Tuesday, March 29, 2005

eMusic vs ITMS : High-Gloss Music Store Smackdown

Putting aside all the candyass objections to subscription vs. purchase-based models, I decided to investigate two major, legal digital music purveyors: Apple's iTunes music store and eMusic's MP3 download service. Who wins? Who dies? I decide!

First up, iTunes. Meh. I object to Apple's iTunes on two grounds:
1) 128 bitrate AAC. Why? Why?!
2) DRM, which is illegal for me to remove

At first sight, eMusic offers a compelling alternative to iTunes.

The good:
1) 192 VBR LAME --alt-preset-standard MP3 encoding. La crème de la crème. This I can get behind; it's what I use for my personal collection.
2) No DRM. eMusic trusts me to be an adult--what a concept!

The bad:
1) Although eMusic positions themselves chiefly as purveyors of "indie" mp3s, iTunes has more indie music! Go look for recent stuff by Lemonjelly or Jans Lekman and you will not find it on EMusic.

Therefore I have sailed the seas and canceled my EMusic account. As another strange plus to choosing eMusic, cancellation is a breeze and can be done through their website. This is way cooler than Netflix or Earthlink, who force you to call their hallucination-inducing tech support to cancel your account. (Note: I savor and love my Netflix account. Earthlink es del diablo.)

Given my objections above and my possession of an iPod Photo which I regard with the tenderest affection, you'll understand I would not glance at Napster except to spit across its path. eMusic might be ok for the occasional download, if you can avoid getting suckered into a subscription, but there is still, for me, no ideal music store from which to make legal purchases. Looks like I get to visit the used CD store or The Site That Must Not Be Named. Since musical preferences are so individual, however, your mileage will vary.

10:22:58 PM    comment []

The File: The Gift Of Fear

[B]ecause my childhood became all about prediction, I learned to live in the future. I didn't feel things in the present because I wanted to be a moving target, gone to the future before any blow could really be felt. This ability to live in tomorrow or next year immunized me against the pain and hopelessness of the worst moments, but it also made me reckless about my own safety. Recklessness and bravado are features of many violent people. [...]

As a child, I was left with the pastimes that cross time: worrying and predicting. I could see a vision of the future better than most people because the present did not distract me. This single-mindedness is another characteristic common to many criminals. Even things that would frighten most people could not distract me as a boy, for I had become so familiar with danger that it no longer caused alarm. Just as a surgeon loses his aversion to gore, so does the violent criminal. You can spot this feature in people who do not react as you might to shocking things. When everyone else who just witnessed a hostile argument is shaken up, for example, this person is calm.
-- Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence, pp. 51

1:38:01 PM    comment []

The File: Weird And Tragic Shores

During the two-week crossing [Charles Francis Hall] came again under the spell of the maritime Arctic. He was awed, as so many other explorers have been, by the strange and often beautiful optical illusions created by refraction in northern seas. Mountains appeared and disappeared on the horizon; the sun, surrounded by a corona, was duplicated so that there were two suns and two coronas; the moon rose swollen to immense size and distorted into strange shapes; indescribable forms moved with miraculous fluidity between water and sky. As usual, Hall thought of God:

A thousand youthful forms of the fairest outline seemed to be dancing to and fro, their white arms intertwined--bodies incessantly varying, intermixing, falling, rising, jumping, skipping, hopping, whirling, waltzing, resting, and again rushing to the mazy dance--never tired--ever playful--ever light and airy, graceful and soft to the eye. Who could view such wondrous scenes of divine enchantment and not exclaim, "O Lord, how manifest are thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy riches!"
-- Chauncey C. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer, pp. 77

1:29:33 PM    comment []