Cheapest Legal Music in any format?

tomlau

Now that allofmp3.com is effectively useless I've decided to try and "go legal". But as anyone else who has been paying 1-2euro an album, stumping up 10-20e seems like robbery.

What do you think is the cheapest way to get legal music? I don't care if it's as CD or mp3 (especially when places like itunes charge you the same as buying the CD).

At the moment the best place looks to ebay.

Samos

I think the best value is probably emusic. They work on a basis of a set number of downloads per month. You can sign up for something like 30, 60 or 90 downloads per month. I think the lowest is €13 per month, while the highest is €21, so the best value is about 23c per track. (This is especially good value if you like long pieces of music!)So, it's still possible to get albums for 1 or 2 Euro. The most I've paid for an album on their is €3.

The music is provided as mp3, so they work on any music player, and come without restrictions, so you can copy them and don't lose them if you cancel the service. You can also get 25 free dl's before you commit. I originally went for that, intending to cancel afterwards, but got sucked in! You can search their database to find what they have before you consider signing up.

However, due to the lack of restrictions the big-money, profit-grabbing labels don't make their stuff available, so it mostly has indie, alternative, classical, jazz, experimental and world music, but it's great for finding obscure music and discoveries.

noby

Have a look at amazon's marketplace. A lot of cds are either new or as new. If you're not looking for latest releases, you can get a lot of older albums for less than a tenner, sometimes as little as a fiver. They have a standard £1.79 postage rate per cd (as opposed to ebay's often inflated p&p), and you'll find a lot of albums in the £3-£5 area.

tony 2 tone

Samos wrote:

I think the best value is probably emusic. They work on a basis of a set number of downloads per month. You can sign up for something like 30, 60 or 90 downloads per month. I think the lowest is €13 per month, while the highest is €21, so the best value is about 23c per track. (This is especially good value if you like long pieces of music!)So, it's still possible to get albums for 1 or 2 Euro. The most I've paid for an album on their is €3.

The music is provided as mp3, so they work on any music player, and come without restrictions, so you can copy them and don't lose them if you cancel the service. You can also get 25 free dl's before you commit. I originally went for that, intending to cancel afterwards, but got sucked in! You can search their database to find what they have before you consider signing up.

However, due to the lack of restrictions the big-money, profit-grabbing labels don't make their stuff available, so it mostly has indie, alternative, classical, jazz, experimental and world music, but it's great for finding obscure music and discoveries.

Thanks for that! Lots of really good stuff on it, dont think 75 downloads a month is going to be enough though.

Samos

tony 2 tone wrote:

Thanks for that! Lots of really good stuff on it, dont think 75 downloads a month is going to be enough though.

When they fist started it was unlimited downloads! But after awhile they reduced the max to 90 per month... and they reduced that again to 75 a few months ago. I signed up in september, so I still get the 90 a month. It never seems to be enough! But it does teach patience, I guess.