Having had a few weeks of being confined to a recliner with a laptop for company, I ran across several folks at the AVS Forum discussing their positive experiences with yourmusic.com. As I couldn't do much other than surf and listen to music, I decided to sign up and see what all the hoopla was about.
The service is reminiscent of the old Columbia Music House or BMG Music record/cassette/CD-of-the-month clubs in that yourmusic.com ships you a CD every month. However, they also take a page from Netflix and have you build a queue of CDs that you'd like. So, instead of having to fill-out a postcard every month (or getting the lame default selection), you get the top selection from your queue. If you let your queue empty and your shipping date arrives they'll still charge you $6 and you don't get a disc. This is the largest risk of this service, but they're very up-front about this and it's trivial to avoid for all but the most forgetful.
The pricing for the discs is fantastic, at only $6 each with no shipping and handling charges. (It looks like residents of some states could get charged sales tax, but so far California isn't one of them.) You also have the option of purchasing as many discs as you'd like at the $6 price, so you aren't limited to just one a month. There are a few discs that are more expensive, but they're almost always double-disc sets.
One especially attractive fact is that they have a small number of SACDs and DVD-As, all priced at $6. These normally run close to $20 each. I was able to order nine classical Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence SACDs, including one double-disc set, all for $65 delivered. (Both labels were originally recorded in three-channel sound, but until the SACD format they were downmixed to two channels; now they're available as three-channel SACDs that build a wonderful front stage and presence.) This has helped me start building my classical collection.
They also have discs from the pop, rap, country, etc., genres. Selection isn't as broad as a typical music store's, but it's pretty easy to find a dozen discs you'd be interested in owning—especially at the $6 price point. Since you can quit at any time without penalty, you might even just join up, order all the discs you're interested in and cancel the service, treating it as a half-off sale.
The largest drawback of the service I've found is that their shipping is slow and they don't provide good feedback on your order status. For example, I placed three separate orders on October 3. I received the last order on October 11 (the others haven't arrived yet), but my account shows that all three orders still haven't shipped. So, if you're into instant gratification you'll probably be frustrated, but as far as I'm concerned I'm happy to wait a while in limbo to take advantage of the low price.
(Now, why can't all CDs be priced this reasonably?)
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