Music for Less

Nearly two million Americans paid to download music during just one month this year. New sites are popping up all over the Internet where music lovers can go to download their music and get high quality tunes.

Bronce McClain downloads music from Rhapsody.com. "It's like putting a CD in your computer and listening to it," he says.

Our expert, Jonathan Whitehead with the Recording Industry Association of America, gives us the low down on these websites.

The Low Down on Downloading

There are many different sites on the web where you can download music. You can check out sites like the ones listed below to find everything from classical to rock.

www.BuyMusic.com
www.PressPlay.com
www.Listen.com
www.Apple.com
(For Mac Users)

"Record companies have been out there licensing thousands and thousands of their songs to these legitimate websites," Whitehead says. That means you can find many of the songs you want right on the net and access them immediately.

Pricing

Whitehead says pricing varies across the different sites. You can comparison shop and find the deal that suits you the best. Songs are usually priced per song if you are downloading them onto your computer's hard drive or onto a disk. Prices per song range from $.79 a song to $.99.

Bronce pays ten dollars a month to stream songs through his computer. That means the songs are played live right from his computer. He does not have to store them on his hard drive.

If Bronce wants to download the song to a computer to burn it on a CD, it costs $.99 on top of the ten dollars he pays.

Special Deals

"The first three months that I used the service it only cost five dollars a month, and I got the first one for free," Bronce says. Special deals are common on these sites. You can usually get a month free to use a free trial. Often times, you can also get a couple months at a discounted price when you first sign up. Read the fine print on the sites to see when those introductory rates expire.

A Sour Note

Although you can get most of the songs you would like from these sites, you can't get them all. Industry watchers say some artists only license some of their songs to be available on the Internet. Do searches on the different websites for your favorites songs or artists to see if their songs are available.

Music to Our Ears

One of the benefits of downloading licensed music is you know you're getting quality files, and Whitehead points out, "You know that the music file you're downloading is the music file you want." However on illegal sites, you may get only half a song or the wrong one altogether.

When you use illegal sites, "You open your computer up to viruses, security risks, you potentially offer personal files to millions of people around the world," Whitehead says. He says when you use these legal pay sites, you do not run into those problems.

Facing the Music in Court

"If you're downloading copyrighted material, without permission of the copyright owner, you're violating the law," Whitehead stresses. The recording industry has recently sued people for downloading songs illegally.

That means you'll be paying big bucks in court. "The law says that if you infringe one song, the statutory damages are anywhere from $750 to $150,000 dollars," he says. Using these legal sites allows you to avoid court and lawsuits all together.

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