Music Addict Alert

I’m SO in trouble.
I’ve been slow to jump on the MP3 bandwagon. At first it was because I hated the sound of sax at low bitrates – it reminded me of a high-frequency buzz saw, or perhaps a dentist drill, focused right between my ears.
But lately I’ve been steering clear of iTunes and things of that sort because I hate the idea of being bound to a particular audio standard. The proprietary AAC and WMA secure formats leave me annoyed and frustrated.
So I just decided to give eMusic a shot. All I knew about them was that they let you download actual MP3’s, and high bitrate versions at that. And oh, it’s a monthly subscription and you start out with 50 free song downloads. Okay.
I signed up and the first thing I noticed was a link to a John Coltrane album that I’m missing. And then a link to a Thievery Corporation album. Hmmm, promising.
Once I got into the site I discovered that they have *thirty* Coltrane albums for download, plus a handful of compilation discs. Holy smokes. That’s more than I ever find at Tower, or perhaps anywhere except Bud’s Jazz Records, a place I sorely miss.
My first pull-down was Bebel Gilberto’s “Tanto Tempo Remixes”. The first track came down at variable bitrate, 159Kbit/second average. Not bad! It sounds a little dark, there’s a bit of high-frequency range definitely missing, but overall pretty damn decent!
I have a feeling this could be bad for my checkbook (but undoubtedly great for my ears!)
EDIT: Okay, the more I dig around their site, the more I notice there’s a lot of stuff missing that I wish was there. Oh well, should be enough music to keep me happy for a little while. 🙂 Your mileage may vary. I still think it’s worth checking out!