Audiobubble Music Store
I received an email from the Audiobubble team about their online music store.
Audiobubble isn’t your average online music store.It began in early 2005, when two musicians, Shaun Russell and Tom Chambers, decided to create a music service that was fair to artists and fair to customers. Tired of puny 30 second previews, lack of customer trust and lack of freedom for the artist, they created the Audiobubble concept.
We don’t use DRM because we know it isn’t consumer friendly. Shame that Napster, iTunes and other online music giants can’t wake up to this fact. Audiobubble is about freedom. Join the revolution!
I signed up for an account and was listening to previews in no time under Ubuntu Linux. The only information asked for during signup was email, username and password.
Payment is handled through PayPal, so if you don’t have a PayPal account and refuse to sign up for one you’re out of luck.
Other online stores that sell music files without DRM: Magnatune, Bleep, Mindawn, Audio Lunchbox.
February 16th, 2006 at 5:03 am
eMusic.com has a big collection and is DRM-free, too.
February 16th, 2006 at 5:30 am
Well, if they just would learn that TLDs may be 4 characters long. I can’t register with my .info address.
February 16th, 2006 at 6:18 am
AllOfMP3.com also provides a smashing DRM free service, and have a very extensive catalogue.
February 16th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Hey,
AFAIK http://www.emusic.com is DRM-free as well. eMusic offers quite a good selection of popular alternativ musicians. And I to really like the german-based (but also english languaged) online-shop http://www.finetunes.net – they really really rock.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
I am using http://www.allofmp3.com I see the web in the newspaper because they sell full discographies for 1€.
But they have problems with that and now sell 1 song for 1€
February 16th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
That’s not how AllOfMP3 works. You get to choose your encoding bit rate. The album price you are quoting is for 128 kbps. The real price is US$0.02 / MiB.
February 16th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
http://www.beatportonacid.com
February 17th, 2006 at 1:58 am
http://www.finetunes.de is a german DRM free online store. Songs are available both in mp3 and OggVorbis (!). Payment is handled through Firstgate.
-DBS
February 19th, 2006 at 5:25 am
foryourears.com has a nice selection of electronic music without DRM.
February 19th, 2006 at 10:04 am
or grammy.ru for free
http://www.grammy.ru/music/mcatalog.php?act=az&sstr=O
lot of Russian, but A-Z letters at the top and small blue floppy disk to click for download are self explaining. the servers are slow (20KByte/connection) and number of simult connections from the same IP is limited by 2 or 3. but it is completely free. no registration, no e-mail, no password. collection is large. quality is 128Kbits, most files are MP3.
February 21st, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Magnatune also has a wonderful service. Since I have a problem with describing them adiquitely, here is what they say on their front page:
February 23rd, 2006 at 12:18 pm
As a note, you don’t actually need to have a Paypal account to pay, you just need a credit card to pay through them. If you don’t trust Paypal with that information, THEN you’re out of luck.
February 24th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
It is clear that DRM secured content is against the user because it restricts you using it wherever you want.
All shops using/selling DRM-free stuff are 1000 times better than iTunes, Musicload, etc.
(Just wanted to bring all our thoughts to one point and stick here – forever!)
March 3rd, 2006 at 11:47 am
Not to forget:
http://calabashmusic.com/
the world’s best world music site. There is even a free download every week.
March 10th, 2006 at 8:35 am
For 0.25$ a track in MP3 (=No DRM) – especially for world music fans – I use http://www.emusic.com
March 14th, 2006 at 3:51 am
http://www.BeatPick.com is offering a fair trade model with a good service too.
1. no DRM 2. listen to entire albums for free 3. good music. 4. download WAV, mp3, OGG 5. share music once you buy.
March 19th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
i have heard that allofmp3 is not very legal, it is in Russia and no money from it goes to artist – so why buy it there? i like also http://www.emusic.com and http://www.mp3tunes.com/store.php
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:01 am
I’ve got to say thanks for the list of sites, I’ll keep those in mind. I’ve also got to toss my thoughts in about allofmp3.com, which I’ve been using for about two years now. I’ll admit originally I was worried about handing my CC data over to a Russian company, but (besides the fact I used a one time CC number and they use a third-party to handle transactions) I’ve never had any issue with them. Their download speeds are a little slow (20-40KBps) and their official client is Windows only (web interface available but clunky), but their catalog is huge. Well worth checking out.
May 17th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Another DRM-free music store with a new approach to online music sales is the Potato System from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (the guys who first invented MP3 compression). I’m not sure how well it is represented internationally.
).
It’s based on the concept that everyone who buys music may redistribute the music on their own webpage and thus participate in those revenues (like a snowball system, except that it’s potatoes this time
May 26th, 2006 at 5:46 am
Peer Impact also sells MP3s
But they also sell DRMed Tunes as well as protected games and soon time bombed movies for rent .