Other than Itunes, what other music buying services do you use??

Not technically buying, but I use Spotify an awful lot nowadays. Not sure if its available in the US, but it's a free, ad-supported streaming service, works really well.

emusic ftw.

God I love emusic, so much.

If you're looking for mainstream stuff it's not always the best (although I've been surprised at some of the things I've found on there recently) but if you want lots of music for cheap and to try lots of new bands and read lots of great articles and be able to quickly and cheaply obtain the music discussed therein it is wonderful.

I really do love it. I'm going to dump audible and get my audiobooks, drm free, from emusic from next month as well.

Emusic and Beatport

For years now I have a monthly subscription on Emusic and occasionally I buy something on Beatport. I have never bough any music on the iTunes store.

yo yo, I found this one on facebook http://www.facebook.com/scattertunes, my friend forwarded it to me because Hendrix just released his new album on it with some cool features like the real lyric sheets scanned and some documentaries for free, I bet more companies are going to try to do this style of giving you bonus materials to compete with Itunes.

other than that, I guess try emusic.com I like them too

emusic.com has already been mentioned.

I also buy from amiestreet.com which has dynamic pricing, and can be a great way to find stuff for cheap as new/obscure music can be had quite cheaply. They also have sales where they will offer $20 of buying credit for $10, so you effectively get half of your purchases.

7digital.com occasionally has good sales on albums, but I don't use it much otherwise.

Recent apple acquisition lala.com often sells mp3 albums cheaper than iTunes does (we'll see how long that lasts.)

I also occasionally buy digital releases straight from the label. Merge offers flac for example, and their 320k mp3s are often cheaper than the 256k aac from iTunes.

Unless you're technically inclined, most people will buy their music from either the iTunes Store or the Amazon MP3 Download service. Reason is simple: both automatically populate the iTunes playlist for easier syncing with your iPod, iPod touch or iPhone.

I'd like to see other digital music online retailers make it a seamless experience to have the music on your iTunes playlist after downloading.

I use emusic more than iTunes.

SactoGuy18 said:

Unless you're technically inclined, most people will buy their music from either the iTunes Store or the Amazon MP3 Download service. Reason is simple: both automatically populate the iTunes playlist for easier syncing with your iPod, iPod touch or iPhone.

I'd like to see other digital music online retailers make it a seamless experience to have the music on your iTunes playlist after downloading.

Click to expand...

As someone who is technically inclined, I don't really know of services that offer dramatically better pricing or availability of the music to which I listen. Are there any? I mean, discounting the ones that are legally dubious (e.g., the ones from Russia) and the ones that only sell indie music?

That being said, I think Amazon does a great job with their service, and I use it at least as much now as iTunes itself. For a while, things were consistently cheaper on Amazon, but the last time I bought songs, it was a wash, and I think I got them on iTunes instead.

mkrishnan said:

As someone who is technically inclined, I don't really know of services that offer dramatically better pricing or availability of the music to which I listen. Are there any? I mean, discounting the ones that are legally dubious (e.g., the ones from Russia) and the ones that only sell indie music?

Click to expand...

This is a hard question to answer without knowing what kind of music you listen to.

emusic has several major labels now, and at a per credit basis it may be cheaper than buying the equivalent on iTunes.

I have to admit to being in the camp of very rarely finding what I want cheaper on iTunes than any other online retailer.

jazzbo said:

This is a hard question to answer without knowing what kind of music you listen to.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't call most of it mainstream, but it's almost all signed on major record labels. Some of it is pretty mainstream, particularly the country and hip-hop I listen to. I might check out emusic, thanks!