The last few weeks, I had the need to study and therefore listen to lots of kind of music, primarily instrumental and classical.  So I started to get active on the internet… what can it do?

As you may have noted, Napster and MP3 have changed the scenery of the way people sell music.  In fact, music sales has been in the downtrend the last few years because of it.  While before, the only way was to go to the music store, and get the CD, now most music can be downloaded through the internet.

Apple iTunes changed the way you get legal music.  They had a great price at that time which was 99 cents per song, and they are selling now music by the millions.  Of course, millions of songs are also available through file sharing networks without any licensing.

The greatest offer came from providers like Zune.Net and Real Rhapsody.  I was very very tempted.  What it does is it offers you unlimited number of songs ( they say that they have upwards a million songs), and for the amount of about 12 to 15 dollars per month, you can download any number of songs, and listen to it.  However, you have to pay per month, and the songs have usually DRM ( digital rights management ) limitations.  The songs you download can be played only in about 2 or 3 computers or designated mp3 players.

The good things is as long as you are paying per month, you can listen to the songs as many as you want, but once you stop paying, then all the songs you download will not play also — that means you have unlimited selections but only if you keep paying!

But even then, I got so excited about it – after all, we have to get over the fact that we don’t have to own the songs perpetually, but just be able to listen and study it.  However, there was a big letdown – the music subscription service would not accept your payment and registration if you are not a resident of the United States.

Maybe it is understandable – maybe the record companies want to release the music but even with DRM, they were still reluctant to release it to the world.  But that goes to show that we are at a disadvantage when you are not known to respect IPR – such great deals are not available to you!

After some queries, I decided to register to emusic.com.  It is not a all you can listen model but they have upwards a million songs. You can listen to a segment of it ( usually about 30 seconds), and if you like it, you can buy it.  They have several plans, and the plan I choose was that you pay 15 dollars per month, and you can download 50 songs every month ( that means each song is about 30 cents which is cheaper than iTUnes or Amazon.com).

I have been very happy with it.  By the way, lately, I also find out that if you go to myspace.com, it has a very rich music library.  If you do a search on most tracks, you can find most selections, and although you can listen to it, you cannot download it.  However, many of these songs were registered and uploaded by users themselves, so some are not properly labeled, or some are not so nice.  But nevertheless, if you just want to know some music group, and test their music, myspace.com has probably one of the biggest sources, even Philippine song groups.

I also found out that if you are a member of Facebook, you can load an application called Music Player, and that allows you probably upwards hundreds of thousands of songs which you can listen to. The only drawback is that it is not very high quality, but nevertheless it is free!

I am sure millions of people go to the internet for music, and there are lots and lots of other resources.  Please feel free to inform me if you have a good one.  But unlike years ago, the internet has allowed me to buy and listen to almost virtually any music that I heard of in just a click of a mouse.