Re: [libreplanet-discuss] buying CDs VS Digital Downloads

[J.B. Nicholson]

Cardoza, Michael wrote:
> Where as digital downloads almost always come in a format that is
> non-free, if they come in a format that is free you either need non-free
> software to download them, or at the least non-free java script to
> download them. In the case of amazon if something happens to your files
> you need to download the songs individually as there is no Software for
> GNU/Linux (that I am aware of) that can download a whole album.

There are sources that distribute DRM-free recordings that work excellently 
with free software. Magnatune.com, for instance, will sell you unlimited 
access to their library in a variety of formats (including FLAC) for a 
one-time fee and they offer an SQLite database which catalogs all of their 
current recordings at http://he3.magnatune.com/info/sqlite_magnatune.db.gz. 
It's not hard to write a program to download the latest database, figure 
out which recordings are new to you, and download them all with free 
software. As far as I know there are no region restrictions used to 
prohibit downloading from magnatune.com. There is a note about sharing the 
recordings as well (see 
http://blog.magnatune.com/2004/04/peertopeer_netw.html although the 
complete terms are not entirely clear to me).

I imagine there are other comparable sources of media out there that work 
similarly.