Music sites safe to download

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 4, 2004 by Kiplinger's Money Power

Before legal music became widely available online, you downloaded at your own risk -- the risks being tinny sound, virus contamination and the threat of a lawsuit by the recording industry. But new sites have erased these hassles with clear-sounding music that is not only safe for your PC but also for your conscience.

Each of the three major digital-music sites -- iTunes Music Store, Musicmatch Downloads and Napster 2.0 -- sells individual songs for 99 cents and complete albums for $10. You can search their catalogs by artist, title and genre, and can listen to a 30-second sound clip before you buy.

Each catalog has its gaps. Some stores have exclusive deals with bands. For example, iTunes has a lock on the Grateful Dead and offers a variety of songs by the Eagles. Some artists are MIA at every store.

Because you don't have to pay a membership fee, you can use all three services -- depending on which operating system and portable player you have. The only problem is dealing with different file formats.

Files from Musicmatch Downloads (www.musicmatch.com/download) are encoded in the Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format, which lets them be played on about 20 models of portable players. After you download a file from Musicmatch, you can convert it to the popular MP3 format by using a $10 program available from vendors at InterVideo.com and gocyberlink.com. Although many players recognize the WMA format, dozens recognize only MP3 files. Of course, you can also play downloaded music from all these stores directly from your computer and from CDs you burn.

Musicmatch has the fewest downloadable tracks -- about 250,000 -- but the store says its library will double by January.

Apple's iTunes Music Store (www.apple.com/itunes) boasts about 400,000 tracks. ITunes' songs come in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC)/ FairPlay file format, which is compatible only with Apple's iPod players -- $300 to $500. However, iTunes allows you to convert downloaded songs into MP3 files -- and thus use an MP3 player -- free of charge.

Files from Napster 2.0 (www.napster.com) are available on the WMA format, but the store allows you to download music only to the Samsung Napster YP-910GS -- $400. Users who want to download songs to other WMA players can first save them to Windows Media Player 9, a separate free program (www.windowsmedia.com). From there the songs can be downloaded onto other WMA players.

You can also change Napster files into the MP3 format using the software available at InterVideo.com and GoCyberlink.com. Napster has a 460,000-track library.