File Format Support
Due to the contentious nature of DRM encoding that was initially used by competing download services, eMusic won early praise for not including any in their own files, despite the fact that it cost them contracts with the major record labels. eMusic openly stated that this was a business move that has greatly aided the site's popularity. While the site currently sells music from the four major record labels, the company has stated that it will remain true to its independent roots and build new product features that are geared towards members who are independent-minded, not mainstream pop-culturists.
eMusic stores a record of user purchases on its internal servers, but does not place any purchaser information inside the tracks that are sold. The service uses the LAME mp3 encoder to produce variable bit rate MP3 files. Analysis on the files show that the preset used is alt-preset-standard, a high quality VBR preset aiming at an average bit rate around 192kbit/s. However, and contrary to the information published on the web site, files can sometimes be found in lower quality bit rates, including for recent releases. The preview streams provided for each song match the bit rate quality of the full download files.
Read more about this topic: Good Noise
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