Have you tried amaroK? (http://amarok.kde.org/)

The album price is a little more intimidating, and I’m not sure the video clip price is tempting – I don’t think of a video clip as being worth three times the song. In many cases these days, when you buy a CD, you can get a DVD with the music videos, or a live concert, as well.

The DRM is in the good-enough category. It’s not so restrictive that people have to by-pass it, it doesn’t get in the way of common tasks (e.g. burning a CD for that long road-trip), it allows loans (after a fashion), and it doesn’t have any implicit expiry clauses. Only people really interested in “sharing” music will bother bypassing it, I think.

As for your wife’s spending habits, that’s where the Allowance feature comes in.

Also, I am not sure if 1.70 is good value yet, I guess if you cherry pick songs it is. But I must be a bit old fashioned, I like to listen to albums as they were built by the artists, including the “bad songs” which may grow on me. Heck, I miss having 2 sides – flipping a record over always seemed to open up the album more… but I am a dying breed I guess.

Also, you are paying for a lossy format, it is not the same data as if you bought the (well mastered) CD – most people probably wouldn’t worry about this though – I can tell the difference on my studio grade speakers at home, but mostly from years of amateur music production teaching my ears to tell the difference…

But it is about time !

My wife is more then keen to use it, especially the TV program thing once they roll that out (I will have to watch the credit card VERY closely).

And I’m _defintely_ going for the shopping-cart model, Simon – the potential for impulse buy is far too huge. Heck, I bought three songs last night when I was only going to stop at 1!