I just got this from this noted metal label (home of Fear Factory and Sepultura (at one time) that they
will be putting up their entire catalog as burnable WM downloads (no word on bitrate though).

Price will be $0.99 per track or $9.99 per album.

The WM thing will probably kill it for me, but some of you might be interested.

Most of the backend infrastructure is supposed to be provided by LiquidAudio (I thought they were going bankrupt?).

Let's hope it's a sign of better things to come in terms of record labels opening up their catalog for downloading.

$10 for an album without a case,without a sleeve, without a cd? Music labels suck...

yeah, really. fuck that. 3 dollars more and I can get the ACTUAL CD.

Microsoft bought Liquid Audio and all their patents. They also let Real use it without having to pay royalties on it.

I was thinking of switching to RR, now I made my decision; no way.

1) WMA, ick. Really made my decision

2) This is why people use P2P; $1 for something I could get in twice the quality on P2P, for free. I'd pay $0.50 a track for --alt preset standard stuff, but that's just dumb.

How much would you pay for lossless? For alt preset extreme?

Actually, I change my prices; a quarter for --alt preset standard, 75 cents for FLAC. CDs aren't worth $15... I'm 14, I have 4 CDs I want off the top of my head so far, and I can't afford anything, that'd be $60 just for some of the music I like

Bleh, I can't picture too many people on this forum being willing to pay for anything on WMA format even if the bitrates are decent.

You'd be much better off taking a trip to your local pawn shops or second-hand CD stores and spending money on ACTUAL CDs there if you can't afford brand new discs from CD retailers. eBay is another idea.

Still, I agree that seeing record labels release music digitally like this is a good thing and hopefully others will do the same with formats better than WMA. Time will tell if this works out for them or not...

Many american ISP's are offerings music downloads as well.
I believe most (if not all) use the same scheme:
Proprietary formats, low bitrate and sometimes non-burnable.
Dont waist your time, cd media and MONEY, because all are low quality.
IMHO, paying .99 per song is trowing money on the garbage can.

Other official services like emusic offers mp3s, but at 128 only, and...using Xing codec!!!:(
The BigFive will never let anyone to offer high quality files(lossless or high
bitrate) for download.(this is the real situation, I hope it will change someday)

LIF

I've been a emusic user for a while. True, their bitrate/encoder sucks, but they have really a good selection (lotsa great jazz) and for $10 USD a month, you can get a hell of a lot music. I'm reaching the end of what I'm interested in from them though. And my file sharing abilities/knowledge has improved too!