LimeWire Store Opens for Business
Written by enigmax on March 17, 2008LimeWire has just launched a beta version of its online store, requiring no additional software and offering DRM-free MP3 music downloads for as little as $0.27 per track.
A message on the LimeWire Store frontpage reads: “Welcome to the LimeWire Store: We’re so new, we’re beta!”
A little late, but open for business today, the LimeWire Store Beta is here offering a web browser-based interface for downloading music. Even though the same people are behind the LimeWire P2P client, the system is centralized, with the company hosting the MP3s on its own servers.
No subscription is required to use the store and tracks can also be paid for individually at $0.99 each, but there are significant savings to be had with some of the pre-paid plans. The ‘Platinum’ plan offers the best price, offering 75 ‘Download Credits’ for $19.99 a month, which works out to $0.27 per track. ‘Download Credits’ can be purchased using a Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover credit cards.
Right now, the store is a browser based experience for anyone running Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Firefox, Safari or Opera, but in the future the store will also be integrated into the LimeWire client. In an interview with Slyck last year, LimeWire said of the integration:
Our plan with the LimeWire Store is to add to the LimeWire experience–we’re not going to take anything away. We think purchase links should appear alongside Gnutella search results, similar to how Google keeps sponsored links separate. We believe a significant number of users will choose to purchase content if the presentation is convenient and unobtrusive, the price is right, and the product isn’t hindered by DRM.
True to their word, all the tracks are being offered as DRM-free 256kbps VBR (variable bitrate) MP3s. However, due to the dreaded ‘licensing issues’, LimeWire Store is only available to US customers at the moment.
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61 Responses
due to the dreaded ‘licensing issues’
it seems there’s all ways ussues with this some where, well at least they are trying and the price does sound right and the price they are asking for. most of all it’s DRM free.
So…did I miss something? Haven’t used LimeWire for a while but given the choice between buying a DRM-free track and downloading a DRM free track in whatever format I want for free, why do they think people will bother with their store?
Then again, I haven’t used LW in years, so I’m not up on what they’re playing at
Thats kinda cool i guess…
That’s kind of… irony, lol xD
Booo!
This is the wrong way to go. It’s just like itunes. It doesn’t have the selection that p2p has, and you still pay too much. The only business models that are able to compete with piracy are voluntary collective licensing and/or pay-what-you-want downloads.
At least they have higher quality drm free mp3s. That’s a start.
What is Limewire?
Just kidding but why would people use this when they can use torrents? It seems shitty but people won’t want to pay for music with Limewire when they’re using Limewire to get music for free. Does this make sense to anybody?
Listening to mp3’s in 2008 is just plain stupid (you like to listen to music full of holes ? I don’t), flac is winning every day, and PAYING for mp3’s is completely insane
Too bad you can’t tell the difference between a proper V0 rip and FLAC. Holes my ass
Listening to mp3s in 2008 is the same as listening to them any other year previously, for casual day to day listening there is nothing wrong with mp3.
FLAC and other formats are great for archiving but not practical for every day use as you well know, i don’t even know why i’m bothering typing this.
nice features, but when it available for asian country?
well paying for music through limewire is going to confuse people. Any yes most people cannot tell the difference between and an MP3 Track, even if the CD is retail! Plus the CD is “missing” parts it is not completely lossless as it stands anyway.
MP3 Players are serving there part for the casual walk to work, drive to work listening to the music you want to here…
To use FLAC for the same archieve for casual listening you would need probably around (working on a FLAC album is around 350MB and MP3 is around 60MB) 10 times the amount of space…
Yes FLAC is better on paper but in reality you just won’t be able to tell the difference…
kinda ironic that limewire opens a store… the price still is just a tad too high for my liking, at something like 15c I’d be more tempted to buy a song.
The only ones to really get it right were allofmp3.com and that got shut down- so I think I’ll stick to my free p2p
pay?!
Sounds like a Good Idea but as long as there is an ‘as good’ range of tracks that you can find on torrents/limewire and it becomes available to the rest of the world soon!
This IS the way it has to go!
this is gonna fall on it’s arse.
who uses limewire any more nowadays anyway?
i can guarantee the artists won’t see a cent of their $0.27 per track so you might as well get the torrent. or buy the CD.
