A while ago I mentioned that I was going through my mp3 collection and purging the crappy stuff. Four gigs later, I finished this weekend. Now I'm working on ripping my CD collection so I can get rid of some CDs. I mentioned to Kelly that I'm in the market now for a new mp3 player since the free one I've been using sucks balls and goes through AAA batteries like nobody's business. I decided on this one, and Kelly offered to buy it for me as an early graduation gift! Thanks so much sweetie!

For a while I've been thinking about online music stores. I like Yahoo alot, but there's two others that have captured my attention lately. First off, eMusic has been around for a while, but I haven't paid much attention to them because they're mostly independent labels. However, they've been getting alot of press lately because they don't use any kind of protected file format, just plain old mp3. Nobody has to worry about the songs not playing on Macs or PCs, having special mp3 players, or having to have required software. That's something I strongly support now that DRM schemes are so common. eMusic has some artists I like, especially some of their older albums, but there are many of my favorite artists that aren't on the site. So I could never use eMusic exclusively, but I wonder if the concept is worth supporting so that one day, larger labels will allow their songs to be available through eMusic.

The second service is MTV's Urge, automatically available as part of Windows Media Player 11. It's a pretty typical service to Napster, except it has several key things going for it. For one, it is completely integrated into WMP, so you never have to have two separate programs open just to download and listen to music (I like using a single media player for all my music/video needs). Plus, it's really easy to go back and forth between URGE and my music library. I like the ease and simplicity alot. It also has plugin support for other music stores like WMP10 has, but you still need separate programs for those to work. Secondly, URGE allows you to watch music videos for free (if they exist). I like being able to see a music without the complicated browser navigation on MTVs website. Thirdly, URGE allows you to restore your downloads. This may not sound like much, but it makes things so much easier for me. Typically, when you purchase a song for 99 cents, the license only allows playback on that computer. But I have two computers that I use for music: my laptop at ASU and my computer at home. With Yahoo, for example, I would have to buy a song on one computer, burn it to a CD, then rip the CD on the other computer, with a loss in quality. With URGE, all I have to do is go to my account and click on "Restore Downloads". I even tested this with one song and it works great. I think other music stores do this as well, but my current favorite, Yahoo, does not. To my knowledge, URGE and Yahoo have the same offerings, even though MTV proclaims it has about 500,000 more songs.

If URGE is so great, then why isn't it my new favorite? Because of price. It's $10/month and Yahoo is only $7/month. That's a big difference per year, and to me that's worth a little inconvenience. Meanwhile, I'll still use Ruckus because it's free, even though it's a big pile of shit.