Sunday, August 2, 2009

Magnatune: creating a free(r) future for good music

Today's music bought online usually includes (whether we like it or not) DRM, or digital rights management. This usually controls how many computers you can listen to your music on, or what programs you can use to listen to it (think iTunes). While in recent times, DRM is hitting hard times, it's still an integral part of many online music retailers.

Magnatune, on the other hand, is a site that allows you to download music for a small fee (which you can choose, by the way), and half of that fee goes to support the artist. You can also purchase two types of memberships, streaming and download.

The streaming membership simply allows you to listen to all the music you want without any commercial interruptions. And the download membership allows you to download as many albums as you like with one fee. Both memberships are paid on a monthly basis.

And to be honest, most of the music on Magnatune is of a far higher quality than the music on the radio.