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Avoiding the pitfalls of Digital Music and Download Services
Those of you who are already deep into digital music will most likely skip this page as “old hat”, but I do have some good advice to offer and I clearly want to get a message out to those who scoff at the industries attempts to curtail theft.
I am somewhat of a late bloomer when it comes to digital media. I personally never bought into CD based music much and I had not given digital music a second look. A recent sentimentality concerning nostalgic 70’s music combined with an interest in placing ring tones on my cell phone has swayed me to look at the options.
Nearly everyone is turning to online digital media. Online music is clearly the way to go and as bandwidth increases and compression software gets better online video will become just as practical in the near future.
There is no question that picking and choosing your favorite songs is a blessing. Gone are the days of buying an entire album to get a single song that you really like. Adding them to your digital player, phone or PDA is what makes it truly great. However, many people do not realize some of the additional benefits.
With the low overhead of creating and delivering Digital music there are other benefits you may not be aware of. Let’s say, your grandfather use to sing a song that you loved as a child. The song was originally not very popular and recently it became very hard to find. The cost of reproducing the poorly selling album or CD it was on had forced the production company to stop making it. You have searched and searched and you simply can’t find it. Presto, now it’s available in a digital download format.
Don’t Steal Music.
I have personally heard several people spout off about the high cost of music. With all the options and at an average of $0.99 a song there simply is no excuse.
There are plenty of web sites and blogs arguing and counter arguing the points concerning the justification of music sharing and theft. I won’t go into a long diatribe about it. Just my own short two cents: Although digital music has put a damper on media production it is nothing like the effect that theft has had. Music theft has and continues to badly hurt the music industry as a whole. What many of the people who scoff at the laws and protest and preach to justify their theft and illegal sharing of music fail to realize is that the harm done to the music industry is not being done to corporate share holders, agents, artist and the like, it is being done to the average working man. When profits are lost, production gets cut back. People - real people who depend on a paycheck - lose work.
Deciding on a format.
The first thing you have to decide on before buying digital music is the format you are going to use. The most common formats for online digital music are MP3, WMA, Middi, WAV and an assortment of others.
I won’t spend a lot of time explaining the pro’s and con’s of the various formats. There are plenty of resources on the web that do a good job of explaining why one is preferred over another and the history of the whole thing. Here is a place to look if you want to know the in’s and outs of Music file formats:
Media Monkey (They sell a media database program and audio format converter ) http://www.mediamonkey.com/mp3-ogg-wma-audio-faq.htm
Let’s keep things simple.
First off, everyone should know that all of the formats mentioned here are lossy formats or formats that lose data in the compression process. They were created to lesson the amount of data needed to get a good sound replication. CD quality audio is superior in every way to any of them, but the file sizes are simply too large to make downloading and transferring practical.
Some terms you will no doubt run accross:
Lossy - Data Compression that loses some quality in order to make smaller files. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression
Lossless - Data compression that does not lose quality. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression
DRM - This is the protection encoding created by Microsoft. Nearly all of the downloaded music from legitimate sites use some form of this. For more on DRM check out http://www.microsoft.com/security/glossary.mspx#digital_rights_management and http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-drm.htm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6337781.stm
These audio formats are ways of compressing the data. Some quality is lost and even though the files are converted to CD Audio format when you burn them to CD that quality lose remains.
I will tell you right off the bat that I do not have a fine enough ear to tell the difference between an MP3 and a WMA file. These two formats are what most people are going to want. There is a third that seems to be gaining ground. It is called OGG, but I don’t have any experience with it yet.
So what is the difference between MP3 and WMA? Basically MP3 is a major standard, and the term is so familiar that it is now being used as a generic term when talking about digital music devices. Much like Coke is used to mean soda. The problem with MP3 is that it has been around over a decade and the compression format is not as good as WMA. WMA is as good or better as MP3 but takes less space.
Windows Media Player comes with every Windows PC and WMA is the format it uses. Obviously a standard.
Sometimes however you need one of those other formats.
For example, my Telephone will play only WMA files from internal memory. It will do MP3 if you have a memory card installed. In addition, the ringtones have to be MIDI. (One device, three music formats.) My PDA, a Palm Zire 72 requires RealPlayer to play music, so I have to have my music in Real Audio format or RealPlayer Music Store tracks (.rax).
For me the decision was simple, since I need 3 or more formats I decided to use one of the two most common and of those the one with the best compression WMA.
I use an audio converter to change these WMA files into the other formats I need. There are hundreds of these converters available and some are free. I have not found one that I want to stick with so I won’t make any particular recommendations.
As mentioned before Media Monkey offers one that I think I may try soon. (Update: Works great, but will not work with DRM protected files.)http://www.mediamonkey.com/download.htm
There is a trial version available on Microsofts site that looks good.
called Acez Audio Converter http://www.micocosoft.com/audio-converter/
I have used a DVD player offered by AVS and I liked very much (Ever lost your DVD codec files and could not get them back? Well that’s another topic) AVS offers a product that contains an entire suite of Audio Tools. The trial version has no limits, but sticks “nags” into things reminding you to buy it. http://www.avsmedia.com/AudioTools/index.aspx
Update: I have also used the 14 day trial version of Protected Music Converter. It works very good and does dozens of formats, but the trial copy seems to have a glitch that is preventing me from doing more than one file at a time.
