As you all know I just got my eMusic account and I went a bit crazy downloading songs. The good news is that I have some more indie bands to discuss and especially some Swedish Indie.

The first band on the list is Sambassadeur. They’re signed to Labrador Records, which is pretty much the beacon of Swedish Indie. Many of the popular bands that I’ll be talking about in the future are all tied to this label, so go ahead and check out the site. Most of Sambassadeur’s songs are sung by the female vocalist Anna Persson (what a surprise, Archa likes a female indie fronted band). She doesn’t have the typical “Swedish Drunken Girl” voice like Victoria Bergsman, but it’s still soft, not too whispery, and definitely catchy. The other band members are guitarist/songwriter Joachim Läckberg, guitarist/vocalist Daniel Permbo and bassist Daniel Tolergård. The songs are a range of jangly guitars, electronic beats, synthpop and a dash of effects pedal. Their music can end up sounding like a blend of Jesus and Mary Chain, Mono, and some futuristic medieval music. I’m sorry, that’s probably a bad description, but that’s why I blog and I’m not a writer for NME.  Why don’t I just give you some examples.

A bit of trivia for you. The song “Kate” was actually on a Payless Shoe commercial several years ago.

On Sunday I decided to take a chance on another site other than Itunes or Amazon Music for my music downloads. I did some research and decided on eMusic.  I realized that Itunes wasn’t cutting it for me. What I needed was a site that I can pay a monthly fee for whatever price and get a certain amount of downloads.  Emusic is the place to do that.

The biggest problem with Itunes for me was the amount of music I like to download.  I was paying like $9.99 an album for usually about 10 songs. The way I spend money on downloads; I knew it was going to add up in the long run. Another problem I found with Itunes was the scenario of me constantly converting my purchased Itune songs to MP3s. I guess I’m still old school and I like making mix CDs for my car. With eMusic.com and even Amazon, all the songs are MP3s and are DRM free. Itunes still has DRM music on their library.

Emusic has several subscription plans to choose from. They have month to month and they also have annual plans as well. The one I chose was the bottom tier eMusic basic for 11.99 a month. This plan is a limit of 30 songs a month, but when you first sign up they give you an additional 50 extra songs (Booyah). So like a kid in a candy store, I went freaking ballistic. I couldn’t stop myself. I had a list of all the albums I wanted to get, but couldn’t, because I just didn’t feel right in buying that much music on Itunes.

I have to say that eMusic may not be right for everyone. First off, eMusic is more of an independent music supplier. If you’re looking for more mainstream music like oh, Britney Spears, then you’re not going to find it. Hell, they don’t even have New Order. As matter of fact they steer away from most mainstream labels to keep the prices down. Another important tidbit is that unused songs do not carry over to the next month (I guess it’s not like unused minutes), so it’s important to get your money’s worth and make sure to download to your limit. If you’re interested in eMusic, but don’t know for sure, you can type in several band names in the search bar and see if they come up. If they have your type or taste in music, then enjoy.

Well, I still have 26 more songs to go for the month…