During the reign of Napster and other file sharing networks getting music for your Mp3 players was as simple as anyone could make itand best of all there was no cost. But as soon as the music industry started loosing money, the copyright suits soon followed and the "good ol"days were over. There are still many "P2P" sites and software that offer "free" music mp3sfor their users but are often times unreliable and illegal.

Nowadays you can get your music legally many different ways. You can pay to download individual songs or albums, stream music from a website,  or buy a CD and copy it to your portable music device. But which way is best, whatconditionsshould be considered when purchasing music online or signing up for music subscription services and is there any way to get music forat no costlegally anymore.

Has Free become a new "Four Letter Word"

It would seem that Free has becoume a "Four Letter" word in the music industry, but you can still get a good deal of your music for free.

How you may ask?

Unfortunately, purchasing music will eventually be inevitable (unless you want to violate on copyrights and get fined thousands of dollars, not recommended). So as your checking out these sites, and downloading your free music, there are some factors that you should be paying attention to so you know where to go when you have to actually start paying.

Fat bank roll not required

First of course is cost. You want to get the cheapest per download cost you can, but you don't want to sacrifice quality or freedom to use your music how you want.

Sometimes you can get bulk discounts for downloading many songs at once instead of one at a time. Buying a whole album may be cheaper online then it is at the store. Plus it comes in mp3 format already so you don't need to rip and convert the songs yourself.

A great substitute to buying individual tracks is to join a music subscription service and get all the music you can cope with for a monthly fee, but you lose access to that music when you subscription expires.

Remember to check and see if they permit you to play their music on your mp3 player before signing up, there is usually a slight increase in fees for services that do. But shouldn't cost more than $13-$16 per month.

At least one good thing came from all of this

While I am on this subject, I think one great thing that has come out of this whole situation is the fact you don't have to buy the whole album anymore. I can remember many of my friends saying why do I have to buy the whole CD when I only like one or two songs on it. I wish I could just pay for the songs I want. Well now that's a reality.

Quality, Audiophiles Beware

When I say quality I am talking about Bit rate, calculated in bits per second (bps) or kilobits per second (kbps), which is fundamentally the amount of data compressed in to each second of audio or video. Most mp3's use to be encoded at 128 kbps CBR (Constant Bit Rate), that was when most people were still on dial up. Now you want to look for at least 160 kbps VBR (Variable Bit Rate). Having Variable Bit Rate allows the mp3 to use more data for encoding at certain points in the song where it is real data leaden allowing for a much superior sounding mp3, this results in a slightly larger file size but is absolutely worth it.

Your Music File Freedom and DRM

When you purchase a CD or download a song from a website they often times have DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions which only allow some actions you can do with your music. For example, you can only transfer a song 5 times before it becomes unplayable, and you must repurchase the song.

Fortunately, it seems as if the industry is moving away from DRM because of the compatibility problems it causes with certain computers and portable music devices.  As well as, the fact it infringes on the Fair Use Act of copyrighted material, where certain uses of copyrighted material is lawful and encouraged.

A recap

• Try and get the lowest cost per song that you can when buying music online, sometimes this can be accomplished by buying in bulk.
• You no longer have to buy the whole album, only pay for the songs you want.
• Subscription services are a great alternative to buying individual songs, but has limitations.
• Download songs that are at least a bit rate of 160 kbps VBR for quality sound.
• Attempt and get DRM Free music so you have complete control over how you use it.

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