Sunday, March 9, 2008

DancetracksDigital is Tops in Brazilian Dance Music.

DancetracksDigital.com is one of my favorite music download websites because it features a section specifically devoted to contemporary Brazilian music

Given the central theme of my blog, its obvious to see why I feel that way. This is a great place to begin a search for electro samba in its many forms. Of all the music download websites I've ever searched, dancetracksdigital makes it a breeze to find the music I love. Brazilian music isn't the site's only strength, they're actually geared to all forms of dance music. 

Dance, club and house music labels seem to have the most creative CD artwork and DancetracksDigital makes good use of it. I like the fact that they include artist and label bios. Given that so much music is now available primarily online, I miss having linear notes that are bundled with jewel cases. That may be some what "old school" but it makes for a deeper appreciation of the artist and his/her work. However, I've noticed in the past year or so, booklets are available in iTunes with an entire CD purchase. 

DancetracksDigital, like mp3sparks.com offers performance quality encoding, usually at 320 kbps, some older tracks are at 256 kbps. Tracks are compatible with all media players and come without digital rights management (DRM) encoding. The per track pricing is bit steep at $1.89, but I imagine audiophiles and music lovers won't mind paying for quality.

Mp3sparks.com, by contrast, offers a range of bitrates and prices are adjusted accordingly. One makes out much better though by purchasing entire CDs from dancetracksdigital; here pricing is well in line with other leading online music sites, like iTunes, at around $9.99. You can sample 60 seconds of any track by placing it on your playlist with its built-in music player. The site boast almost 2,000 labels and 15,000 artists to choose from. There's a news section, which is essentially a blog,  but it has some very interesting music related events like a building in Detroit that went up in flames that housed a legendary vinyl record shop or the worlds largest record collection that was up for sale. DJ competitions, artist profiles and youTube videos are also available in the news section. 

If you're looking for purchasing suggestions, dancetracksdigital's charts are kind of limited compared to other sites, most noteworthy, mp3sparks. They seem to be based solely on their popularity within the site, as opposed to industry or world-wide activity. Although of limited use for the average music download person, DancetracksDigital offers DJs live ready tracks that can be used in performance. 

Conclusion
I've had nothing but a good experience using this site to augment my mp3 iPod and iTunes collection. Unlike some other sites, boxmp3.com comes to mind, I've never encountered any download or encoding errors. The site is very reliable and updated frequently. There are other sites with better pricing options but the selection more than makes up for it. I'm especially excited with dancetracksDigital because I've been able to find several remixes of contemporary Brazilian artists and label samplers that prior to discovering the site, I could only find in the now vanishing brick and mortar mega stores, like Virigin records or Towers records. Does anyone remember them ?

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Disclaimer

The posts on this blog are my own opinions and are based on my experience using the respective mp3 download website. 

I have no financial interest or affiliation with any website, other than as an end-user that purchases a lot of music from a variety of sources. Your experience may vary. 

Any mp3s linked to this blog are purely for trial purposes only. If you enjoy the music, please do the right thing and support the artists and purchase their music properly. Thanks !