Five Reasons to Switch to EMusic from ITunes

Anybody that loves music and spends any time online knows that Apple's iTunes is the top dog when it comes to legal music downloads. Apple's ubiquitous iTunes service boasts of over 4 million songs as well as hundreds of feature films and television shows available for its handheld video players. iTunes features songs from mainstream major label artists as well as a number of larger independent labels, but make no mistake about it -- iTunes exists primarily to sell iPod players.

On the other hand, eMusic was designed with the music lover in mind. Second only to iTunes in the total number of songs sold online, eMusic is beginning to nip at Apple's heels as even the major labels are beginning to take a second look at this independent digital music retailer. I've used both iTunes and eMusic over the past couple of years, and have no affiliation, past or present, with either service except as a consumer.

For the avid music fan, however, especially those of us that buy a heck of a lot of music - both digital and on compact disc - eMusic is a great place to rapidly build a digital music collection. Here are five great reasons to switch to eMusic from iTunes.

1) INDEPENDENT MUSIC

Standing alone among its peers, eMusic champions independent music, offering over 2 million songs from thousands of small-to-large indie labels, including much of the CD Baby catalog. The service bills itself as the "world's largest digital retailer of independent music," and it reports its sales to Nielsen's SoundScan system. Indeed, behind only iTunes, eMusic sells nearly 5 million songs monthly, more than all of the other download services combined. Their roster of indie labels outstrips anything that you can find either online or in the real world of "bricks and mortar."