Ditch iTunes for monthly subscription service?

[onlyCOpunk]

So I'm in the market for a new portable audio device. I'm hesitant to go the iPod route but drawn to it since I regularly buy music from the iTunes store, hence I have alot of protected AAC.

I'm just curious how good these music subscription services are as for the price of one album a month I could download whatever I want. But I'm weary of selection plus the hassle of making all of my protected content unprotected via burning to cd then reimporting.

Anyone have some input on this?

 

[Ika]

But I'm weary of selection

Do you mean wary?

Also, instead of burning to CD and then re-ripping, you could always use a DRM stripper; this one's a little old, but I don't really feel like doing any in-depth searching - that's for you to do if you're interested.

 

[Bacstar]

I'm currently subscribed to Napster's for a monthly fee of $14.99 which I download onto my Creative Zen Vision M. I never had a real CD collection of music and before moving up to Alaska, I had XM satellite radio in my car and a XM MyFi which I totally miss. I did try Yahoo Music, but I had to switch when I upgraded to Vista 64bit since their software wasn't compatible at the time.

So far, I like it. They have billboard lists of hits for most of the music genres I may be interested in. If you search by Artist, they'll usually provide a list of their top 10 hits, tabs for entire song lists for that artist, critic picks, and a short bio. The software is easy to use, and I think it has a built-in ripper so you can convert your CD collection.

As for variety, I guess it all depends on what you like listening too. So far, I've found most of what I searched for, but it's usually well-known bands or stuff you can hear on major radio stations.

It does have it's drawbacks, you can't burn any CD's from the subscription music. If you don't plug in your device at least once a month, the music will stop playing. If you ever switch services, you'll have to re-download everything. I think they offer discounts if you decide to purchase music, but I haven't tried it yet. My biggest gripe is trying to find music to listen to. I really wish I still had my satellite radios

 

[intogamer]

The new iPods are pretty slick though. There are programs that will convert your protected AAC songs to nonprotected format.

Napster is good too.