Still lining up to re-buy the same old pop-tunes? GoTriad's Pat Egan has put together an excellent how-to on why you don't want to play the me-pod/nabster game, and thanks to a new mp3-mart upstart called eMusic.com, maybe you won't need to.

eMusic?

Never heard of it? Maybe you enjoy overpaying for overhyped overproduction, since apparently that's the hip now way to be, but then again, being a reader here, you're more than likely the sane and reasonable sort and maybe you'd rather save your booty for concert tix instead. And if that's so, then you're probably wondering just who is this eMusic underdog and what's its deal. For starters, stick this bit of PR in your me-pod for a preview:

"Try it for free, and eMusic will give you 50 songs just to take a poke around. If you like it, choose a plan that costs 22 cents to 25 cents per song ... Prepay for a year, and ... pay 18.5 cents per track."
[ Move over, iTunes ]

That's like 4 free albums and then an ongoing 5-for-one sale compared to the usual leechers. Not a bad deal on the door-crasher. Only, it gets better ...

"... Limitations? None, except for the size of your hard drive. Songs are yours to keep in perpetuity, with no restriction on how many times you can burn it to a CD. (But don't pirate, people. These bands and musicians work hard to make music. Give them their money.)

And a 30-second sample is available for almost every song, so you can test drive galore.

Ok, customer-relationship-wise, that's starting to make real sense, sensitive to how I buy music and how I need (not 'want') to use the music I buy (not 'rent') so I'll give them some cred there too. It's yours, put it in your ipod or any other MP3 player, put in a CD, put it on a tape, put it in your ear anytime anywhere, put it in your friend's ear, play it at the hop. It's yours, you bought it.

So far, so real good. All that's left now is the critical issue, and the one the others all slack off on, and that's whether I'm stuck in another Columbia House all the NYC/Hollywood pop swag you can stomach catalog, or if there might be some real meat in the gumbo ...

"... eMusic covers every genre and has steadily accrued some of the best labels in the world: Matador (Pavement, Cat Power, Yo La Tengo), Fantasy/Stax (the Staple Singers, Booker T. and the MGs), New West (Dwight Yoakam, Delbert McClinton), Anti (Blackalicious, Elliot Smith) and Merge (Superchunk, Lambchop), plus artists including Gillian Welch, Sun Ra, CCR, Otis Redding, the Pixies, Thelonious Monk and Fugazi.

Hmmm ... nutricious, affordable, burnable and Booker T, too? Add a sprinkle of Frumpy's Decrypt Script and chopeen says it will even do Linux!

Now, how about eMusic++ ...

Ok, gots your attention, and who knows, maybe gots some attention from the eMusicalis too let's hope because herein is a how for bringing this underdoggy swing up high overhead and into the main of the fray ...

There's a thing I don't understand about the iTuners. I mean, they are so modern and e-hip, yet, why do they still stay with the old Trouser Press model of music promotion? It's true. They wait for the trades to relay the top-act hype, and rake in the sales. I suppose that works for them, after all, they are selling (soda)pop culture, fashion moments.

But that ain't gonna fly selling Monk or Gillian Welch. The good stuff is self-propelled by viral diffusion, infecting the culture with intrisic better-ness, the good stuff seeps through the communications lines and makes itself known even if it is as obscure as a Roger Rainbow.

So why don't these services get Flickr'd? Why don't they read my Living With Webservices and opt me into their operational universe? Hey, I'd love to help sell a few Sun Ra tracks, and the Cosmos knows the Morton Street crew could use a few coins more, so are they going to make it luciously easy to mp3-blog their sample clips? Double-plus good if they deputize me in the processes, sales referred on my code going into my eMusic account to be tallied into associate-reward tracks. They scratch my e-back, I scratch theirs, and before we know it, you can't query google on an indie artist name without at least a few top-page links leading direct to the Pay Here and Get It Now sign.

I mean, how sweet is that?