So eMusic has been around for quite some time, but has it changed over the years? How does it fare against iTunes and Amazon? I hadn’t used it for some time, so I went over and grabbed myself a subscription.

I’m not going to go crazy with this entry, so I will just tell you what you need to know. eMusic’s catalog is pretty large. If you like independent music, you will love eMusic. If you intend on buying music from any of the major record labels, go elsewhere. This part hasn’t really changed over the years. Their catalog is growing, but only as other independent labels get onboard.

With their most basic subscription, songs only cost $0.35 each, and they are DRM-free MP3’s at ~200kbit VBR. Definitely awesome. For whatever reason, though, they do not offer album art still. However, if you have an account on the iTunes Music Store, you can just use iTunes’ album art grabbing feature to fix this.

And I think that little detail kind of summarizes the whole service — you should use italongside a service like iTunes; the catalog is not good enough to be your only source of music unless you don’t like anything by any of the big labels at all. But if you consume a lot of independent music, eMusic is still a great service, and will save you a lot of money for the songs they offer that you want.