Don’t like any of these choices? A Google search on the words “Audio Converter Free” will get over 13,500,000 pages of Free Audio converter info.
So, where to get the music?
There are literally thousands of sites. I am listing some of the most common ones. Many are gee-Whiz cool, but behind that “want-ta-be-hip” interface stands a mountain of things you need to check out.
Before picking a site you should pay close attention to a couple of things. Since cost is not a factor (most charge the same thing) lets look at some things that do matter.
1) What format will my music download in?
2) Music rental as opposed to purchase and do I have to use a specific player?
3) License issues. Are there restrictions on how I can use the music? (Can I use it on more than one computer, can I burn it and if so how many times?)
4) Can I move the music to my portable devices? (phone, digital music player, PDA)
5) Is there good support at the site? (What happens if you download music and it won’t play?)
What format will my music download in?
I have talked about formats and the fact that you sometimes need a converter, but you don’t want to have to convert file formats every time you want to listen to that new song. Take your time. Make a list of devices you want to use the music on and make sure you know what formats you need/want.
Music rental/subscription as opposed to purchase.
Many sites have great music rental/subscription programs. Don’t confuse this with Music sharing. Peer to Peer sharing sites and upload and download swapping sites should be avoided. I am not a legal expert but I am pretty sure that most of those sights are operating outside of the law.
Legitimate sites like Yahoo Music will let you pay a fee each month and allow you to download and play any song in their library. This is also what Napster ended up doing. Instead of selling you the song, and they do that also, you get to have any and all of them as long as you pay the monthly fee. At Yahoo it’s called Y! Music Unlimited and the price is roughly $6.00 a month. This is great if all you want to do is play music on your computer, but there are some catches to it. First off, they require that you use their player Yahoo Music Jukebox, which of course uses a special format for the music. For an extra fee you can put music onto portable devices, but the number of devices supported is relatively small. Information about Y! Music Unlimited can be found at http://music.yahoo.com/ymu/?tab=benefits
License Restrictions:
Nearly all the legitimate music sites place usage or license restrictions on the digital music. For example most will only let you burn a song to CD 7 times or copy it to one or two backup computers. Simply put most music sellers use a special download of a license that is checked against a service or site on the Internet before allowing you to play, burn or transfer the music. This precaution is understandable to prevent mass reproduction by thieves and would-be illegal music production fools. For legitimate users these restrictions should not be a problem as long as the restrictions are reasonable. If they are not, don’t buy your music there.
Just make sure you read and understand this before making a purchase.
Portable Devices:
There is not a lot to say here except that this is an important factor. If you want to play music on your phone, PDA or portable digital device then you need to know what format that device will accept and find a site that offers music in that format. Alternately you could find a good converter to change the format of your purchased music.
Be careful not to get locked into a player that will not talk to your device or transfer music to it.
Also, If you plan to play most of your music on your portable device like a phone, you may want to consider getting the music from your service provider. Verizon, Cingular and most carriers sell downloadable music.
Is there good support at the site?
I recommend that you test it first. I recently bought about 18 songs from a download site and when I went to play them they were all missing their licenses. A short phone call later everything was fixed. If the support had not been good I would have been in trouble.
So, call the support number. Do you get a person? If so, ask them what happens if you download songs and they don’t play?
Now to shop for music:
Given all of these factors you should now go out and shop for a site. There are thousands. Again, many are flashy and “hip”, but don’t let that suck you in. You want easy and fast with good support.
As un-hip as it might seem one of the best places to look at is Wal-Mart. The selection is somewhat limited compared to others (roughly 500,000 songs) but nothing I have looked for was missing so far. The files are in WMA format and they work in Windows Media Player. The songs are cheap. Just $0.88 each. The order process is simple, the download is smooth and easy. The license agreement restrictions are more than reasonable.
Note: Wal-Mart does not have a list of portable devices that their DRM downloads work with. Instead they display a list of what devices they currently sell that will work with the downloads. I found out the hard way that the files would transfer to my phone, but not play. (I may add something on how to convert the files in my Cell phone section)
Here are a few to look at to start you off. Remember there are thousands.
Places to buy Music:
Wal-Mart Music - http://downloads.walmart.com/swap/
Yahoo Music - http://music.yahoo.com/
Music Match (is now Yahoo’s music player/system) - http://www.musicmatch.com/
BuyMusic at Buy.com
http://www.buy.com/buymusic/18250.html
Real Player
http://musicstore.real.com/music_store/home
Microsoft’s Music Site MSN Music
http://music.msn.com/
Unlimited rental / Subscription sites:
Y! Music Unlimited
http://music.yahoo.com/ymu/?tab=benefits
Napster
http://www.napster.com/choose/index.html
Rhapsody
http://offer.rhapsody.com/
I am not so sure about this site. Anyone?
EZ-Tracks - http://www.ez-tracks.com/
Device providers who sell music:
Verizon V-Cast
http://getitnow.vzwshop.com/index.aspx?id=music_vcast
Apple: iTunes Music Store
www.apple.com/itunes/store/
Cingular (Now AT&T)
http://www.wireless.att.com/source/music/cingularmusic.aspx
Guides and comparisons of download services:
About.com
http://mp3.about.com/od/wheretobuymusic/a/all_profile.htm
Digital Trends
http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/print_guide33.html
C|net’s music Center
http://www.cnet.com/4520-7899_1-6304020-1.html
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