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You ask if the upcoming legal digital download systems for Windows are going to approach the quality of Apple's iTunes. I for one can't wait to see how iTunes itself does when it is made available for the Windows market.
However there is a superior solution already available, for Windows, for Mac and for Linux; and, crucially for many of us, to countries worldwide rather than just the US. It is called EMusic (www.emusic.com) and it has offered both better value for money and less restrictions than iTunes since 1998.
We happy EMusic subscribers pay a single monthly fee of $9.95 and in return are allowed to download as much as we like from the massive database of albums available. We can write to CD, to iPods or other portable devices and copy our files to other machines.
Under iTunes, ten bucks will get you ten tracks. Under EMusic it'll get you as much as you like. Spot the difference.
It distributes content from almost a thousand labels who are leaders in their genres, such as Epitaph (punk), Shanachie (folk), Beggars Banquet (indie), Metal Blade (metal), Buda (world) etc. There are brand new releases and there are backlist titles that are out of print.
The one caveat is that most major labels don't want to play. However we are finding that this is fine because there is so much great independent music available at EMusic that we don't have to conform to ClearChannel censorship any more.
Why wait for new alternatives to iTunes when a superior model has been around for five years?
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