Last month I signed up for the Rhapsody service thru my ISP, Comcast. Since then I've downloaded 2 CDs worth of music - Bill Frisell and Sonny Landreth. Both CDs sound very good and appear to be on par with store-bought music. Rhapsody charges $0.79/song, reasonable in my eyes, and offers a pretty broad selection.
I think the best part of this is that I can preview the songs before purchase and I can determine the content and the order of the songs on the CD. The service also allows me to listen to new music while I'm working, I expect to broaden my musical horizons quite a bit this year because of this.
In addition, I have found several sites that offer live music recorded by dedicated "tapers", a paradigm founded by the Grateful Dead and carried on by many jam bands and the like. Check out db.etree.org and click on the "Browse Downloadable Shows" link - there are hundreds of artists' shows available and most sound pretty darn good...
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I think the best part of this is that I can preview the songs before purchase and I can determine the content and the order of the songs on the CD. The service also allows me to listen to new music while I'm working, I expect to broaden my musical horizons quite a bit this year because of this.
In addition, I have found several sites that offer live music recorded by dedicated "tapers", a paradigm founded by the Grateful Dead and carried on by many jam bands and the like. Check out db.etree.org and click on the "Browse Downloadable Shows" link - there are hundreds of artists' shows available and most sound pretty darn good...
-RW-