October 30, 2004

Curious George: Are there any subscription Music Video sites?

iTunes Music Store has some, but not nearly enough for a junkie like me. I don't like using p2p because the quality is really bad and most of the bands' sites have the same problem. I'm looking for a website with good quality and wide selection- free is ideal but I'm willing to pay.

  • Me too, for 1980s videos. (Sorry, I grew up on MTV during its first few years)
  • ifilm.com has a fair amount of music videos, but last time I was there, you generally had to search specifically by artist, and they tended to only have relatively recent fare to choose from. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily. Despite what listening to the radio makes you think, there is some darn good music still being made.... just not promoted.
  • You can browse by category at at iFilm (on the left of the page). I'm not a subscriber but they have quite a few videos, I clicked through five pages of Pop/Rock so that's 400+ videos there.
  • Another option that comes to mind is Direct Connect. It is p2p but the way it works is you hook up with people on 'hubs'. You have access to all the files of all the people on any hub you connect to. If you find a person/hub with a large amount of videos (and there are many) that meet your quality expectations then just hang out there and grab what you want. I have found that the download speed can be slow, but once you find a source the quality tends to be consistent. I use DC on a regular basis to share files with a friend of mine overseas. Caveat: most DC hubs require a minimum share amout, anywhere from 1GB to 50GB, and Direct Connect for Mac is problematic as most hubs don't allow Mac users because the Mac DC client doesn't identify itself properly. If that was fixed I'd be on DC all the time.