@15
What are you basing that guarantee on?
[quote comment="313193"]@15
What are you basing that guarantee on?[/quote]
the fact that a lot of artists don’t see a penny from iTunes sales, which are way more expensive. $0.27 is just not enough money for any substantial amount to filter down to the artist.
I think it’s good - in theory. Its nice to see people putting the effort in for providing legal alternatives to piracy. But there’s one major problem : the population of the US is estimated at around 300 million. The population of the world is estimated at around 6.6 billion. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that work out to around 6.3 billion people that CAN’T use this legal alternative?
I, for one, would willingly fork out a few bucks/euros/pounds (depending on where I’m living at the time) to legally download my favorite movies, TV shows and music. But there’s no avenue for me to do so! So I’m forced into piracy. Its that or nothing, and frankly, I’ll choose the illegal media over no media.
This page is still called “Torrent”Freak, right?!
Or in other words: Who cares?
[quote comment="313151"]So…did I miss something? Haven’t used LimeWire for a while but given the choice between buying a DRM-free track and downloading a DRM free track in whatever format I want for free, why do they think people will bother with their store?
Then again, I haven’t used LW in years, so I’m not up on what they’re playing at[/quote]
Because of the legality of it. If the download is straight from their servers it won’t even look like P2P activity to your ISP, it’s supporting the band, it’s not stealing… Just because your moral values are low enough for you to steal without consideration doesn’t mean everyone is like that.
…I like Limewire for downloading one-zees/two-zees, I bitTorrent for when I want a whole album or discography. I feel too guilty downloading lossless; I wish there was a way I could pay for that. The kind of music I like was mastered during the vinyl years anyway, vinyl’s headroom is only 128k. And even if it wasn’t, I don’t have the space to store lossless.
As far as DRM MP3s, that doesn’t bother me, because I can just play ‘em in iTunes on my Mac, with Audio Hijack recording ‘em in the background, stripping out DRM, then I just add metadata/cut down sample rate and copy ‘em back to my server. :)
[quote comment="313217"]Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that work out to around 6.3 billion people that CAN’T use this legal alternative?[/quote]But how many of those 6.3 billion even have internet? Even though the US is a measly 300 million, we’re one of (if not the) largest consumers in entertainment.
I appreciate what Limewire is doing, but nah, I’m not going to use it. I don’t have a credit card, for one; and like someone said, it’s hard to imagine artists really benefiting at all from us buying off Limewire.
From this article, I think I’d mention this to anyone that wanted to download individual songs (but too impatient to figure out bittorrent) because at least they’re promoting quality, rite.
You’ve got to be kidding me, LimeWire seriously sucks…
[quote comment="313157"]Booo!
This is the wrong way to go. It’s just like itunes. It doesn’t have the selection that p2p has, and you still pay too much. The only business models that are able to compete with piracy are voluntary collective licensing and/or pay-what-you-want downloads.
At least they have higher quality drm free mp3s. That’s a start.[/quote]
well, look at it this way. now that theres more competition for buisness models such as these (for itunes, etc), maybe prices will drop? :)
MP3 is shit, simple as. If you cant tell the difference between V0@260k and FLAC@800k then you’re either deaf or your stereo is a piece of shit. I mean stereo, as in a proper hifi separates system, not some half assed, over priced set of active pc speakers made from crap quality components in shiney plasic boxes. Suppose you’re all also blind and cant tell the difference between 1000kbps avi and 1080p either.
They should be distributing lossless quality singles. If someone wants to then convert that to mp3, fine, at least then there is choice. Screw lossy formats. Better yet, there is absolutely no reason what so ever not to offer studio quality (24/96) for download for a slightly higher charge. I paid for an uber quality 192khz soudcard, I want something that will put it to good use, not some shite quality lossy format with 75% of the bits missing. They should take a page out of Linn Records book, and offer REAL quality at a very reasonable price.
Limewire has had over 139,000,000 downloads (making it #3 of the top 50) at download.com
In any event, this isn’t about selling mp3’s and being an iTunes competitor as much as it is about legalizing the software, just as Azureus did with Vuze.
