Applelust.com: Legal MP3s

The JunkMan

MP3 - The Legal Way

In the wake of my article on creating an MP3 jukebox from an old PowerMac, one question often asked was in regard of the legality of using MP3 formatted audio files. As we know Napster has been put out of commission (at least as I write this) and while there may be other sources of MP3 on the Internet, Mac users concerned about copyright infringements and the right of recording artists to eat something else than macaroni and cheese would rather rip the files from CDs they own than deprive the later from the small stipends awarded by their production houses.

But there are alternatives to either using the music you already own or stealing from the artists: Subscription-based music distribution companies have been making their way to the Internet, and I have been looking at one of them, eMusic.com, over the last three months.

eMusic's rates are fairly affordable: A monthly $9.95 for a one year contract, or $14.95 for a three month contract - about the same as the cost of one CD a month. There is also a 30 days/100 songs trial subscription available.

The ability to download full albums at once instead of track-by-track was available to PC users months before one Mac programmer, out of sheer frustration, decided to create freeware application RuMPSucker.

Clicking on eMusic's "Download Full Album" from your web browser downloads a ".rmp" file, containing a song list and their URLs. Using RuMPSucker to open that file will allow you to either download all the songs, in queue, and have them placed in an album sub folder within an artist folder, or to select individual songs from your album selections. Transfer speed using RuMPSucker is well above what I get from my web browser, but you should still count on an average two or three minutes download time per song.

eMusic's catalog isn't the best in the world. You will not find the latest, greatest hits. But there are some great surprises, such as finding an almost complete back-catalog for Elvis Costello, George Carlin, and others. A lot of jazz and blues, worldbeat, and an extensive selection of classical titles by known and lesser known orchestra complete the usual pop, rock and dance genre. There are even rarities, stuff I had never seen anywhere or that was unavailable since deleted from the distributor's catalogues: John Cage, some live Lenny Bruce, Thelonious Monk... For Star Trek fans there are soundtracks from both TV and movies, special effects audio clips from the original TV episodes, and interview material with Nichelle Nichols and other stars. Or how about Woody Allen discussing the art of comedy?

My only point of contention is an overabundance of low-quality live recordings and "unreleased" cuts — but these could perhaps be interesting from an historical perspective or to hard core fans of the artists.

In three months, I must have downloaded over 100 albums and a great deal of singles. I'd go to the eMusic web site late at night, pick my music and use RuMPSucker to download the files overnight. All this with the knowledge that the artists will be paid for their work.

Unlike the MP3 files downloaded from dubious sources, all the eMusic files are high-quality encoded, at 128kbps and 44.1kHz — ready to burn to an audio CD.

The small membership fee paid to eMusic was well worth it. I took a 3-months subscription, since I don't know if a one year membership would be worth my while: New music is added all the time, but at the rate I am downloading songs I've pretty much gotten most of what I really liked, and it has become harder to find titles of more than secondary interest.

eMusic will not replace an occasional shopping spree at your local music store for the latest release of your favorite artists, but it offers a great amount of material to fill the missing gaps in your musical education, explore different styles of music or the work of other artists.

This is highly addictive. I've always loved music, even owned my own record shop at one point. The drawback is that I'll now have to spend more money on another hard drive to store all these tunes.

eMusic

RuMPSucker

Pat St-Arnaud

Go to Pat's JunkMan page here at Applelust.

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