But what if Steve Jobs and company one day decided to pull the plug on the whole operation? The prospect, of course, seems all the more unlikely as Apple sells more and more tracks, but earlier this month iTunes Vice President Eddy Cue proposed just that. Responding to the repeated requests of music publishers that Apple increase the royalties it gives to publishers and artists to fifteen cents, Cue made Apple’s position alarmingly clear: “If the [iTunes Music Store] was forced to absorb any increase in the royalty rate,” he wrote, “the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss—which is no alternative at all.”
In other words, if Apple were forced to pay six cents more per song in royalties, the iTunes Music Store would become less profitable. At the heart of this struggle are the interests of the companies involved: Apple wants to keep song prices low so that people keep filling up their iPods, while the record companies, making no money from iPod sales, want a bigger piece of the pie.
All of this, honestly, is beside the point. More importantly, the modern music coinsurer does not want his or her music consumption stymied by squabbling executives at Apple and SonyBMG. The point is that one needs options. Thus, in an effort to remove some of our eggs from the proverbial online music distribution service basket, let’s take a second to look at three of the more wholesome iTunes alternatives.
AmazonMp3
When AmazonMp3 emerged from beta this past January, its main draw instantly became its (graceful) lack of digital rights management (DRM). Songs downloaded from Amazon’s service, are your songs, allowing you to do whatever you wish with them—burn them to discs, use them on music players that support Mp3 playback, play them on more than three computers, etc. Moreover, AmazonMp3’s offerings are all encoded at an average of 256 kilobytes per second, which, in non-tech speak, means that they are pretty damn good.
As far as pricing goes, AmazonMp3 features a plan similar to that of the iTunes Music Store. Individual songs range from $.89 to $.99 each, and albums from $5.99 to $9.99. The AmazonMp3 catalog currently contains over five million songs, from labels both large and small. While it may at first glance seems skewed toward popular music, the number of more obscure artists available is a pleasant surprise.
Rhapsody
Rhapsody, I admit, is a bit tricky to understand at first. Its basic service allows subscribers to listen (note the word choice) to an unlimited number of songs for $12.99 a month. With special Rhapsody Software, subscribers can also burn purchased tracks to discs, and, with a Rhapsody To Go membership, may even put the songs on supported portable music players. Of course, it is here that corporate power grabbing makes itself present again—Rhapsody To Go is not supported by Apple’s iPod line of products. Moreover, if you decide to cancel your Rhapsody membership, all of your streamed tracks will cease to function, meaning that it is better to purchase songs rather than stream them. Purchased tracks are DRM-free and ring in at $.99 each.
eMusic
eMusic is, for all intents and purposes, the music-lover’s download service: Its subscription-based model encourages avid music exploration and consumption. The service, of course, does have some limitations. For one, eMusic does not utilize DRM in it’s files, so big record companies have refused to do business with it. This situation results in a music catalog that pales (numerically) in comparison to those of the aforementioned services. Regardless, eMusic more than makes up for the loss of artists like Britney Spears (alas, eMusic does not sell “Womanizer”), with the inclusion of many more independent artists.
Subscribing to eMusic is similar to buying monthly minutes for a cell phone—without rollover. An obvious ploy to encourage more reckless 11th-hour downloading, eMusic’s painful lack of rollover downloads is the service’s main—and I dare say, only—drawback. If your downloads remain unspent a month after they are allocated, eMusic clears them out and gives you a new set.
This is why eMusic’s pricing options are so important. The service offers a number of different subscription plans, ranging from “eMusic Mini Monthly” (10 downloads, $5.99 a month) to the more (extensive) “eMusic Connoisseur” (300 downloads $74.99 a month). eMusic also offers a number of annual plans, but if you are like me, you fear that kind of commitment. Lastly, subscribers are allowed to cancel their subscriptions at any time—a welcome allowance to be sure.
Choosing between these three (of many) services depends entirely on your music-listening practices. If you can’t go a week of your life without discovering a new artist or hearing a new song, eMusic is certainly the choice for you. Or, if you only foresee yourself downloading a few tracks here and there, stick with Rhapsody or AmazonMp3. Any of these services is more sustainable than iTunes, which employs DRM and does not provide freedom of usage. In the unlikely event that iTunes is one day usurped or otherwise disappears, promise me one thing: that you won’t keep your mouth hanging open for too long.