best Windows buy per song service/software?

[JasonCoder]

I haven't bought a CD in years, for better or worse. I used to use MSN music for pay by the track song downloads. Worked ok, nothing special, fit my needs. Then they decided to hell with that, we'll get into an agreement with MTV and launched URGE.

So then I used URGE for a while. Again, worked ok, nothing to complain about, large library, etc. So I guess MTV doesn't dig MSFT doing its own thing with the Zune store or something so they didn't stay in love and prolong the URGE service. I've been sent e-mails that all my user details have been migrated over to Rhapsody.

So I go check out Rhapsody and no where can I find where to just buy ONE FRICKING SONG. They want me to sign up for their bullshit pay a monthly fee residual income for the company crap. Ok, it may work for you but it's not what I want. So buried somewhere on their site I find (after I get an e-mail to the effect) that I can indeed buy songs by the track. After the compulsive 18mb client download all I get is errors. WTF?!

I'm running Vista 64 and have yet to find software I can't get to run. What a piece of shit. Anyways so can someone recommend a good service that can do what I want? I guess I can go back to buying CDs but I'd rather find a decent up to date, not just indie, song library.

Thank you that is all.

CLIFFS:

- Rhapsody sucks rhino dong
- URGE is teh history
- Need new song download service

 

[secretanchitman]

itunes?

 

[JasonCoder]

I always thought iTunes was too closed for things compared to windows DRM. With the songs I've purchased I can play it on up to 5 computers, burn a set number of times and use on about a gazillion different WMA devices (my phone, my psp, my 360). I thought with iTunes except for your computers you had basically one player, the iPod.

 

[tdawg]

Originally posted by: JasonCoder
I always thought iTunes was too closed for things compared to windows DRM. With the songs I've purchased I can play it on up to 5 computers, burn a set number of times and use on about a gazillion different WMA devices (my phone, my psp, my 360). I thought with iTunes except for your computers you had basically one player, the iPod.

All you need is a cd burner and a cd-rw disk. To strip the DRM for play on any device, just place purchased iTunes songs into playlists (as many songs in a playlist that will fit on an audio cd), and burn the tracks to the cd, as if you were burning a cd for your car stereo. Once the cd is burned, open the cd back up in iTunes and rip the tracks back to your PC in unprotected .mp3 format. Done!

Downside is that unless you bought a complete cd, you'll most likely have to fill in all the ID3 tag info for each track.

 

[Evander]

Amazon sells their music in mp3 format, 89 cents a song:
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sv...ng=UTF8&node=163856011

I think yahoo! sells drm free music, but you gotta pay double.

edit: also you can remove drm from wma using fairuse4wm (Freeware), there is also a free one on doom9.org but I forget what it's called. I've used it and it works. It's a good idea to use it in any case, for example I purchased music last year from a legit store called PeerImpact, but they were bought by another company this year, so when music needs to connect to verify the license it would fail. Fortunately I already removed the drm from the tunes I bought so no problem.

For itunes I've heard of a utility called tunebite but I've never dealt with itunes or that program

 

[JasonCoder]

Yeah I've heard about some of the DRM stripping progs out there... don't they do a high speed dubbing to get around it legally?

DRM is so fubared. *sigh*

EDIT Nope this ain't your father's tunebite, this is better. Thx for the tip!

 

[j0j081]

Yahoo Music engine works in Vista 64 you just have to run the installer in compatibility mode if I remember correctly but I know it works because I have it right now.

 

[Soundmanred]

But Rhapsody has the full backing of the almighty Hennifer Lopess!

 

[Gooberlx2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...of_online_music_stores

I've used Walmart, Amazon and Payplay.fm. Walmart does (or did, not sure which) have some drm-less mp3s, but the selection was not impressive. Overall, the catalogs with the mp3 selling stores are still rather limited. And then the lack of bitrate quality for the DRMed files (usually 128kbits) steers me away from those. I have seen several bands using a service called "Snocap" through myspace which sells tracks in 192kbit mp3. Typically $0.99 per song.

The WMA lossless store is interesting, but at $1.29 per song I'd often end up spending more than I would driving to target or BB and buying the actual CD.