I am an obsessed music collector. I can totally blame this on my father. As a child I can remember weekly trips to Everybody's Records in Cincinnati and the walls of our house being covered with record shelves. I came to believe that everyone's parents probably had copies of the clear vinyl, Talking Heads, Speaking In Tongues (Robert Rauschenberg Limited Edition) LP. The music-collecting gene was passed down to me and the advent of CDs just made my problem worse. And now with MP3s... let's just say that things have gotten out of control. Until very recently I lived a few blocks away from the famous Amoeba Music in Berkeley. I tried to shop there as much as I could, but sometimes they just didn't have some rare, Javanese Court Gamelan album that I desperately needed. So far I have been incredibly allergic to buying music on iTunes because of their iPod-only, DRM (copy-protected), music format. Recently a ton of big companies (Amazon, Walmart, and even iTunes) have started selling DRM-free (non-copy-protected) music online. I decided to round up a list of some of the big names and lesser known online music stores, buy one DRM-free song from each and describe my experiences.

Amazon MP3 Downloads

I hit the home page and there is a giant banner that lets me know that their files will play on any mp3 player. I don't immediately see any featured albums that look interesting (most of it is popular music like Queen Latifa), so I click into the international section. There's some interesting stuff in the featured artists area including the French artist Serge Gainsbourg. Amazon only sells 4 of his 100+ recordings but I'm still pretty impressed. The listing page has a little play button next to each song so you can preview a few seconds before buying. I click on the button next to a song called “Black Trombone” to buy it for 89 cents and I am prompted to sign in to Amazon. I've bought some tangible things from Amazon in the past, so I already had an account. After a few attempts to remember my password I get through and I am prompted to “Get the Amazon MP3 Downloader”, which I am guessing is some sort of software. I choose the option to “Skip installation and continue”. Next I'm given a short page with instructions on how to save the file. I agree to the terms of use (without reading them) and click to download. The next screen asks me to select which of my existing credit cards to use. Next I have to select which billing addresses to use. I continue, see a thank you page and Firefox begins downloading the file. After a few seconds I have a totally normal, high quality MP3.

Audio Lunchbox

The home page features about 20 albums by independent record companies. I haven't heard of most of the bands but there are a few things by more mainstream musicians like Bob Marley and Sonic Youth. There is a search form on the left that allows you to pick genres that you are interested in but I don't see a list of categories to browse through. I choose a Lee Scratch Perry record from the “ALB Staff picks”. They also have a player that allows you to listen to song previews, but the player was clunkier than Amazon's and it didn't allow me to click on individual tracks. I select one of the songs and continue to a screen that prompts me to buy a subscription that will allow me to download up to 40 songs a month for $9.99. I skip the offers, continue to check out and run into a login page. I don't have an account so I have to create one. I'm again prompted to purchase a subscription but I choose the “A La Carte / Pay as you go” option and fill out a form with all of my contact information. The next screen prompts me for my credit card to pay 99 cents, after I put that in I get a summary page with a link to “Go To Downloads”. The file came down quickly and didn't have any problems.

Bleep

Bleep has the most minimal home page I've seen. The artists seem to be even more obscure than Audio Lunchbox and they appear to be organized more by record label than genre. I had only heard of one of the groups featured on the home page. Fortunately it was actually something that I had been interested in checking out. I clicked on the Venetian Snares album and played some of the song samples. They had 20 of his other releases. The song samples are full length and a tech savvy user could actually figure out how to download low quality versions of all the songs for free (I wouldn't explain how to do this here). Overall the interface is pretty edgy and non-conventional. I loved the way it looked but I actually had a difficult time figuring out where the samples were playing and how to stop them. I click the buy the mp3 for $1.35 and it gave me a column on the left of the page with a cart and a "Checkout" link. I was prompted to login and had to go through screens to create an account, agree to terms, choose a payment method, enter my credit card information and finally click to “Process Order”. The song took considerably longer to download than the others, but the file was higher quality than others (320k) which would be important to audiophiles.

eMusic

eMusic is defiantly focused on (what we in the marketing biz call) the purchase funnel. I got to the home page and I really only had one option. Almost all of the real estate on the home page was dedicated to driving people to sign up for a $9.99 monthly subscription. Up in the top corner there was “Why Join” link with a little more information. eMusic doesn’t seem to offer any options to buy an individual song. The $9.99 subscription does give you ability to download 30 songs a month which works out to under 33 cents a song, but you have to commit to purchase all those songs to make it worth while. I decided to sign up for their free trial to see what I could get. Of course I had to put in a credit card for the free trial, after that they tried to up-sell me to sign up for an audio book subscription as well. I skipped that and continued past another page that asked me to sign up for the email newsletter, finally getting to a page that asked me to download the eMusic Download Manager software. Fortunately I spotted tiny link on the right side of the page to continue without downloading the software. I then had to click through a screen to disable the download manager. At this point I still haven’t seen any music and I’ve almost forgotten why I came to eMusic in the first place. I click on “Browse” and find a neat page with sections organized by genre, release date and other criteria. They are featuring the Dead Kennedys and the Hall and Oats Christmas album on the homepage (which is awesomely random). The free trial gives me 50 free download so I decide to get down to business. I browsed into the Electronic section. Feeling nostalgic for cheesy, rave music I decided to download a song from The Prodigy’s 1992 (pre-scary) classic “The Prodigy Experience”. I clicked on the download link next to one of the songs and it saved a high quality, MP3 to my computer. I went on to download more songs from various artists. I can see how it would be easy to stay on there all day. After downloading 11 songs I canceled the free trial and (theoretically) was charged nothing. I’ll be sure to check my credit card statement. With the subscription requirement eMusic has a really high upfront commitment, but once you are in it’s a blast. The selection is great and the ability to get songs with a single click is great for serious impulse music shoppers (especially those of us who have already accepted the fact that some portion of our monthly income is going to be spent on music).

