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
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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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