Downloading Music - Hot

By Robert Walling
Downloading music online has become an ethical dilemma since the creation of Napster in 1998. The upstart service allowed computer users to access and download from a vast selection of MP3s (digitally compressed audio files) at no cost to them. Recording artists, however, paid a price when their fans chose to illegally download their music instead of paying for their CDs. Legal or not, MP3s are quickly becoming a popular, convenient medium for people to listen to their favorite music.

The government and the recording industry have responded by allowing a legal maneuver through the switch to this developing new format. The federal government has begun strict enforcement of illegal online MP3 services. Napster, in its original form, no longer exists. Many copycat sites - Limewire, Aimster, Macster - have popped up, although some have had short life spans.

In 2002, Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs released iTunes, a legal online music provider. The service currently charges listeners 99 cents per selection or entire albums for approximately $10. Entire audio books are also available to be downloaded.

iTunes pays record companies for the rights to distribute their property online, unlike other services that share files from multiple users. This gives people an ethical, legal and easy way for people to download music instead of driving to a music store and buying the CD.

But what is the point of downloading music if it is no longer free? Simple: It is convenient, cheaper than buying CDs, and customizable.

Portable MP3 players, such as Apple’s iPod or the Dell DJ, provide a way for your entire song library to fit into your pocket. The devices are small digital storage units. They use a spinning magnetic disk (similar to a computer’s hard drive), or solid random access memory (similar to a Nintendo Game Boy game cartridge). Magnetic-based players are larger, but provide great amounts of storage - the largest of which is Apple’s 60 gigabyte or 15,000-song iPod. Smaller RAM-based machines carry about one or one-half gigabyte of storage. Although they have less capacity, they are both cheaper and smaller than their hard-drive-sized counterparts are.

CDs today can be priced from around $12 to $20, depending on where one shops. However, Apple’s iTunes service charges only $10 for an entire album to be downloaded to a personal computer. Once the songs are on the computer, they can be transferred to an MP3 player; all the albums can be inside an object the size of a deck of cards.

But what if a band records an album with only one good song? (Imagine that happening?) iTunes allows the purchase of individual tracks from the album for under a dollar. Not only does the service allow you to customize what goes into your own playlists, but it also opens the doors to a greater variety of music - not just the songs you hear played everyday on MTV or the radio. This gives record companies more information on what people actually want to listen to, so that they will not mass-produce a product and advertise it on radio stations. People can tell the industry what is popular by browsing through what looks interesting, and then buying what they like. An online music store, such as iTunes, can keep track of these statistics to get a better idea of changes and trends in different types of music; it tells the industry exactly what is preferred.