Yet again, you completely miss the point.
[quote]However, due to the dreaded ‘licensing issues’, LimeWire Store is only available to US customers at the moment.[/quote]
Wow, now that is just pure, unadulterated business foresight and intelligence right there; these guys must be the corporate masters of the business world. I’m sure their lawyers all graduated cum laude and their managers and CEOs are all first-in-class.
Sheer, staggering genius! Make sure most of the planet has no legal way to aquire their music - just cripple the single best music service (i.e. the one that doesn’t gouge the customer for a product worth 1/20th of its cost, and that doesn’t crap all over what the customer has paid for with drm and quality-restrictions);
that way, by leaving the customer faced with only two choices:
a) 20x-overpriced, crapped on goods, vs.
b) free, high quality goods,
the customer will OBVIOUSLY decide to sympathize with the corporate millionaires, and hand over all their money!
Why didn’t I think of that!!!
This might sound a bit silly.. but since i cant remember ever using limewire dont really know the answer..
but… if I get this story right, they are offering user uploaded tracks (ie pirated tracks) for free and also offering the same tracks for pay-and-download?
And my 2 cents, I do agree with the user above who says the artists are not going to see sh1t at 27c a track… itunes is already screwing them and they are charging nearly 4 times as much…
Limewire, AFAIR, was one of the few or perhaps the only Gnutella client written in Java.
I used it some years ago, but ultimately dumped it because it turned out to be unstable (one way or another), not to mention slow, both of which seemed to be due to Java.
Not long after I dumped LW, bittorrent took off.
I’ve used bittornado since and I almost can’t imagine using LW again.
Licencing of content is not down to Limewire, its down to the content providers who want to secure their over inflated profits in other countries while selling cheap crap in the US. For instance, if a track sells for 27c in the US, exchange rates mean that it should be about 13p in the UK. Knowing that they can use licencing to charge double, say 27p (about 55c) in the UK, means they will. The same thing happens with just about all other retail goods. Microsoft sell XP in China for about $3, but you can forget expicting that price from your local Walmart.
[quote comment="313287"]
And my 2 cents, I do agree with the user above who says the artists are not going to see sh1t at 27c a track… itunes is already screwing them and they are charging nearly 4 times as much…[/quote]
Supposing the artists are getting screwed over (which of course they are); they will be screwed over at $0.25 a track, they will be screwed over at $1.00 at track, they will be screwed over at $1.50 at track; we’re talking mafIAA dinosaurs here: they really don’t want to give any money to anyone but them selves, least of all to the people who created the music in the first place.
But suppose the artist deserves and gets 25% a track, or $0.25 a track, whichever is greater. Then Limewire sells the song for $0.30 and makes 17% profit; iTunes sells the song for $1.00 and makes 75% profit. Artist gets paid either way, but because Limewire is willing to take a hit, and make a profit instead of an insane profit [although even in this example I think the artist is not making enough profit:)], Limewire music is MUCH more lucrative to me, and I will buy a lot more of Limewire’s music. I would avoid iTunes based on both principle and economics.
So in my opinion, the workers - err, artists:) - have nothing to lose but what has already been taken from them, and nothing to gain but way more money.
[sorry, can't help smiling; I don't even really agree with communism, I'm more libertarian - check out Ron Paul on YouTube!]
Fair play to ‘em.
I’m with you there, ‘um, yar’; the prices look reasonable at raw exchange rates ($10 album being £5) but we all know full fucking well that if the same product gets sold in the UK they’ll ramp the price up closer to £10.
Ah well, it’ll be their loss.
Morons from RIAA don’t get it: licensing has to be WORLDWIDE if p2p is already worldwide.
Otherwise it is pointless.
I wouldn’t use it, because it is centralized.
At least they should provide an accounting for every track, signed by the artist, stating who gets how much from the $0.27 per track.
[quote comment="313309"]Microsoft sell XP in China for about $3, but you can forget expicting that price from your local Walmart.[/quote]
that’s real bs.ummm-kay u!
at number 2,
napster turns a profit, even though you can’t get things form free through napster anymore, it’s just as easy to torrent things.
