Guide to Downloading Music
There are many ways to download music in today’s day and age, but some may find it a bit more difficult than simply typing in a search engine for downloading music.
How many times have you been surfing the internet and were curious about finding websites on dowloading music. Chances are you have come across literally dozens and not sure which one to choose. Not sure which ones can be trusted and others can? There are a few genuine websites dedicated to downloading music, and I will cover just a few of them.
Napster is probably the most famous and infamous music download site to this very day. Started in 1999 by a college dropout, he and a few friends had this wonderful idea of file-sharing. Here’s how it works. Say I have a certain song downloaded onto my computer from a CD. Well, I can make my music files accessible to others if they are part of a file-sharing program. It’s simple really, you sign up, find the music you want and download it.
Unfortunately however, Napster ran into a few legal issues with the government and forced Napster to shut down. Many of the artists, including METALLICA were against the idea of sharing music over the internet. They felt it was stealing. It is stealing and very illegal.
Napster still clung onto life support for another year or two and finally went to a subcription service to bypass the legalities. It worked and many people were willing to a monthly fee and download as many songs as they wanted.
Now you are probably wondering why I mentioned Napster? I did that for one reason, and one reason only. Internet users want to know where and how they can download music. Well it’s really quite simple. There are two ways you can download music.
One, pay a monthly fee or pay per song. In other words, you can pay say less than ten dollars a month and download unlimited songs, or pay as you go.
Probably the most popular music service is Rhapsody, which is powered by RealPlayer. The process is quite easy becuase there are only a few steps which are required. First, you go to their website www.rhapsody.com, download the player and sign up, that’s it.
Once you’ve downloaded the player, which only takes a few minutes depending on your internet connection, and if your system meets the minimum requirements you’re on you way. There are three different options also. You can sign up for just the internet radio, wihch is about five dollars a month and listen all you want. You also have the option of paying 10 dollars per month for internet radio and unlimited downloads. That means you can create, edit and manage playlists, and download entire albums. The last option is purchasing downloads for .79 each.
If you’ve never used Rhapsody before, downloading music has never been easier. Just type in the artist/song name or album, and find what you are looking for. There are icons where you can just play the song or add to your music library.
If it’s the entire album you want, click on the add album icon and it will download in minutes. Once you have added the music you want, go into My Library and there it is.
There are other ways to download music, and that’s a pay as you go option. All you do is find the song you’re looking for, and click on the BUY option. Once the song has been downloaded to your computer you can either listen to it on your computer or burn it to a blank CD. Now with Rhapsody, you can do either or. If you want to burn your song to a CD, just add it to the burn library and click on the BURN NOW. Your credit card will be charged the appropriate fees, but at least it’s permanent.
Overall, there are numerous sources of music download sites. You have to be careful because some may say it’s “Free,” but there can be underlying charges you aren’t aware of. The bottom line is, be careful and aware of what’s out there.
