Music For A Song

(From The Hartford Courant/The Washington Post -- By Rob Pegoraro)

Picking AN ONLINE MUSIC STORE ought to be no more complicated than choosing between GROCERY STORES. But if you're going to buy more than a few songs a month, you may find yourself in the kind of long-term commitment associated with signing MORTGAGE DOCUMENTS.

That's because the big online music stores (for example, APPLE'S ITUNES MUSIC STORE, MICROSOFTS's MSN MUSIC, NAPSTER, REAL NETWORKS' REALPLAYER MUSIC STORE and RHAPSODY, SONY's CONNECT, YAHOO MUSIC and WALMART.COM MUSIC DOWNLOADS) don't all sell the same bundles of bits.

Instead, they offer songs and records in DIFFERENT FILE FORMATS.
Almost all of these restrict you to certain programs and music players, and almost all arrive cocooned in a layer of COPY-CONTROL SOFTWARE to stop you from sharing your purchase with the neighbors.

You can't quickly or conveniently convert these files to another format. Your downloads today may DICTATE THE HARDWARE and SOFTWARE
YOU BUY YEARS FROM NOW -- and conversely, what you own now can determine WHERE YOU DOWNLOAD IN THE FUTURE.

This applies to anybody with A MAC or AN IPOD -- THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE is the only major online shop to offer full support for APPLE'S HARDWARE. But if you've bought one of SONY's DIGITAL-MUSIC PLAYERS, the only store with compatible downloads is CONNECT. And if you own a player compatible with MICROSOFT's WINDOWS MEDIA AUDIO FILES, you'll do best at sites that sell music in the SAME FORMAT.

Those factors aside, here's what to look at when considering these stores.

Music For A Song