[quote comment="313409"]…
At least they should provide an accounting for every track, signed by the artist, stating who gets how much from the $0.27 per track.[/quote]
Brilliant! F’king brilliant! And I’m not being sarcastic this time, I think that is a really good idea; charities have to account for what percentage goes to the worthy and what percentage is eaten up by the charity;
likewise, music companies should have to explicitly state how much of the profit is going to the artist, and how much is going …, well, everywhere else / the record company.
I like that idea!
it may be as likely as consumer-goods stores and car dealerships telling us what percent gross profit they are making from the sale, but I still really like that idea!
[quote comment="313419"][quote comment="313409"]…
At least they should provide an accounting for every track, signed by the artist, stating who gets how much from the $0.27 per track.[/quote]
Brilliant! F’king brilliant! And I’m not being sarcastic this time, I think that is a really good idea; charities have to account for what percentage goes to the worthy and what percentage is eaten up by the charity;
likewise, music companies should have to explicitly state how much of the profit is going to the artist, and how much is going …, well, everywhere else / the record company.
I like that idea!
it may be as likely as consumer-goods stores and car dealerships telling us what percent gross profit they are making from the sale, but I still really like that idea![/quote]
To continue with another twist, I think there should be a pool to pay those artists that do not mainstream stuff and don’t earn like the stars. But a pool has to be managed somehow. And then there will be another RIAA or MCAA.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WO42s0r2LNU
[quote comment="313412"][quote comment="313309"]Microsoft sell XP in China for about $3, but you can forget expicting that price from your local Walmart.[/quote]
that’s real bs.ummm-kay u![/quote]
lol. XP might as well be worth nothing. It’s been hacked and cracked so much that there’s more illegal copies in China than legal. How do you think I’ve gotten Windows for the past 10 years. ;)
Cute but i dont care.
I’m on Waffles & Whatcd and i live in Canada :D
I HATE Lime-weird! What do they sell? Stolen hubcaps?
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
[quote comment="313161"]Listening to mp3’s in 2008 is just plain stupid (you like to listen to music full of holes ? I don’t), flac is winning every day, and PAYING for mp3’s is completely insane[/quote]
yeah but storing flac on the other hand is absolutely insane for the most common users without terabytes at their disposal.
ITT: elitest flac-tards who have more money than sense.
Download LimeWire
http://nikito.su/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1852&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc
“MP3 music downloads for as little as $0.27 per track”
Little, eh? Is it sarcasm or are you really *that* dumb? :-)
Anyway, it’s lossy format (does anyone even use such crap now?) for insanely high price. But that’s a good start, so I have a nice proposal: make it FLAC and $0.01/album and maybe we’ll think about it. Maybe…
[quote comment="313607"]storing flac on the other hand is absolutely insane for the most common users without terabytes at their disposal[/quote]
Newsflash: 1TB of external storage is about $200 by now. And any man in his right mind will better pay for it than for shitty mp3s.
napster has done the same thing, and now limewire? I wonder what next?
napster has done the same thing, and now limewire? I wonder whats next?
sorry for the double post.
Limewire is going the same way as AudioGalaxy, and to all the kids out there, I think it fair to advise you to switch to BitTorrent. uTorrent is probably the best client to use, and it would pay you to learn how to use it anyway. Who needs all the spam, fakes, and RIAA sponsored Limewire messages anyway? Now they are offering paid alternatives, but why? Because what you want is getting harder to get and may get filtered out altogether. This is because in order to survive, they need to co-operate with the music industry, and why not turn it into a profit?
It may be time to get out before it becomes just another pay service. With bittorrent you can get whole albums and even some discographies, as well as movies, games, and software. I know many of you only want the latest tunes, but there will come a time when you want more, and also diversify.
Come on guys, you programmers, it may be time to start developing a few new p2ps also.
You can also find a lot of rarer stuff on file storage sites which you can search with a search ap or thru blogs, which are searchable thru Google.
[quote comment="313711"]”
Newsflash: 1TB of external storage is about $200 by now. And any man in his right mind will better pay for it than for *** mp3s.[/quote]
Yes this is great news, but I still don’t see why anyone would want Flac anyway. People either don’t want it or it is uneconomical to download, as most people don’t have super speed unlimited bandwidth, nor could they afford it.
