What did the sea say to the penguin?
Nothing, it just waved…
This month’s worthwhile spending is in a yearly subscription to Magnatune, a music label company that’s got all my sympathy. What you have here is a record company with a business model for this century: listen to full albums on-line for free, purchase albums on DRM–free files in the format of your choice, re-download as many times as you want, and share with friends. 15 dollars a month will get you full access to the catalog. And the share with the artists? 50%. The PirateBay cannot match this.
I’ve known Magnatune for a while and own a handful of good albums — Shira Kammen’s Music of Waters (joyful, simple Irish folk) or Brad Sucks’ Out of It (full-sounded, punchy Indie with a noir touch) come to mind. As a heavyweight-but-picky listener, I find the catalog (now broad and rather rich) to match that of most traditionnal labels in terms of signal-to-noise ratio.
If you happen to use Ubuntu, the whole Magnatune catalog is waiting, ready to be streamed, right within the Rhythmbox player. I enjoy randomly playing tracks of every genre and then press the download button when my head starts to move.
