More on digital music

A few days ago I wrote a post comparing the costs and advantages of buying a CD vs. buying an album on iTunes. A few things I neglected to mention:

• For most people CD's are more convenient. You can play them on any stereo in the house without any additional technology. This isn't a problem for me since my place is 500 sq. feet and my only stereo is attached to my iBook, but it is for other people. Also, playing mp3's in the car requires and iPod and an iTrip or adapter.
• Plus if people don't back up their data they can lose all their music with a hard drive crash. It's appalling how bad people are about backing up their data, but that's another topic entirely.
• You can buy digital music even cheaper than iTunes. I just signed up for eMusic again. You have to sign up for a plan, but it comes out to around $.25 per song. The basic plan is 40 songs a month for $9.99--but hurry because they're changing the plans on the 21st (Tuesday) and the basic plan will only be 30/month. That's still cheap, but if you sign up now you'll be locked in. You can try it for free with 25 free downloads, and if you like it you'll be locked in. If you don't you can quit without spending anything. They tend to mostly have independent music. There's some overlap with iTunes. For example, I could have gotten the Dan Bern album from them. I look at it this way: For the price of that one CD I can download six ten-song albums...