Music without a monopoly (comparison of online digital music stores in the US and Russia)

    The fact is that in our country, digital content, especially audio tracks, is still in an unenviable position. The majors believe that Russia is a more or less promising and fast-growing market, sellers say that their estimates are not entirely correct ("record labels claim millions of content sales, claiming to pay a fixed annual subscription fee for their catalog as" sales "), and the end user still wants to download music, if not for free, then in bulk for a very small fee (without thinking that it is still pirated). I already wrote about all the ups and downs of their relationship in CNews at the end of January , however, the reason for today's topic will be somewhat different.

    The journalist Ed Bott, who on Microsoft’s ZDNet parses Microsoft’s flights, has published, in my opinion, very interesting material,comparing six major alternative iTunes Music Store audio content sites in the United States . Amazon MP3, Zune Marketplace, Rhapsody, eMusic came into view. The author drew attention not only to the cost of tracks, available formats for downloading, but also to the quality of the services themselves from the point of view of the consumer (ease of use, purchase recovery, etc.).

    The general conclusions are as follows:
    1. For the price, the Lala service is recognized as the best .
    2. Zune Marketplace is the most convenient, but only for those who use Windows (since software installation is required).
    3. If you do not use the iTunes Music Store to download music, you can safely save from 10 to 26% of the cost of the track.

    comparison table

    It is interesting that, by and large, Western journalists really have something to compare with. Yesterday in the "PC Magic" appeared material about Russian iTunes counterparts . It was hard to find four sites (I did not count UCG content, as well as various communities, including how I saw open source music somewhere).

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