Online MP3s (legit) expirences

[Saldrin]

I have not bought a CD in over 10 years, nor have I ever purchased an MP3. I've never used iTunes. I'm getting fat and I need to excercise so I'm buying an mp3 player to motivate myself to do something...anything.

I am not buying an ipod, I was thinking of an Sandisk Sansa. What are some good options to get mp3s legally, with very little DRM issues? I was about to buy the sandisk online and it comes with a free month of Napster, but I read the fine print and it says I need to maintain my subscription to listen to the music I purchased. Thats a rather bad deal... Easy fix is probably just use a wav recorder then convert, but I'm trying to stay honest.

What else is out there? Rhapsody? Walmart? I don't mind playing $1 per song, but I want that song to be mine after I get it. Maning I can leave it on my PC, transfer it to my portable, burn a CD....

Suggestions? Expirences? Recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

 

[shoulin]

iTunes is now DRM free, with that i dont think u could go wrong, u cant sync to anything but an ipod with itunes, but there are converters out there to make the files to reg mp3's ... and thats still legit, if u own the file u can do whatever u want to it (convert, rip, burn, etc...)

 

[artmaven]

This may be a bit late but I'll give you my .02 anyway. I have two Sansa mp3 players and I'm over the moon about them. It took some doing, tho.

The first one (e260) crashed one day, just after loading it, at the start of a 5 day weekend holiday, about 30 days after I purchased it. I was livid. I took it to Best Buy but the Geek Squad (or whatever they call themselves) said there was nothing that could be done for the patient and suggested pulling the plug.

I hadn't taken out extended warrenty on it so I had to mail it to Sandisk and get a replacement under warrenty. I couldn't live w/out the thing since I had immediately become addicted to it so I bought another on the spot. I explored all the other brands at Best Buy and decided that they all sucked so I bought the e280R. Fabulous! and it included a 3 month trial subscription to Rhapsody, which let me load the e280R w/subscription trax. The addiction was more severe than ever. 30 days later it crashed, too.

A music forum friend recommended anythingbutipod.com as a forum to troubleshoot my Sansa. They were great. I not only solved the e280R problems, I solved the e260 problems, too. I keep DLs and rips on the e260 and I keep subscription trax on the e280. Fantabulous! I mean it.

My conclusion is that Sansa is fantastic once you work out it's bugs. I'm really glad I didn't mail it in for a replacement but de-bugged it myself b/c that's when it works great. Once you de-bug, no problems at all and I like knowing the thing inside and out. If you're not up for that, don't bother w/Sansa.

Now, Rhapsody is another story. I absolutely adore it. DLs aren't a terrible hassel, I spend $.89/song, I've gotten 15 track albums for $8.99. They burn to CD, I rip to mp3 and I'm set. Not my favorite way of doing it but I'm not gonna spend money and leave the DLs in .rax format. As long as I do that, I really love it, esp the subscription (to-go) trax. BUT it's got some serious issues. Check out their forum before you do anything w/Rhapsody. They, like everyone else (including Microsoft's Vista, McAfee, Lavasoft Ad-Aware), release software long before some huge bugs have been worked out. I'm so fed up w/that way of doing business. And Rhapsody subscription trax have to be synched/re-licensed on your billing date, from your computer, or they won't play. That 30 day license thing is a bunch of junk. License the to-go trax on the 31 of the month and if your billing date is the 1st, you'll have to re-license again. Makes vacationing w/out the laptop a subscription-music-no-go. It'll still play the purchased music fine.

On that note, according to folks on the forums, there are some major issues trying to get Rhapsody to work on Vista, esp x64. Last I read, it won't work w/ 64-bit at all and there's more than I can handle getting it to run on x32. I'm gonna wait a while before moving to Vista. Too many programs won't run on it. Lavasoft has issues w/it, too.

If you're still in the market, check out the anythingbutipod forums and Anything But Ipod Reviews & News before you buy.
If you're interested in Rhapsody, checkout Rhapsody forums first.

Good luck on the motivation.