A Thorough Review of eMusic

eMusic is a fairly large online music store, currently owned by Dimensional Associates LLC. It is second in customer base only to Apple's Itunes Store. It offers direct downloads of MP3 files without the Digital Rights Management encoding that the other major download services use, which means they are not hobbled in any way and can be freely copied/burned without limitation. Because of this, major labels have been hesitant to license their music to eMusic, so the catalog largely focuses on indie and obscure rock, blues, jazz, folk and classical music.

eMusic currently has a trial offer going, where you can download up to 25 mp3s (in a period of 14 days) absolutely free of charge or commitment. As long as you cancel before the 14 days are up, you pay nothing. You do have to give them a valid credit card number as security, however. I went into this trial with the intention of actually subscribing to eMusic for at least a few months, as a few of my music-loving friends had highly recommended the service. However, after going through my trial period, I opted to cancel without continuing as a subscriber, for a number of reasons that I will discuss below.

Signing Up and Setting Up

Both signing up and cancelling were notably painless. As mentioned before, they do ask you for a credit card number even if you don't continue beyond the trial period, but outside of giving that they asked for a very minimal amount of information. Making a new account took less than five minutes and I was launched into the eMusic store with 25 downloads and ready to begin.