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Starmaker: VHX wants to be the next big thing in video.
...NOT WITH THAT WEBSITE DESIGN
Thanks for the link! That would be so cool!
(ok, about the design I'd prefer less huge sections with more content)

The site, however, is just starting, so we'll have to see what happens in the future.
For GOG I have waited 5 years before joining lol (and it's still in a sort of uncertain ground).

For me the service will be good if it manages to start selling classics (is this even possible?) and new big indie titles (at a nice price), exactly like GOG.
Downloads size will be quite a big problem, though.
Post edited January 14, 2014 by phaolo
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Starmaker: VHX wants to be the next big thing in video.
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NOT WITH THAT WEBSITE DESIGN
And certainly not with TPB AFK being on the front page. Oh yeah, I see it clearly how representatives of the biggest Hollywood studios see a monument to their sworn enemies and then think "hey, this would be a good place to sell our movies".
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Starmaker: VHX wants to be the next big thing in video.
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NOT WITH THAT WEBSITE DESIGN
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F4LL0UT: And certainly not with TPB AFK being on the front page. Oh yeah, I see it clearly how representatives of the biggest Hollywood studios see a monument to their sworn enemies and then think "hey, this would be a good place to sell our movies".
Lol no, not yet. I'm thinking they might go the way of humble bundle.
Another great source for DRM-free ebooks is Feedbooks. They have a ton of public domain stuff (much of it sources from Gutenberg), and they typically do a very nice job formatting the books in a pleasing fashion.

I'm quite disappointed with the publishing industry as a whole with regards to ebooks. Ebooks should be some of the simplest and cheapest things to make and market, yet instead the companies let huge swaths of the their back catalogues languish. It's no surprise that this is an area where "cottage scanners" have leapt in to fill the gaps.
For technical (mostly IT) books, O`reilly and Manning are great. There are also a handful of less known DRM-free distributors.

DriveThruRPG is also awesome for roleplaying books. They have tons of DRM-free roleplaying ebooks from all over. Even D&D books from older editions now.

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JKHSawyer: iTunes music is DRM free and you can redownload any time you want from you account. Exactly like GOG.

Movies, TV Shows and Books however are DRM locked.
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JKHSawyer: iTunes music is DRM free and you can redownload any time you want from you account. Exactly like GOG.
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mistermumbles: Yup, say what you want about Apple, but them managing to force the music industry to drop that shit was and is a pretty big deal, as far as I'm concerned.
I second that. iTunes is my goto place for music.

Not sure if they were the first to do that, but they also improved the buying format by letting you buy songs individually which was also big.

Prior to that, music distributors would sometimes screw you over by shuffling the hits across several albums, even for "best of" albums. That put a big damper on those shenanigans.
Post edited January 14, 2014 by Magnitus
We´re usually so resigned with DRM in entertainment media that don´t think other way is possible. I can´t give you any recommendation, except for already mentioned bandcamp (which I use and I´m unaware of limited number downloads).
Post edited January 14, 2014 by tokisto
Have you tried eMusic? They are DRM-free, and have two options. You can go á la carte, and pay a little bit over their normal price for downloads, or you can have a monthly subscription.

My monthly subscription is $11.99 a month, so each month I get to download that much music. You can buy songs, or buy entire albums, or buy a song one month and complete the album the next for a little bit less. They have old music, a lot of new music, and plenty of obscure stuff.

If you opt for a more expensive subscription, they'll add some bonus credit each month.

A full new album on eMusic will cost a little bit less than it would on other services. For example, I was able to buy Black Sabbath's latest album, 13, for $11.49 of my eMusic credit.

Old tracks range from 39 cents to 79 cents generally, and newer tracks are either 89 cents or 99 cents. But if you buy the whole album, you're definitely saving versus iTunes.

My subscription also comes with 10 hours of streaming music per month.

They also have a separate audiobook subscription thing.

EDIT: Three, not two things I should warn you about:

1. Not all countries can use eMusic, I've heard; I don't know if Italy is one of them.
2. You must use as much subscription credit per month as you can. The remainder does not roll over to the next month unless you have so little credit remaining that it isn't enough to buy a song. Only then will it get added to your next month's credit.
3. You can only redownload a song for free in the event of an error.

I've been getting the most out of eMusic for almost two years now. I love it, and highly recommend it.
Post edited January 14, 2014 by dmetras
So, has anything changed after 5-6 months?
for rpg stuff:

Bunde of Holding bundles are now usually redeemable at drivethroughrpg.

http://bundleofholding.com/index/current

For dark ambient music: http://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/

as seen from adress, goes to bandcamp.

I can highly recommend to listen to stuff there, youll soon be wanting to buy album or dozen.
Post edited June 15, 2014 by iippo
Bandcamp is cool, but misses all the classics: I'm looking for other great stores like GOG!
Amazon's MP3 store is basically GOG-like for music. I am guessing the "limitations" you mention are a region thing? In the US at least they're 100% DRM free and simple to use. They keep pushing their cloud player option though, part of me worries they will eventually only have that. Hope not.

For movies/shows there is nothing I know of. People have told me you can easily remove the DRM from iTunes stuff but even if that's true the quality of the video is so very, very poor compared to blu ray or even DVD I would never purchase anything there.
As far as music goes MP3's typically are sold DRM free. You buy it or burn it off disc you can listen to the data on anything you want anytime. Movies are a different story entirely. The movie industry wasn't about to let mass pirating or copying lower the industries money, so they lobbied for extremely strict media usage on modern computers and raised up prices on licensing a movie or show to stream. I think you can only burn DVD's with outdated burner software and the feature was phased out. I was kind of disappointed when I built a new rig about 5 years ago since the primary reason was to put my DVD collection onto my PC and stream to a tv so I wouldn't wear out the disc.
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StingingVelvet: Amazon's MP3 store is basically GOG-like for musi[..]
These are the problems I found months ago on the web and here:
- regional prices and promos ('effin italian artists).
- number of downloads limitations (I'd like an online backup "shelf" like GOG).
- client not yet mandatory, but needed for multiple tracks easy purchasing.
- are ALL tracks really DRM-free?
- files are modified with identifiers!?
- I read about bad mp3 conversion..
- no FLAC format (if that quality is really needed).
Post edited June 15, 2014 by phaolo
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phaolo: These are the problems I found months ago on the web and here:
- regional prices and promos ('effin italian artists).
- number of downloads limitations (I'd like an online backup "shelf" like GOG).
- client not yet mandatory, but needed for multiple tracks easy purchasing.
- are ALL tracks really DRM-free?
- files are modified with identifiers!?
- I read about bad mp3 conversion..
- no FLAC format (if that quality is really needed).
You can redownload any time from the cloud page, which doesn't require an app. They do use a downloader app, but I don't see that a big deal. And yes, everything is DRM free. That was their big sales pitch when they started.
You could also try qobuz.com - which is French and does not seem to have any complete official translation yet. Still, it offers DRM-free, high quality tracks (like FLAC), which can be downloaded in any format equal or inferior (so buy in FLAC/CD quality and basically download any format you want - and there are quite a lot of them). It also provides 'Studio Masters' for some artists, which are top quality. The download app is efficient. Obviously higher quality means slightly more expensive tracks. They also have quite a big catalogue! I don't know if their discounts and offers are interesting for foreign customers, but it's really worth a look! (mainly because they sell a lot of FLAC/uncompressed tracks)

This may help if you want to try it while browsing in French, it's a tutorial for English users:

http://www.findhdmusic.com/help/?t=qobuz-tutorial