Magnatune is a service which allows you to buy music on-line. OK, nothing new. However, you get to decide how much you want to pay for each album. Magnatune claim that they 'are not evil' as you decide what an album is worth, and whatever you pay is split 50/50 between Magnatune and the artist or band. You can pay anything between $5 and $18 (or £3-£10 or €4-€14) for an album, which is incredibly cheap. The default price is $8, and you might expect many people to pay that or less. However, a large number of people choose to pay more because they know half the money goes directly to the artist.

Loads of things really surprised me about Magnatune, especially when compared to other download services. Firstly, the number of different genres available. Anything from heavy metal to classical violin, from trance to country. The range of music available is amazing considering that the site has not been around nearly as long as the major record labels. Next was the choice of formats when you download, and of course its all DRM free! You can download music as MP3s, ogg-vorbis or even lossless FLAC files. The audio quality is also a lot higher compared to most other services. Lastly was how easy it all was. There was no complicated sign up process, just enter your credit card details and your email address and you're good to go. You can even do it from inside a few audio players. For example, I buy my music through my audio player Amarok.



I recommend the site reccommend to anyone who wants to buy music on-line, especially if you are looking for new, up-and-coming artists. All of them are very good, and many are better than a lot of well-known artists.

 

 

 

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Sounds interesting. However, I think this could become controversial. Artists, or the production companies they are affiliated with should set the price of a product, people should not get the choice. Although this is better than free music over Peer to Peer Networks it may still cause losses for artists.

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As far as I know the artists generally are happy with it. Allowing people to choose what they pay is a bit of risk for both Magnatune and the artist, but most people seem willing to pay that little bit extra as they know how the money is divided up, and the artist directly gets half of it. As far as I know, the average price paid for an album is $8.93, despite the fact most people I have spoken to think that people either leave it at the default of $8 or always pay as little as they can - $5.

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