So apparently, while I wasn’t looking Emusic got really, well… good. Last time I checked, it was a decent service it seemed, one of the only monthly fee music download services that let you have the songs in pure, unadulterated, DRM free, all-natural mp3 format. Unfortunately, the selection was pretty limited, at least for artists that I was interested in. Then today, in the middle of reading some articles about the pending RIAA civil lawsuits and mediocre new download services, I came across something about Emusic and went to give it another look. This time around, I thought they had a really good selection of stuff I was interested in. I guess I’ll give their trial a go and see if it’s worth keeping around. The only problem is I’m not sure I can get used to the idea of really owning an album after downloading it, even if the artists are compensated as they are in this case. I just don’t know how I feel about not having the actual physical album, cover art, liner notes and all.

Update: 3 hours later and I’ve rolled right through my 50 trial songs and gone into about 18 albums downloaded with about 14 more on my list to get later. I keep looking through their catalog and finding more and more stuff I’d been wanting to get for a long time and even lots of new stuff that I’ve heard about recently. There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight, which brings up my only other concern… how well are the artists being compensated for this. As great as >18 albums for $14.99 is it just leaves me a little unsure how that breaks down into reasonable compensation for all involved. So yeah, I’ll probably end up buying the albums that I really dig, both to have something tangible in my collection and to be sure to support the artist.