Buying Guide to Online Music Services

There are a variety of online music services that are available to you the consumer. There is Kazaa, I-Tunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo, Napster and many others. There are several factors to consider when deciding which service to use.

Kazaa and other free services

Positives

The benefit to Kazaa and other free services are obvious; they cost no money to use. You can also use Kazaa or pretty much any free service to put music on any portable mp3 player that you want

Negatives

The downside to these services is equally obvious. Most of the material on these services is illegally attained, and many people have been getting sued for using these services because they are violating copyrights. Kazzaa in particular also offers no organizational features that allow you to easily manage large amounts of music. If you have a large music collection and decide you want to listen to it be prepared to spend a couple of minutes scrolling and scrolling trying to find the one song you want to listen too. Your best bet if you download from Kazaa would be to use Windows Media Player or I-Tunes to manage your music. 

I-Tunes

Positives

I-Tunes is considered by many to be the premium music service. It is top of the line in every category. It allows endless ways to organize your music, and it offers countless more products and services that can be used. It can be used to organize Apple music or free music from other programs like Kazaa. And I-Tunes doesn’t stop with just music. They offer TV shows that can be purchased for a couple dollars an episode (not that much of a bargain but better than purchasing the DVD for 60 dollars) and for some things they even offer free podcasts. 

Negatives

The main drawback to I-Tunes is the incredible expense that is involved. I-Tunes charges almost a dollar a song for its collection. For people who have even small music collection of a couple hundred songs using I-Tunes will be expensive. For people who have large music collections, I’m sure paying fifteen to sixteen hundred dollars for ownership of music is not a very happy thought. 

This is the picture of the yahoo logo, my music engine of choice.

Credit: Yahoo

Copyright: Yahoo Inc