Isn't this the thing I just joined two weeks ago, and then dumped as soon as my free 'points' ran out?

You buy 'credits' with your bank card. How many credits it actually takes to GET some stuff is way more than what their literature describes.

No credits (0) to stream 30-second's-worth of music to see if it's really the track you want. One credit (1) to stream the full song once. Ten credits (ten) to download the song to your computer in crippled .wma format, which means if you don't remain a paying subscriber, or buy a new hard drive, or you have a system crash, you can say 'bye-bye' to all your music.

One Hundred (100) credits to download a burnable track, and get the damn thing off your computer to where it's safe.

In practice, some of the tracks required over 200 credits to download. (I think one particular Bee Gee's track cost 205 credits). Anyway, you will be Told which tracks you may download as 'open' tracks - *many* key songs are only available as crippled ones.

Also, some album tracks are available individually, or all-together, as one full album. One would <sortof> suspect that if you're willing to purchase the *whole* album outright, you might get a wee bit of a discount over downloading all the tracks separately, but you often don't. It's cheaper, credits-wise, to get the tracks separately. Carefully check the 'credits-cost' first before downloading anything!

(Anybody else have experiences with these services?)

-- Mike --