The Petra Zone

I don't know how many Petheads subscribe to MusicMatch ON DEMAND, but for those who do, or for those who will in the near future, MusicMatch has dramatically increased the number of Petra tracks available for online steaming!

For the longest time, MusicMatch only had a few songs available from one of the compilation albums, which has really been disappointing. Now, they have 12 complete Petra albums - not including compilations - available for online streaming!

What I like about it is that you can pick and choose what tracks you want to play just like if you had them stored on your hard drive. In fact, you can store the track links in your MusicMatch library, and they appear as if they were MP3s are stored on your hard drive, and they play like they're stored on your hard drive, except they are streamed. Honestly, you can't tell they difference. You can play entire albums if you want to, in the order or your preference, as often as you want. And all of it is in excellent CD quality.

I mention this because there are some CDs I don't have, like God Fixation, Unseen Power, and a few others I just haven't gotten around to buying yet. For those of you like me who don't have a complete collection yet, this is one way you can see what your completed collection will sound like ahead of time!

Plus, I think it's great that more of Petra's music is out there for exposure.

I've noticed, though, they don't have anything from the Greg X Volz era, and there are some other obvious albums they don't have yet, like ON FIRE, THIS MEANS WAR, and BACK TO THE STREET.

But compared to what they used to have, they now have a lot!

Just so there's no misunderstanding, this is not freeloading. Nothing is downloaded, and you can only play the streams on your computer. Plus, you have to pay subscription fees in order to access the streams.

I've noticed, though, they don't have anything from the Greg X Volz era, and there are some other obvious albums they don't have yet, like ON FIRE, THIS MEANS WAR, and BACK TO THE STREET.

This is not totally on topic, but is it just me, or does no one carry the albums and songs from the starsong era? (This includes all the ones you mention, notice.) Are they being cheap and not widely distributing those songs or something?

Yes MusicMatch is pretty good, they even had Fletcher Henderson! Though I'm too cheap to buy it...

Well, as I understand it, MusicMatch secures the rights to stream the music they provide... I assume they pay a fee to the recording companies that hold the rights to the music. I may not be using the correct terminology here, so please bear with me, but as I understand it, this is why MusicMatch sometimes provides only a partial album or may exclude certain albums altogether by any particular artist. It has to do with the permission they secure from the recording company, the artist, or a combination thereof. Starsong is probably a poo poo company when it comes to doing this.

Yeah, my ON DEMAND subscription is probably frivolous spending on my part, but every time I think about dropping it, I think of an artist to research and play some music out of it and get amazed all over again that streamed music could sound so good. It really is a remarkable service.