Henry sez, “the Smithsonian is making its Folkways collection (an incredible collection of American and world music, often collected by professional musicologists) available for download at 99c per song (more for some longer music). The nice bit is that the music is available in MP3, so that the buyer is free to transfer it to other devices etc as he/she wants. They seem to be making a big effort to get royalties back to the original artist too.”
I’d happily pay $10 a month (and lock in for a year, a la the original eMusic) for an unlimited sub to Folkways. It’s so eclectic and at times uneven that it cries out for a taster’s-menu approach to its wares, where you can sample just about anything. And my guess is that they’d sell a lot of one year subs that would pay out more than the subscribers would spend on a track-by-track basis (all-you-can-eat menus are cash cows, as AOL and others have discovered by going from metered service to flat rate).
But this is still fantastic news: no DRM, royalties to artists, and an incredible catalog of materials.
(Thanks, Henry!)
Update: Jen points out that this is a dupe of Xeni’s post from last month — I’m gonna leave it up for the stuff on flat-rate pricing, but be sure to catch Xeni’s post and the excellent comments she updated with.