Does anyone know of such a service? I'd like to expose myself to different types of music without buying every single CD that comes out. A rental-type service would be nice.

Nope, nothing that would ever work, since CD's are so cheap and music piracy is so rampant.

Try the Library

Movies are just as easy to pirate.

And get censored versions of CDs? No thanks.

Movies are more conducive to rental as most people want to watch them once and that is it. Most people will listen to cds over and over.

There are plenty of places where you can listen to samples of every song on an album, which for most people is enough to decide on whether or not they will purchase the album.

This is pretty helpful for finding new stuff related to what you're into:

http://www.pandora.com/

If you're just trying new music, then why not? ^^ You could buy it uncensored later.

I don't know of a single public library that carries the censored version of an album, unless it was donated by a patron.

I'd suggest Lala, but it requires being willing to part with CDs you already have.

700 MB or 1.4 Gig compared to under 100 MB d/l's. They are quite easy to pirate but not compared to music.

Have you considered Rhapsody , Napster or the like? They are basicly rental services, except you can "rent" as much music as your hard drive/MP3 player can hold.

You know, not every album worth listening too has foul language on it.

I've checked...the libraries here have the censored versions of all of their CDs from pretty much 1998 on.

Muncie Indiana, wasn't that the town from Hoosiers?

Anyway, around here the library doesn't carry the censored versions and the main branch of Springfield, Illinois literally has at least a couple thousand CDs.

Another option would be to buy / sell on ebay, the price per disk will be less than buying new of course.

I'd also suggest lala.com

= J

lala.com or yourmusic.com

yourmusic does cost, but it's painless and the queue system is similar to netflix.

That's Milan. Although the team that Milan played was indeed from Muncie.

So let me see if I understand...it's $6.99 per CD, you get one per month (but can buy more anytime you want)?

It is affirmatively illegal to rent out CD's or record albums or tapes of audio recordings. This is not a gray area because of potential infringement, it is actually illegal to do so and that is why no one does it.

In the early 80's there used to be music stores that would let you "rent" record albums and buy blank cassette tapes so you could "backup" these rentals.

The music industry lobbied and Congress amended the Copyright laws to outlaw the rental of audio recordings.

They also outlawed the rental of computer software for the same reasons. Interesting side note, as video games were somewhat new and Nintendo was rather big and there was a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment, Congress explicitly excluded video games under this rental prohibition which is why you can rent video games today.

Yeah, I remember in the summer of '83 I would rent vinyl albums for a $1.00 from this one store. I'm not sure how long they got away with it, but I visited many times that summer. I brought back an English Beat album that was slightly warped by the sun in my car and had to purchase it at full price. Still have it.

Correct.

And not every movie worth watching is rated R, but that doesn't mean they aren't just as good and enjoyable to me.

a lot of used music stores allow you to listen to the cd before you buy it. Also emusic.com has a wide variety and its like $10 a month and you get to download like 30 songs a month. If all else fails try to meet some new friends and borrow music from them.

I second www.pandora.com

I created 7 stations and have spent a bit of time developing them over the last year. The have introduced me to dozens of artists, that never would have reached my ears.