SwingDJs

Amazon.com usually only has clips for the first five songs of an album. Any recommendations out there for sites that have clips for more of the songs on an album?

I guess I can always get off my ass and go to one of the music stores that allows you to open up new CDs and preview them in their entirety.

www.cheap-cds.com has fewer sampled CDs overall, but for those it has, it typically has the whole CD. Plus they have .m3u (playlist) files for the CDs, so you can click on one link and hear the whole CD.

www.towerrecords.com is also pretty good about getting most of the tracks for the CDs they have. I think they get their data from www.muze.com, which has a note about how Sony only releases the first five tracks of their CDs.

Here in Vancouver, Virgin Records has a new music sampling system: select your cds, take them to one of many bar code readers/digital stations in the store, and scan the bar code. The tracks of the cd will be listed on the screen of the listening station, and you can select any or all for sampling. The drag is that you can only hear the first 30 seconds or so, which doesn't get you through the intro of many a swing song.

Once you've done your sampling, make a note of the cds you want, then go to A&B Sound to buy them (because it's way cheaper). (A&B will also let you open 3 to as-many-as-you-want {depending on who's working the counter} for sampling.)

Lucy

barnes and noble in LA does that too

your cds, take them to one of many bar code readers/digital stations in the store, and scan the bar code

What's fun is to go with a friend, wait until said friend is listening to something, then go off, find some really awful music, and swipe the CD under your friend's bar code reader before s/he knows what's going on.

Uh...not that I know from experience or anything.

More on topic, though, I've seen that at Barnes and Noble in the Bay Area too. So I think it might be an all-over sort of thing.

Kyle wrote:barnes and noble in LA does that too

http://www.bn.com

Sometimes it's the first 5 songs, sometimes the entire album.

http://entertainment.msn.com or windowsmedia.com usually have samples of the whole album.

Well, E-music is great because you can hear a sample, download the whole song, put it on a CD, drive around listening to it for weeks -and then decide if it's worth going out and buying.

Greg Avakian wrote:Well, E-music is great because you can hear a sample, download the whole song, put it on a CD, drive around listening to it for weeks -and then decide if it's worth going out and buying.

Except that you paid $10/month for that.

Actually, i think it's a great service, but I can't deal with the low bitrate sounds (128)

GemZombie wrote:

Greg Avakian wrote:Well, E-music is great because you can hear a sample, download the whole song, put it on a CD, drive around listening to it for weeks -and then decide if it's worth going out and buying.

Except that you paid $10/month for that.

Actually, i think it's a great service, but I can't deal with the low bitrate sounds (128)

I agree completely, which is one reason why why I have not jumped on the Emusic bandwagon.

I would have to mostly agree, but it depends on what you get; there is some stuff you can definitely DJ, but watch out for cymbals. Anyway, unless it's crap I wouldn't buy, I use Emusic as much to figure out what I really want to buy and that definitely saves me more than $10 a month.
The thing I really miss are personel and liner notes. It's so easy to snatch a song here and there I don't get around to looking stuff up on AM for instance.

Yes, it makes sense for that purpose. It's less necessary here in Austin, though, because most CD shops in Austin allow you to listen to any CD in the store in the store, and many allow you to return what you don't want for store credit, no questions asked, within two weeks. It makes good business sense because it promotes satisfied customers who will be more willing to purchase stuff and try new things out.

Which kinda gets back to the original post Ron made. First, Emusic has all the tracks sampled on many CDs (though still not close to all CDs) for $10 a month. However, I still prefer actually going to a store and listening to the physical product. I also tend to find lots of new stuff that I otherwise would not have considered that way.

The shear volume of stuff you get from eMusic makes it worth it. No law saying you can't buy the real CDs later. Because of eMusic, I have a few hundred more jazz CDs than I would otherwise.

As I am sure Greg will attest, you can still visit the records stores and download from eMusic. It is not a either or type of thing.

As for playing eMusic at a dance, a few of the local DJs, including me DJ from eMusic generated music and most people don't notice. Sure, Lawrence might be able to tell. But, the average dancer does not notice.

Nate Dogg wrote: As for playing eMusic at a dance, a few of the local DJs, including me DJ from eMusic generated music and most people don't notice. Sure, Lawrence might be able to tell. But, the average dancer does not notice.

That's definitely correct. I use E-music stuff too and as far as I know nobody has noticed the lower quality yet. Hell, 50 percent of the dancers use the music as a metronome, and maybe 10 percent actually listens to it carefully.

/Patrik - in a pessimistic mood

I just came across fye.com and they've got samples of every track of every CD I searched for. The server is pretty quick, too, compared to bn.com and amazon.com.