iTunes

Apple’s iTunes Store has definitely been the 500-pound gorilla in the world of on-line music sales for several years, but as I mentioned earlier, Apple’s proprietary, iPod-only, music format was always enough to keep me from buying anything from them. A little while back, after enduring some criticism from the tech community and reaching an agreement with EMI Records, Apple started offering a portion of their catalog in a format that wasn’t copy-protected or specific to iPods. However, they still aren’t offering actual MP3 files. The format is called “M4A” and many MP3 player still won’t play them unless you run them through some kind of a conversion program. I recently switched back to using a Mac as my primary computer and started drinking the Apple Kool-Aid again, so I put all those concerns behind me and set off to buy some music.

The first thing that you notice when you go to buy music from iTunes is that you can’t do anything until you download and install their software. It’s a 41 MB download, so even if you don’t read the license agreement and cancel all of the prompts to import your existing music, etc. you are probably going to need to spend at least 10 minutes to download and install it (not to mention all the time I spent getting distracted looking at all the fancy new iPods on the download page). iTunes only works on Windows and Macs, so if you use Linux or some other operating system, you are out of luck. Of course since I’m using a Mac, Apple has done me the service of magically making sure that I already have the latest version of iTunes installed and ready to go. As much as I have tried to deny the fact and look for competitors over the years, I believe that the iTunes software is still by far the best music software available. Even if you never buy a thing from the iTunes store, I still recommend downloading the software.

I finally get to the home page of the iTunes store. It’s presented inside of the software so they can offer some fancy user interface features that you wouldn’t see on a web site. The homepage is information overload. With music, movies, tv shows, iPod video games, ringtones, and podcasts, there are just too many choices. All of the content seemed very mainstream and nothing really jumped out. The only thing that caught my eye was a Sonic the Hedgehog, iPod game, but I don’t have a modern iPod so it wouldn’t do much for me. I click into the “New Releases” section and still didn’t see much that I was interested. Some of the titles said “iTunes Plus” under them. I have a suspicion that those might be the DRM-free ones. One of them is a Thievery Corporation album (that I am mildly interested in) so I click it. The album view has customer reviews and a great interface for listening to 30 second previews. I didn’t like the album much so I went back to browsing around. Eventually I was able to confirm that the “iTunes Plus” songs were DRM-free and I found a way to browse only those. Even with the categories and filters I still have a hard time finding stuff that I like. There didn’t seem to be much editing or strong suggestions toward things that I might like. I wind up getting a song off of a 1994 Pharcyde album. I already had the album on vinyl, but I got bored of trying to find something interesting and new navigating iTunes’ sea of really crappy, pop music. When I click “Buy Song” I have to walk through a few screens to set up an account and enter my credit card information. When I was done I didn’t get the song, so I decided to click “Buy Song” again. This time it confirmed that I really wanted to spend 99 cents for the song and it started downloading to my music library. I was eventually able to convert the song into an MP3 so it would play on my phone. Overall it was a pretty long and anticlimactic experience.

And the winner is...

Amazon MP3 Downloads definitely beat out the rest. Here’s a quick overview chart:

1) Tom Peters on Short Writing

Back when I worked for Metaphor Studio in Cincinnati I did a lot of web site work for Tom Peters (uber-guru and author of In Search of Excellence). Back then I had never read any of his books, but since I was exposed to his content every day, one big concept stuck in my head: If you want to reach executives and other busy people, write in a way that can be quickly scanned and processed using descriptive sub-headings and short bullet points when possible. This writing strategy definitely makes me pay more attention to "Top 20 Whatever" articles they come across on my RSS feeds because I can quickly estimate how long it will take me to scan the article and get the basic points.

2) Tom Johnson on Blog Usability

One of the best "Top 20 Whatever" articles I've read recently is Tom Johnson's Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog. These tips apply for personal and corporate blogs. Here's his list (without in-depth descriptions for the ultra-time strapped):

1. Pick a topic for your blog.
   
2. Encourage comments.
   
3. Make it easy to subscribe.
   
4. Include an About page.
   
5. Present your ideas visually.
   
6. Keep posts short and to the point.
   
7. Use subheadings for long posts.
   
8. Link abundantly.
   
9. Make headlines descriptive.
   
10. Archive by topic.
    
11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post.
    
12. Allow users to contact you offline.
    
13. Present your real viewpoint.
    
14. Write for your future employer.
    
15. Include a Top Posts section.
    
16. Provide an index.
    
17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title.
    
18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
    
19. Reward commenters for commenting.
    
20. Post often.

Thanks to Georgina Hibberd for posting about Tom Johnson on the University of Sydney's templatedata blog.