Concert Venues

Okay, it is time for me to finally say good bye to my portable disc player, and join the Internet and portable music revolution. Okay, the revolution isn’t so new any more, nor is my PC, but as I wade through the sea of choices for how to download music, listen to and buy Internet tracks, I grow more eager to get my feet wet and eventually suit up to take the plunge. But I happen to be a bit more practical than that. So, I have spent a considerable amount of time over the last few weeks trying to determine what’s optimum for my lifestyle, my wallet and my PC.
1st thing I realized when searching all of the music services is that things seemed to work a lot smoother with a cable connection (and most services seem to point that out from the get go). Just like my compact disc  Walkman, the time had come for me to lose my ancient dial-up connection to the Internet experience. It actually turned out to work in my favor as my cable company gave me a good deal on high-speed, and also threw in a discount on my current expenses for cable TV.
Now that I was “connected” at an acceptable speed to the World Wide Web, I had to determine, what I was trying to get out of the Internet music experience. After some intense melodious soul searching, I realized that the only thing the separated me from the perpetually hip is perhaps the categories of music I was searching for, and the amount of time I wanted to spend Internet searching for music.
The guy who sits next to me has a 60 GB iPod, and is complaining that it is al most full. That’s over seven thousand tunes. I don’t know that I would even live long enough to listen to that a lot of tunes. My needs were simple r. I had an MP3 player still in the box from two Christmas’ ago, and it promised to hold over 500 tunes. That would be optimum for me, at least in the short term.
Next, what was I looking for in my new Internet music experience? Did I want to listen to music on my PC, in my car or on my MP3 player? Yes to all three. Did I want to listen to the radio while I was on my PC? Again, yes. Did I want to trade music with others Internet in a peer-to-peer Napster- like environment? Eh, that one scared me a little, and I decided that occasion up my files to strangers made me feel dirt, so I put that one on hold.
My next prohibit in determining how I would “music Internet ” was price. I searched dozens of web sites and services, but narrowed my sights to three of the ample guys: AOL Music Now, iTunes and Rhapsody Music Service ( offer d by Real Networks).
I already had AOL, so I signed up for their Music Now product for $8.99/month ( that’s in addition to their monthly fee as an ISP). I was able to download tunes, listen to them while “offline” and burn them to compact disc  or move them over to my MP3 player for an additional fee per song. That seemed to be standard across most of the services. Music Now was a follow up to the original AOL Music Net, which I actually like d better because it ran local/regional ly on machine and the new Web-based Music Now takes much longer. AOL also has a partnership with iTunes, so you may be on AOL, but iTunes will launch and then you’re actually in the iTunes application. It’s confusing. If I want to move my downloaded tunes to my MP3 player, the monthly fee jumps to $14.95 per month, and if I want to put them on a compact disc, I pay and additional 99 cents per track. This is too much resources for me. I typically buy one or two compact disc ’s a month, and that would be cheaper than this Internet service. Not to mention you have to be an current AOL member (more resources per month) in order to even use the product. I am passing on AOL Music Now.
On to iTunes. Okay, so there is no monthly fee for iTunes. Love that. And I could purchase tunes for 99 cents per track. Love that too. But wait. I don’t have an iPod, and iTunes has tunes in their proprietary MP4 format. Ugh. The cheapest iPod out there is around $99 (so much for no monthly fee), and it is not the model I would select. I like my MP3 player. If I already had an iPod, this may be the route I would go, but Apple tends be wonderfully inflexible, and I hate to be tied to one offer r, player and format. There is also a limit to how you could share the tunes on your home network. I feel like even though I own the song, I am being watched on what I do with it. Good bye ample brother.
Rhapsody Music Service from Real Networks. So far they are the least expensive. $9.99 per month and that’s with unlimited access to over 1.3 million tunes. I do have to have pay the additional 99 cent fee if I want to burn to compact disc  or transfer to my MP3, but that’s the industry standard for paying the musician s, and the monthly fee is five dollars less per month than AOL. The music comes over in the more expansive ly guide ed MP3 format and the tunes are mine to rip transfer or share with my other PC’s on my home network. like the other two, I could listen to live radio on my PC, but I like the freedom I get with Rhapsody Music Service. I am not being watched, and the music is mine.
Now that I know how to download music and have chosen Rhapsody Music Service, I am on my way to joining the new world of portable digital music. I have already burned a few compact disc ’s for my car, albeit with an older man’s twist on today ’s favorite s, and transferred those same tunes over to my little antiquated MP3 player for those long weekend walks.