Mushroom Digital: Ur Doin It Wrong

Mushroom Magazine recently opened a new section of their web site dedicated to free music downloads: Mushroom Digital. Described as a “music on demand” service, it does not appear to be all that is claimed. In fact, after much effort I was unable to get the Mushroom web site to cough up a single working download. Perhaps you need to be a paying subscriber?

If you still want to give it a try, start by signing up for a basic membership. After confirming your email address you will have access to streaming MP3s in 96k or 128k quality. Hooray! If you want the free downloads you will have to struggle with the confusing member page to find the “free mushroom.digital music download testticket,” whatever that means. Subscribing to this ticket is supposed to unlock the free downloads but I had no luck getting it to work. Every time I try to download something I am asked for another username and password–and no obvious username and password combinations are accepted.

Well, that was pointless. Then again, even if everything had gone smoothly I doubt I would have been impressed. It looks like Mushroom Digital is geared toward individual tracks in MP3 format (although I did spy the excellent SCM mini-album up for grabs). I’m sorry, but how is this any better than MySpace? Plenty of psytrance artists stream tracks and allow MP3 downloads from their profiles. No sign-up required, either.

In any case, single MP3 downloads are nothing special. I don’t know why anyone would bother navigating Mushroom’s convoluted subscription system just to gain access to a random bunch of MP3s from mainly unknown artists. If Mushroom wants to compete in the free economy they’re going to have to do better than this!