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MP3 Music

MP3 music is becoming the most popular music file format because of its high quality sound and user friendly features. MP3 files can be played on any computer and copied to any MP3 player simply by copying the file to the MP3 player. No special synchronization software is required for this because MP3 files do not have any proprietary digital rights management (DRM) code attached to the song files.

One company that has acknowledged the popularity of MP3 files and offers all of its online music in MP3 format is eMusic.com. This is what really sets eMusic apart from the other major online music services such as Napster.com, iTunes, and MsnMusic. These other online music services offer their music in various proprietary DRM file formats which require you to use special software to access the music and require you to go through special procedures (which are often lengthy and confusing) in order to transfer the music you have just purchased to an MP3 player or laptop.

eMusic has decided to make the user friendly MP3 file format a big selling point of its service and is growing rapidly in popularity because of this.

And the songs you download from eMusic come directly from their servers, and are recorded in high quality audio. This is not just software that lets you hunt for songs on a peer to peer network. Besides the legal questions of swapping music on such networks, the recordings are often of very low quality. In fact many of the files on such networks are allegedly corrupted on purpose just to annoy people. Some say the recording companies are behind this, but in any case, who wants to spend their time sorting through those kinds of problems?

The songs in the eMusic library come directly from the artists and recording companies and are high quality recordings. Right now, eMusic is running a promotional campaign that offers you 25 free songs of your choice in MP3 format if you sign up for a test run of their service. If you decide not to continue the service you pay nothing! And you can keep the songs anyway.

The emphasis at eMusic is on independent musicians and smaller labels. Its more like a college record store than a Walmart. Still you will find many well known artists on board. But the real draw is to be able to browse through hundreds of lesser known artists and find new songs you love to listen to.

I think this is a great deal, and eMusic has over a million songs in their catalog now. They also have writers on board who review and recommend music. Now eMusico is a great place to spend an afternoon. I signed up for the free trial and have decided to stay with the service at $9.99 a month and get more songs. Click eMusic and join the fun. It costs nothing if you cancel within two weeks.