Yesterday I bought my first album from the MSN Music preview, and also another from Napster.
In this post I'll go over my concerns with each of the current major music stores (that I've tried). Those being iTMS, MSN Music, and Napster. In my next post, I'll talk about the online music ecosystem as a whole.
iTunes
Audio Quality:
My biggest gripe with the iTunes Music Store is something that they’ll never consider changing: the format. The audio quality I found from files distributed over iTMS were horrendous. From what I’ve gathered, this is a result of the general quality issues associated with the AAC codec and the specific encoding process used by Apple. While some may not notice (or care), I was able to do an informal test with a few Guster tracks – comparing the AAC files from iTMS with both the original CD release, a 160kbps MP3 rip, and a VBR 85-125kbps WM9 rip.
Only one of four in my audience successfully identified both the AAC and MP3 sources as “not being from the CD.” But all four picked out the AAC tracks and found them to be severely lacking in “warmth.”
What it came down to was that the iTMS tracks had a severe flatness to them, whereas the others had only subtle difference if any.
DRM system:
I have had little experience with the FairPlay DRM system, as the only tracks I purchased from iTunes didn’t stay on my hard drive for very long. However, I see it as a great disadvantage that iTMS tracks can only be played on the iPod, and not any other portable players (including my iRiver iHP-120 and my Rio Carbon).
Napster and MSN:
Audio Quality:
The audio quality, to my ear, is superb from both. This is undoubtedly thanks to the high bit-rate WM9 encoding that both use.
DRM system:
With Napster I previously purchased a single track (a Ben Folds live track) when the system debuted. I was pleased with the audio quality but nothing about the whole online music system really held my interest at the time. I became very displeased, later on, to find that I could no longer play my Ben Folds track after a couple of reformats and OS changes. I was able to “sync” my collection a few times, but eventually it decided that I’d done that too many times. The problem here is that each time was done on the same computer. All that changed was my OS from XP, to XP-64, back to XP, to XP-64, to 2003, and most recently back to XP. It just wasn’t capable of determining that this was in fact the same computer, and so used up one of my “uses” each time I synced.
I also tried using WMP’s “license backup” functionality with no success. There may be a way to overcome this. I just haven’t figured it out. And if I couldn’t figure it out, I doubt most others could.
The DRM system is where MSN Music really shines. It lets you have 5 copies of the song activated on different computers at any given time. You can also visit the store from a computer that has the license activated (as I say), and “deactivate” it – restoring one of your 5 possible activations.
So when I format next time, I just go “deactivate” all of my MSN Music collection when I’m backing up my files, and I’m set.
It’s not ideal, it requires some effort, but it’s simple enough that I’m confident I won’t run into the same problems I did with my Napster track.
Selection:
This is my current gripe with MSN. However, I’m aware that it’s still a “preview” release and that many more tracks are promised. Well, that’s good. I just hope they hurry it up so that I’m not tempted to buy from Napster because they offer albums that MSN so far does not. Of course, this problem could also be solved if Napster provides me with a way to guarantee my access to those tracks in the future.