Pay what you want for music

I have recently found what I consider to be the most fantastic website that nobody's ever heard of. From this website, I learned two things: (1) A website does exist that will charge a reasonable amount for downloadable CD-quality music; and (2) Courtney Love is not as wacky as you think.

Just like Magnatune's slogan implies, they are not as evil the as major recording labels. Their take on music sales is more like the donation bin at an art gallery than the cash register at the record store. You can listen to music (in 128 Kbps mp3 format) before you buy anything, and when you do buy it, you can choose to pay anywhere from $5 to $18.

This is the first instance, I believe, of the software's "shareware" type of model in the record industry. Seven genres of music, loads of artists, each with multiple albums -- there is plenty of music to browse through and listen to. With the try-before-you-buy model that they have, there's no chance of buying some thing that you're not going to like.

Downloads are available in MP3, the original WAV, OGG Vorbis, MP3 variable bitrate, or FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Get more information about the site here.

Originally posted on Monday, 2003-12-08 at 11:00:14.