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Music Downloads Links
Other ways to get digital music
Downloading tunes might be the most convenient way to add music to your computer or portable player, but you can also get legal digital copies of music you own by ripping tracks from CDs. Ripping CDs is easy, and lots of software packages, including Windows Media Player, can handle the task. While you lose the immediacy of downloading and won't discover any new artists, it's an inexpensive way to load up a portable MP3 player, and the tracks created will work on virtually any player available.
If you're interested in listening to music online, and you like spontaneity, you may want to check out Pandora, a music-discovery service powered by the Music Genome Project. At this site, you enter one of your favorite songs or artists, and you're launched into a streaming station to explore that part of the musical universe. A free version is supported by ads, while the paid version is ad-free. A subscription costs $36 for 12 months of unlimited use.
According to PC Magazine, a relatively new service called Slacker.com trumps Pandora and a similar music-suggestion site, Last.fm. With Slacker, you can listen online (for free) to any of 75 genre-based playlists, or 100 artist playlists. You can also customize your own playlists, and the service will suggest other artists you might like based on those selections. The application is ad-free and subscriptions (*est. $7.50 per month for 12 months) are available. You can listen online through the website or through a downloadable application. Slacker fans can listen to their tunes on the go with the Slacker G2 player (*est. $200).
The most helpful websites we found are the ones addressing the bigger picture of digital music: including who stands to gain, music players, critical issues and upcoming technologies. These sites let you know what to watch out for.
Billboard's Chart Beat Chat is a blog that regularly contains general music industry buzz.
Digital Music News is a digital music blog.
Wikipedia has a good entry on Rhapsody with information on its history and an overview of features, limitations and pricing.
Music services websites: