By Jasmine Osada

If you have yet to try buying music online, local digital music subscription service Geetune hopes that you will give the new service a go. After all, who can resist downloading all the music tracks you want for just $12.85?

Sounds too good to be true? Well, here's the difference - Geetune is a music subscription service, not an online digital music store.

While digital media stores like Apple's iTunes sell songs for an average of US$0.99 per song, Geetune works on a 'subscription' service in which users download the tracks and buy the rights to listen to them through monthly subscriptions.

Once a subscription ends the user will not be able to play any of the music he or she downloaded from the Geetune site.

Subscription-based music services are not new, but it is certainly a first in Singapore.

Purchasing a subscription through Geetune is easy - payments can be made online using a credit card or via Paypal.

Prepaid scratch cards can also be purchased and the codes redeemed for a subscription should users prefer not to make payments online.

Geetune currently offers some 150,000 tracks available for download, with plans to increase the selection to 200,000 by the time the year comes to a close. It's not a large selection compared to what's available on iTunes or other online music stores, so hopefully the company will add more.

The songs available cover a good range of genres, from rock and metal to Chinese oldies and classical tracks.

All of the songs on Geetune are under the Universal Music label, and thus selection is limited to artistes and tracks offered by Universal.

Those who prefer international artistes might find the selection of songs a little on the lacking side. But fans of Chinese tunes will probably enjoy the fairly large selection of tracks that are not available on most other online stores.

Searching for tracks on the Geetune site might be easy or tricky depending on what kind of music you are looking for. The site's search function did well for both artiste names and track titles in English, but Chinese songs proved to be a problem as the tracks are in hanyu pinyin and search effectiveness is limited.

The Geetune site's presentation is also a little lacking - it was easy enough to navigate between genres, but each click takes you to a collection of featured titles and not an overview or list of what's on offer.

A better organization of the available albums on the site would make things much easier to locate. This is especially true for Chinese tracks which are quite buried in the menu with little means of hunting them out via the search function.

Locating tracks may require some patience and lots of understanding, especially when you come to realize that the artiste or songs you are searching for is not under the Universal label and thus unavailable on Geetune.

The good thing about Geetune is that the service doesn't require users to download any specific software to play it tracks and the service recommends the pre-installed Windows Media Player.

Downloads are easy to execute - simply click on the download icon and your song is on its way. Data transfer speeds are slow though, and it can take a couple of minutes to download a single track. The 'Download All Tracks' function does not seem to work at the moment either, but Geetune is promising to fix that and add faster transfer rate.

Geetune offers its music in WMV format at a 128kB compression. Sound quality is good and almost indiscernible from tracks on CD.

The ability to take your music on the go depends on what kind of service you've signed yourself up for. Geetune offers two subscription plans - Geetune PC ($12.85/month) and Geetune 2GO ($19.26/month).

The former allows users to play songs only on their PC while the latter comes with an added feature enabling subscribers to transfer the files to supported MP3 players.

The list of Geetune certified players is quite small at the moment, but do include a number of mobile phones with MP3 playback functions, such as the Nokia Xpress Music series.

If you are using an iPod, don't expect Geetune tracks to play on your device. Apple has yet to allow any DRM protected tracks from non-iTunes stores play on its widely popular media player.

All downloaded songs can be played on up to three different Windows PCs, which is two lesser than what iTunes allows. Tracks also cannot be burned onto a CD or shared with other users.

At present the service is subscription only, but Geetune states that users can have the option of buying tracks in the near future.

The Verdict

Geetune's 'all you can download' buffet-style music subscription is best suited to those who like listening to new tracks on a very regular basis.

The fact that Geetune is a Singapore based service also offers some advantages. Prepaid cards and subscriptions can be purchased locally or online without the payment problems that many face when using an overseas service such as iTunes.

On the flip side however, Geetune as a subscription service, imposes more restrictions on its users compared to digital music stores.

The selection of tracks is quite limited at present; the 150,000 tracks may well run short since users can download all they want without additional charges. Here's hoping that Geetune would continue to deliver on its promise to add new tracks - and fast - as well as material from other labels.

If you own a mobile phone or MP3 player in Geetune's list of approved music players, getting the 2GO service might be an added advantage.

For those to find themselves buying more than a handful of new CDs every month, renting their tunes might turn out to be a more economical solution.

But should you like to keep your tunes and burning them onto CDs, or enjoy songs from less popular genres, then sticking to music stores like iTunes or Musico might be a better idea.