A friend of mine just pointed me at emusic.com, a subscription-based MP3 download service. The cost to me would be about 7 quid a month. I had a look through their artist listing. It’s fucking huge, and while the don’t have complete back catalouges for all of their artists, they’re pretty fucking good. (Tom Waits, for instance, only has his three most recent albums on the service, while they appear to have the complete back catalogue of The Fall, including live albums.) Just about every artist I like has something on there, and there’s scads more that I’ve been meaning to check out.

So, essentially, I’m being offered the opportunity to download an unlimited number of songs, legally and legitimately, without ripping off the artists, for less than the price of a CD a month. Can someone please tell me what the catch is? Is there anyone reading who knows more about the service who can tell me if there’s anything dodgy going on?