On the other hand who needs better than good quality mp3 (vbr) which ensures the best value from our Internet connection.
[quote comment="313237"]…I like Limewire for downloading one-zees/two-zees, I bitTorrent for when I want a whole album or discography. I feel too guilty downloading lossless; I wish there was a way I could pay for that. The kind of music I like was mastered during the vinyl years anyway, vinyl’s headroom is only 128k. And even if it wasn’t, I don’t have the space to store lossless.
As far as DRM MP3s, that doesn’t bother me, because I can just play ‘em in iTunes on my Mac, with Audio Hijack recording ‘em in the background, stripping out DRM, then I just add metadata/cut down sample rate and copy ‘em back to my server. :)[/quote]
what the fuck? you think vinyl only has frequencies that go up to 14khz?? you think “recording” a shitty itunes song and then re-encoding it to mp3 is at all decent? were you born deaf or is that a recent development?
[quote comment="314272"]most people don’t have super speed unlimited bandwidth, nor could they afford it.[/quote]
Err. Where are you from? My country is 3-rd world by any standard, yet I have 2Mbps Down/512Kbps Up for $10/month. That’s enough to d/l FLAC which takes only ~30MB per track.
HELL YEAH!!!!!
[quote] We believe a significant number of users will choose to purchase content if the presentation is convenient and unobtrusive, the price is right, and the product isn’t hindered by DRM.[/quote]
HELL YEAH!!! _THAT_ is what the music buying experience was SUPPOSED to be like, TEN YEARS AGO!!!
[quote]True to their word, all the tracks are being offered as DRM-free 256kbps VBR (variable bitrate) MP3s.[/quote]
We’ve been waiting for this moment for ten years; music, for a GOOD PRICE, that has not been crapped all over!!!
[quote] However, due to the dreaded ‘licensing issues’, LimeWire Store is only available to US customers at the moment.[/quote]
Lol, to limewire: Go Limewire, you guys are frickin’ AWESOME!!!
And to the dinosaur mafIAA ****tards, smooth;
You do realize, this is LIMEWIRE?!? That the company is going WAY the heck out of their way let you stupid, lazy-ass bast**** in on the money train? I mean, come on: LIMEWIRE!!! As in, the users are ALREADY STEALING YOUR F’KING MUSIC;
Limewire is just saying “Hey, we support freedom of information, but we also support credit and reward going to content creators, so here, we’ll let you sell your stuff here, and we’ll do our (fair!) best to make legal music a pleasant and convenient experience, to compete with the free music people can acccess THROUGH US ALREADY!”;
and the fucking dinosaurs said “Hell no! We don’t want to be “pleasant and convenient”; we want to be unchallenged, unrestricted, all powerful god-emperors and go back to charging 20x too much for our products, and shitting all over them just before handing them over to the people who want to give us money!”
Go Limewire Go!
Die Dinosaurs Die!
and for god’s sake, finish killing yourselves already, you god-damned mafIAA bloodsuckers!!!!!
I find it lol how they did this. We fucking use limewire for downloading music for free!!
Here’s some other news: LimeWire is by far the worst P2P client to find properly titled music, videos or anything for that matter on. LimeWire is for HUGE noobs that need to realize it sucks and use P2P of some other means!
“However, due to the dreaded ‘licensing issues’, LimeWire Store is only available to US customers at the moment.”
US can kiss my ass.
TO ALL DOWNLOADERS….!!!!
I am a debut artist who’s just recorded one of the most expensive debut albums in recent history.
We have just released my debut album as a FREE HQ Mp3 download.
It was a tough decision for us to make because of the vast amounts spent on the album. We had two of the biggest record producers in the world work on it…. at Peter Gabriel’s Realworld studio and at Abbey Road studio in london.
Despite all that, we recognise the massive potential the internet and free albums in particular offers. We launched last friday and have already had 1000’s of DL’s all over the world.
Come over and download for FREE.. it takes 2 minutes to DL because we have a dedicated server.
http://www.jackrubinacci.com
Thanks
Jack
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