Online music sites

[rg3000]

Of the LEGAL music sites, which would you recommend for jazz recordings, and why?

I'm currently a member of Napster, so I'll get the ball rolling there:

-Napster-
They have an unlimited listening program at $9.95 a month. This program allows you to listen to full-length recordings from most of their collection. New releases and some older recordings, however, only permit you to listen to 30-second clips for free.

The ability to listen to full-length recordings is Napster's best feature, especially considering the incredibly large quantity of quality jazz recordings they offer. Their jazz library includes Blue Note, Columbia, Impulse, Verve, RCA, Prestige, and many other labels. To give you an example of what you'll find, they've got 95 Miles, 63 Coltrane, 29 Hubbard, 24 Morgan, 21 Shorter, 19 Clifford, 14 Dorham, 8 Tom Harrell... albums!

I think the biggest downside to Napster is the audio quality. It streams at about 192kbps. For the majority of recordings, the sound quality is great. You probably wouldn't be able to tell that it's streaming vs. CD quality. Unfortunately, there's still a pretty large percentage of recordings where the sound quality suffers from compression/normalization. The tunes are still worth listening to, but not nearly CD quality.

I'd love to hear from iTunes and Rhapsody members...
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www.iwasdoingallright.com - jazz trumpet blog and ear training tools

[babyimanARCHIST]

At my school (my friend showed me this so I won't be able to find it until he shows me again) but there's something called, I think Winndows Media Playyer? that you can type in an artist's name (I searched Armstrong and others) and you can legally listen to full songs. So I think that's legal since a school has it... You may want to give that a try. If anyone here knows what I'm talking about I'd love to learn how to get this.

[nyc_lurker]

For good jazz selections try eMusic.com. I use to be subscribed to them when they had unlimited monthly downloads but canceled when they changed subscription models. I think it comes to .25-.50 per track with the new subscription model so it is still a deal if you know what you want.

Edit:

As a note, there is no DRM attached to the music files and they are pure VBR MP3's encoded with LAME. This means you can copy from machine-to-machine without any licensing hassles.

[rg3000]

I was also an eMusic member back in their unlimited download days. While they did have a large jazz selection at the time, they didn't have very many of the *major* recordings from most artists. That is, they didn't have much (or anything) from many of the labels mentioned in my original post. But you're right. The audio quality is/was solid.

C'mon iTunes and Rhapsody members! Give us the scoop
_________________
www.iwasdoingallright.com - jazz trumpet blog and ear training tools