Legal Online Music Downloads

This page will deal with legal online music downloads. That is, downloads from the truly legal digital music services - see a complete

There are certain situations whereby you could get legal downloads on other sites, the peer to peer (P2P) sites. However, some songs you could get illegaly from P2p sites. The in's and out's of P2P downloading are covered here.

- has permission from the record labels and artists to provide downloads of their songs
- does not require you to pay money up front prior to downloading their software; i.e., the software should be free
- will offer a plan where you may download for a fee, say $0.99, per song
- may offer monthly subscription plans where you can download an unlimited number of songs without paying the $0.99 fee.
- they offer unlimited burns ONLY to songs where you pay the individual fee say $0.99, per song
- they DO NOT allow unlimited burns of downloads in which you have not paid an individual fee yet
- are advertised with banner advertising (i.e., branding advertising). This advertising only works for major, reputable businesses that know what they're doing.
- do not allow "swapping" of songs, unlike peer to peer networks
- are generally more expensive than P2P networks - cost much less than buying cds from a store - What is the best way to achieve the cheapest legal online music downloads?

Rhapsody - the only service that allows up to 25 free downloads per month. Great features. Click here for full review

Napster - has the most number of files. "Napster To Go" highly recommended for the music buff. Click here for full review

iTunes - although more expensive, it is the #1 rated digital music service for downloading, organizing and playing songs. Click here for full review

Wal-mart - for those who want cheap commercial downloads and few of them. Custom CD option is unique. Click here for full review

AOL Musicnet - now defunct and will be replaced by Napster. When it was in operation it had a few decent features. However, it ranked lower in virtually every category compared to the above choices.