[Nirmalanow]

Magnatune.com is now offering a download membership where for $18 month (minimum 3 months) you can download as much of their music as you want. Music is available in many different formats including lossless and WAV. And fully 50% of all the money goes directly to the artists. Their slogan is "We are a record label but we are not evil" You can also purchase single album downloads for as little as $5, and you can listen to all of their music before buying.

I just joined and have downloaded a dozen or so albums in the first few days. I have no connection with them, I just like the way they do business.

Magnatune: license music and MP3 download

 

[PachmanP]

This sounds like a pretty sweet thing going on. I wonder though how frequently they add new music because it might not be worth staying month to month after you dl everything they have that is interesting unless they add enough new stuff that it would be cost effective to go unlimited vs pay 5 bucks a pop.

 

[micaela]

After looking around the site for a while I joined for the 3 month download subscription. There was enough music I was interested in to be worth the $54 to me - even if that is all that I choose to use it for. It certainly does seem to be a refreshing take on a business that needs a new model.

 

[Nirmalanow]

I will probably download the music I am interested in now while my membership is active, and then switch back to paying for individual albums as they come out.

 

[Nirmalanow]

By the way, they have a very interesting collection of artists in a wide variety of genres and I found it easy to find enough music to make it worth my while.

 

[haloxt]

I just found out about magnatune and seems like $60 for unlimited downloads for 3 months is one amazing deal. I'm going to get all the Jami Sieber albums right now ^^ after listening to the first song in her Hidden Sky album I just had to sign up for them.

 

[Nirmalanow]

I have all of the Jami Sieber albums also. Even though I have not bought from them in a while because I inherited a bunch of new CDs recently, I really like the Magnatune catalog and also their business model.

 

[Head Injury]

Sounds like a great deal. If I can find more than the money's worth in good albums, I think I'll take them up on this offer.

Any suggestions in pretty much any genre? Rock, jazz, blues mostly?

Just noticed most of the thread was old. What's this new stuff about paying a minimum of $10 a month for the Download membership? Do you get less if you pay that much, or does paying more just better benefit the artists and website?

 

[haloxt]

I tried listening to most of their rock albums, some are dumb but they have a couple of good ones. They don't have too many jazz and blues (13 albums total) but less than half of that are actually jazz and blues. And one hip-hop album lol. If you like world or new-agey music, that's where magnatune really shines.

The subscription thing is simple, you choose a subscription length, decide however much you want to pay ($10 per month is minimum), and you have full access to their entire site. If you subscribe for 3 months at $10, what happens is at the end of the 3 months, $15 goes to magnatune, $15 gets distributed to those albums you stream/download. Say you download 15 albums and stream from 15 albums, each album's artist gets 50 cents distributed to them

. Sounds pretty evil of magnatune

.