MANILA, Philippines - If you’ve been looking to expand your music library’s selection of Original Pilipino music (OPM) without downloading illegally or importing from CDs, now is the time. Several online music stores now offer a wide variety of OPM tracks available for purchase, and we’ve gone through them so you can decide where to buy that Bamboo tune you heard on the radio.
Bandcamp
Best for: Discovering independent artists and unsigned talent
Not for: Those whose tastes only consist of popular, major-label music
Of all the online music stores, Bandcamp provides artists with the most control over how releases are packaged for distribution. Artists manage their own pages, set their own prices (free tracks abound), and are even given the option to bundle bonus items (e.g., digital booklets, music videos) with each release. As one of the few to offer lossless audio, they’re also the most obliging in terms of downloadable file formats.
Globe/Smart
Best for: Casual listeners who want songs downloaded onto their phone via SMS
Not for: Everyone else
Don’t look to the country’s two telecommunications giants to offer you much in terms of building a serious OPM collection. As of this writing, Globe’s online music store has 72 tracks filed under OPM, and Smart’s has 100. We tried downloading Wasak Waltz by Francis Magalona and Ely Buendia as a full track on Globe’s store and found an 890 KB file. At least you’ll have some room left on your floppy disk.
iTunes Store
Best for: Apple fans wary of departing from a familiar interface and high-quality, organized digital downloads
Not for: Those who want their music in a format other than AAC (m4a)
The digital media behemoth opened its virtual doors in the Philippines this year, and if you’ve purchased digital media before, chances are a good chunk of it is from the iTunes Store. Reliably tagged with high-resolution album artwork, any OPM tracks you buy will blend in nicely with the rest of your iTunes music library when the download finishes.
MyMusicStore
Best for: Filling in the gaps in your favorite OPM artist’s discography
Not for: Metadata watchers (we noticed that the album field was left blank for many tracks)
MyMusicStore is basically the iTunes Store’s biggest competitor in the country. The two are comparable in some respects, for instance, in terms of OPM releases available for purchase. A MyMusicStore search for Parokya ni Edgar returns 11 albums compared to the iTunes Store’s three, but the opposite is true for Eraserheads albums — MyMusicStore, four; iTunes Store, 11.
OPM2Go
Best for: Purchasing music en masse
Not for: Those expecting a one-stop shop (some artists are noticeably absent)
As the only online music store that sells OPM exclusively, you can be sure that there are a lot of releases here you can’t find anywhere else. If you want to browse through a store and listen to nothing but OPM, this is the store for you. Like the iTunes Store, OPM2Go’s site went live just a few months ago, and its library of releases from both independent and major-label artists has grown at a good pace ever since. And before we forget, they don’t sell any song for more than P15. Really!