Online Music Stores
Choosing the best service to download music can be a difficult task. At MusicToDownload, we make it much easier. In this article, we review the five most popular digital music-downloading services in the world. They are eMusic, iTunes, MSN Music, Musicmatch and Walmart Music.
eMusic is the cheapest available option. It also has the advantage of being DRM-free.
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. The downside of eMusic is that most
major record labels do not distribute their songs to them making only smaller or
independent audio widely available in the eMusic network. This allows the
subscription-based network to share 90 tracks for $19.99 every month in plain
MP3 format. You heard that right... unlike most other services out there; you can
download your favorite MP3 songs with a browser, from anywhere in the world.
Visit eMusic Website (eMusic.com)
Walmart Music - Rating: 4/5 - Catalog:
700,000+ songs - WMA
Walmart charges 88 cents for every song you download. Their downloading system
is browser-based, which is in my opinion, very easy to use and straightforward.
You choose the songs you want to download, pay the small fee for them and
download them immediately. Walmart Music has excellent support and download
speed but its main downside is the fact that music can only be downloaded in WMA
format.
Visit Walmart Music Website (musicdownloads.walmart.com)
iTunes - Rating: 3.5/5 - Catalog:
1,500,000+ songs - AAC
iTunes became very popular thanks to the iPod. Using iTunes, one may buy one
track for a dollar. The main advantage of iTunes over all the other services is
its vast array of songs. It is estimated that iTunes has more than 1.5 million
tracks and growing. The main disadvantage of iTunes is their strong DRM
enforcement. However, that shouldn't be a drawback because you can do virtually
anything you want with their AAC format including, unlike all the other
services, instantly add the music to your iPod. If you are not an iPod fan, then
you might consider another option instead of this one.
Visit iTunes Website (iTunes.com)
MSN Music - Rating: 3/5 - Catalog:
1,200,000+ songs - WMA
MSN Music charges the same as iTunes does - that is, one dollar per track. MSN
Music gives the additional option of buying an album for around eight dollars
(more or less depending on the album itself). I personally do not recommend MSN
Music because it takes plenty of time to have everything set up.
Visit MSN Music Website (music.msn.com/)
Musicmatch - Rating: 3/5 - Catalog -
900,000+ songs (60,000+ albums) -
WMA
Musicmatch charges anywhere from one dollar to two dollars for every song you
download. Speaking personally, I do not like the design at all and I rated
MusicMatch 3/5 for that very reason. I find it very straightforward and easy to
use, but so are many other options out there. They claim that MusicMatch is "The
World's Best Music Player", but in my opinion that is far from the truth.
Visit Musicmatch Website (Musicmatch.com)