The model I am familiar with is Virgin Digital because they are friends of JPF. They charge (last I checked) 8 bucks a month for their subscription service. The reason I haven't been hawking that everyone use them more openly is because they haven't added the "take it with you" feature that Listen/Rhapsody and Napster have. So for 8 bucks you simply get to listen on line or via your computer as long as you want. You can also purchase the music and you can burn a CD right from their player. They have a free 14 day trial period which you should all check out since it's free and if you have some time, you'll really enjoy it. My favorite thing to do is click the Reviews, Bios and the Tab for "Related Artists" and those will have all sorts of folks influenced by or who influenced the artist as well as people they have played in bands with etc.. and you can click their links to take you to a lot of music you've long since forgotten about. I can't tell you how many greats songs I had totally forgotten about I have found that way. Like Searching for Journey and finding The Baby's and then Bad English (all with Jonathan Cain) just from the related links and remembering how much I loved all those bands but had pretty much forgotten them.

They have all the newest releases too, in all genres so you can really see what the hoopla is about. I did that for the Grammy nominees and of course was pretty shocked by how bad some nominees really were, but also discovered some cool stuff I would never had heard otherwise.

I also regularly search for songs that win various awards in the indie community as a measuring stick to where our JPF nominees/winners stack up. (I think we do very well even compared to the Grammy winners in many genres).

So, check it out. I hope Virgin Digital is able to keep competiting with the gigantic companies out there because they actually are interested in supporting indie artists and have even talked to us about helping them out if the business grows enough to support it.

Brian

Brian Austin Whitney
Founder
Just Plain Folks
jpfolkspro@gmail.com
Skype: Brian Austin Whitney
Facebook: www.facebook.com/justplainfolks

"Don't sit around and wait for success to come to you... it doesn't know the way." -Brian Austin Whitney

"It's easier to be the bigger man when you actually are..." -Brian Austin Whitney

"Sometimes all you have to do to inspire humans to greatness is to give them a reason and opportunity to do something great." -Brian Austin Whitney