Audio Lunchbox review
Audio Lunchbox website
| www.audiolunchbox.com | Site up since April 2003 |
Unrestricted. Indie music.
That's what they say. With thousands of labels, tens of thousands of artists and over half a million songs it's easy to agree they're the biggest indie download service of the moment. It's also a joy to see big name artists like Tom Waits available in non-restricted formats. The huge catalog isn't all good though, as there are big differences in the quality of the tracks and it is a daunting task to browse the endless rows of album covers. The Lunchbox guys could learn a lesson or two from Amazon.com.
Audio Lunchbox has other specialties as well, such as offering cover art, liner notes and song lyrics with selected albums. This is great news for people who complain about the lack of information on digital releases. Audio Lunchbox is definitely the least dance oriented of all non-DRM sites listed here, which shows as some strange genre categorizations.
Available formats are MP3 and Ogg Vorbis depending on release. Prices are generally $0.99 for a song but full albums go for $9.99 and sometimes even lower. Great news for customers, I just hope the artists can make a living too with these prices. Audio Lunchbox also sells Lunch Cards
for $25, $50 or $100. These cards work like credits for the music store and you get 3, 7 or 15 free songs per card respectively.
| Format | Quality | Price |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | 192 Kbps VBR | $0.99 |
| Ogg Vorbis | Q6 | $0.99 |
The 30 second previews are played through the built in player made with Macromedia Flash, which is also used elsewhere on the site extensively. You can't click on a single track to preview it, but for example on a 13 track album you have to click Forward 12 times to get to the last track. Not the best solution usability-wise.
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