Pay as You go MP3 Downloads.

[Adera]

In Sweden Spotify is really popular and in think its really good. You can try it for free but then your limited to only 20 hours a month with advertisements, if you get an invite then you can listen as much as you want but you still get the advertisements.

If you subscribe as a premium user you can use spotify on your mobile phone too and you can listen to music in offline mode on booth the computer client and on the phone by syncing you music while connected. Wlan might be preffered when syncing for the phone as there might be quite alot of data traffic, but here you can get a quite good payment plan so streaming over 3G is no problem.

I'm not sure which countries you can use Spotify in as it started in Sweden but you could check it out at http://www.spotify.com

They use 7 Digital if you want to buy music from them but I've never buyed music from them or 7 Digital.

[Janine Dee]

Oh sweetie, that is exactly what I don't want… no subscriptions, free or otherwise. Subscriptions have contracts and clauses and emails with fantastic offers…. I want to pay and play.

I may be crazy, but I find myself comparing it to digital books I've been getting into. I pay X amount for Y number of books, and once my card clears I am directed to Z download page with links for the books I bought.

But everyone wants to have me streaming to a 3G device that I haven't bothered to buy. (Unless your willing to shell out about $100 or so for your plan a month it's nearly useless, and I don't NEED to check my email away from home THAT badly.)

Right now I have plenty of MP3's I made off my cd's loaded to my phone… I just want to be able to legally purchase additional ones without subscriptions or data plans I don't have and have no wish to get.

And please don't think I'm taking issue with you, this is general purpose frustration. 

[Adera]

I'm not taking issue hun, its just that I've found Spotify to be the most reasonable legal solution.

[Janine Dee]

And how sad is that? I mean I love the options we have over the internet, but who would have thought cash and “carry” would not be one of them.

[Bear]

Part of that is security related,…registration of a party to establish an identity. I do not think you'll get around it especially  with the high incident of identity theft. General security programs have an internal check cross referencing the card identity with the registered user. Address and IPO verification, it's not a perfect screening,…but it should be done throughout.

Cash and carry is a concept you'll not find.

[Janine Dee]

That I get, I mean the payment IS electronic so I probably should have “cash” there. I just want to be able to buy the file without having to install any new programs onto my system. The problem is that they all seem to have “download managers” which means “Click here to agree to a long legal document it would take a lawyer a week to decode, but basically allows us to do as we will to your system.”

I may just end up going with Amazon, because while they DO have a download manager, you seem to be able to click to not use it and just download via the browser.

[Adera]

As long as you can play it on any device, won't be very fun if your stuck using their program because of DRM.

[Janine Dee]

That's a big part of it too. I mean if someone sold CD's that could only be played on their brand of CD players… well I basically want to be able to buy digital music with the same legal rights I would have if I bought it hard copy. Again, happy to pay (I know, broken record, but the companies doing this shit are using piracy as their excuse) just wanting to enjoy it as I choose.

[Lover]

I actually dont know any companies without registration. But at most of all you just need an email and a password. I agree, its not the best way, but is it really a big problem? You can choose a single mail address for it.

If you just need few songs, you also can download them from youtube and convert to mp3.

[Janine Dee]

I didn't explain well, I don't mind having to set up an account, but I don't want to have to download a program to download the mp3's, and the problem is that all of them want me to set up an account before explaining what it's going to take.

So I'm hoping one of us knows a good site where I could set up and account (NOT a monthly fee membership, just an account), make a purchase and mp3s that I can play on any device that plays mp3s. WITHOUT any specialized hardware or software from the originating site.

[Lover]

Maybe you can try http://www.musicload.de

As far as I know you need an account. But you can choose many different ways to pay (incl. paypal). It's without DRM and you don't need any software. Musicload is owned to “Deutsche Telekom”. So it is a serious company.

[Janine Dee]

Can Paypal exchange currencies? Because while I couldn't read the site I could tell it wasn't set up for dollars (at least not the parts I looked at).

[Lover]

It should work, as I paid with paypal in an US store. They took the current value and I got my bill in Euro. What I didn't thought of when I gave you this page, its not cheap for you I think. It's better to pay with Euro in America than the other way.

[Janine Dee]

I thought of that to “What's the exchange rate? cause I'm guessing the dollar is still crap right now.”  I'm gaining perspective… and thinking I will go Amazon. I think I'll have to click “No I don't want the download manager.” for each and every damn song, BUT I'm stubborn enough to put up with it just so I can say I didn't buckle and give them an unknown level of access to my system for nothing more then the sake of convenience.

[Janine Dee]

Ah well I ended up going Amazon, and happily while they did have a little box off to the side mentioning their download manager and how it can synch up with Windows Media Player and Ipods (because manual drag and drop is SOOOO passe) any one who's had sex with a woman knows there are just some boxes you don't want to touch. 

I downloaded half a songs, in normal MP3, and they're playing just fine.

[Author]

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