Calling The Tunes

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

Music fans, prepare to take up arms. The online music battles are here and, as usual, consumers are in danger of becoming lost in the fog of war. What's the problem this time? The multitude of formats--MP3, AAC, WMA--and the selection of players--Dell DJ, iPod, Archos Jukebox--plus the sheer number of services.

iTunes Music Store

Apple was first on the scene with the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) for the Mac. When it opened the service for Windows users in 2003, shoppers bought more than 1 million songs in the first four days. Windows users have been thrilled, by and large, with its ease of use and selection. The service also has the full support of the music industry, with more than 240,000 songs available from all the major labels and more than 200 independent labels--for a total of more than 400,000 songs. As a bonus, customers can buy more than 5000 spoken audio recordings from Audible.com, including many of NPR's Fresh Air recordings.

Music purchased from the iTunes Music Store is a permanent download, can be burned to an unlimited number of CDs, copied to an unlimited number of iPods, shared among three PCs on a network, and playlists can be burned to CDs up to 10 times. The ITMS also uses the Protected AAC format, which many consider a superior compression format for digital music. The drawback is that only Apple's iPod music player can read AAC files.

Songs cost 99 cents each, and most albums are $9.99.

BuyMusic.com

The Windows world's first answer to iTunes, BuyMusic.com is Web based, but it works only with Windows. If you have Internet Explorer 5.0 or better and Windows, you can find more than 300,000 songs from all the major labels and many independent ones.

Songs start at 79 cents and albums at $7.95, but most songs are in the 99-cent range and most albums are about $10.

Napster 2.0

The Net's first love with online music is back, and it's gone legit. Now owned by Roxio, Napster 2.0 supports Windows XP or 2000 and requires Microsoft's Windows Media Player 7.1 or better.

Songs are 99 cents each and albums are about $10. There's also a premium service that, for $9.95 a month, allows you unlimited listening and downloading, plus commercial-free radio. It also offers more than 500,000 songs from all the major labels and lots of independents. There are rumors that Napster is working on a Mac version.

Final Notes

If I used a PC exclusively, it would be a tough choice between Napster 2.0 and iTunes. If I had an iPod, which works with both Mac and Windows, I would use iTunes, but with any of the other players, I'm pretty confident that Napster would be my service of choice. I would not use BuyMusic.com because of its more restrictive licensing practices that are less consumer-friendly than those of Napster or iTunes.

Source: Popular Mechanics

psychofun

[jipper]

well in stuck on deciding on which pay service i want to use...so while i weigh up the pros and cons ill use a free service

[DudeAsInCool]

lol