Buy Music With Linux
After I switched from Windows to Ubuntu as my major private operating system, I’m still looking for an iTunes replacement. While there are numerous music players available for Linux and Ubuntu, only a few give the same usability as iTunes did. I’m currently trying out Amarok and will post details about that later, but a major point is: Where can you buy music that does not require a Windows or Apple operating system? Also other bloggers have wondered that already, but there are some updates:
- Amazon MP3: A giant music collection, all DRM free plus a MP3 downloader for Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse. What else can you expect? Like … a service that is not only available in the United States. Until Amazon MP3 is available also in Europe, I either have to use an address service to get a billing adress in the united states or use an alternative.
- MP3Tunes: With a free account you can listen to 400 songs through a web interface only, with a premium subscription you can also download the songs to other devices. Linux is supported - but I don’t like subscription based models.
- Medion Music: While the website could be better navigateable, you can buy MP3s. Unfortunatly it’s difficult to search for only MP3s and don’t get WMAs in your result. Also preview works as they use a little flash player.
- Akuma: This is the most promising service with a large (not huge) song collection and good quality MP3s - some of them are watermarked with a transaction ID, which can only be read by Akuma (at least they say so). Unfortunatly the preview doesn’t work for me. Update: The preview works, once you’re registered. A real show-stopper is that you cannot directly pay for the music you buy: you have to pre-charge your account in 10, 20 or 50 € steps, and of course a whole album is just above 10€.
- Magnatune: While this service is nicely integrated into Amarok (in opposition to the others above), it ‘only’ offers music from independant musicians.
- Update: Musicload: This service is now also offering MP3s. Since this is a major platform in Germany, pushed and powered by T-Online, this looks promising. Now if you could only limit the search results to MP3 only.
- As a last alternative, there’s of course always the option to by CDs (online or in your local record shop). Luckly most of them come without copy protection these days, at least I didn’t see any for a long time.
If you know a better place to buy music with Linux, please comment. My first choice to try out will be Musicload, then Medion Music. Let’s see which works out better. If they don’t have the music I’m looking for, I’ll go shopping at amazon.de and rip the CD. This has the bonus that I’ll also get a nice case and cover 