eMusicology

I haven’t written about eMusic for a while, but this week I’m feeling much more charitable about the service. Chuffed, even. Because while for several months I’ve been filling my 40 download a month quota by digging through the Fantasy Records back catalog (not that that’s bad, but honestly it gets monotonous after a while to hear only really good jazz!), this week I checked and was thrilled to see a bunch of releases from Ryko had been added to the service. Including, thank you very much, Mission of Burma’s Vs., some early Replacements, and the entirety of Frank Zappa’s recorded works. Now if they’d just put up the early Elvis Costello releases, which as far as I can tell aren’t on any of the download services yet, my bliss would be complete.

It also looks like K Records, the oddly brilliant Olympia label, has been added, meaning that a bunch of Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Dub Narcotic Sound System, and Halo Benders albums are available, as well as Beck’s brilliantly lo-fi folky One Foot in the Grave.

The best part, of course, is that 40 tracks for $9.95 a month is about four times cheaper than buying the albums on iTunes (and the downloads are 128 to 192 bit MP3s), and buying a booster pack of downloads is an equivalent bargain. The only challenge will be pacing myself.