmatch's store, by contrast, is an ugly, poorly organized mess. Read the full review here. |
I do find that the DRM restrictions in place in all three music services is likely a number one factor in preventing online music sales from really taking off and competing against the high street shops. Apple seem to offer the best solution as they offer free software capable of burning CDs, transferring music to an iPod, ripping CDs to MP3 as well as providing full featured software Jukebox. Apple also has chosen AAC audio which is the audio codec of the very popular MPEG-4 video codec used in DivX and XviD. The other two rely on the controversial WMA codec which is only popular among content providers due to its DRM capabilities. MusicMatch consumers must purchase the 'Plus' version in order to burn their purchased music to CD after reaching their trial limit of 4 CDs with the basic version. Finally, all three services are only avaiable in the US.
Source: Yahoo Technology
