PTA Technology Corner

The days of visiting the record store (just calling it a record store has long become a misnomer) and thumbing through the latest albums (there I go again) has taken a dramatic change in the past few years. How and where we’re listening to music has changed as well. I remember working at Sam Goody’s when I was younger and I remember getting my first Sony Walkman. But we have entered the “now” generation. The online generation. And the download generation.

It all started with Napster – what became the popular – yet later deemed illegal – download service. Then Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003 (http://www.itunes.com) and now offers over 2 million songs, over 3,000 music videos, 11,000 audio books, over 25,000 podcasts (we’ll get to what those are in a future article) and recently dozens of popular and past television shows. They’ve sold over 850 million songs to date and over 42 million iPods – over 10 million in just the last three months of 2005. This is more than a fad. It’s a new culture! It seems that it’s hard to stand on a street corner and not see someone with those white earbuds hanging from their head. And Apple isn’t the only one selling music online or MP3 players (although they do have an 84% market share in this space even though the iPod only works with iTunes on both Macs and Windows computers).

So why do we bring this up? This column has become a sort of “how to protect yourself and your children” space and downloading music is a topic that warrants some attention. And if your child hasn’t bugged you about buying them an iPod Nano or some other MP3 player, I’ll bet they will be soon. So, what do you need to know?

First, how do you download music? Probably a better question is “how do you buy and download music.” This can be done from a number of sites, even though Apple’s iTunes Music Store is by far the most popular. The others major services include MSN Music (http://music.msn.com), Walmart (http://www.walmart.com/music), Sony Connect (http://www.connect.com) and Real Rhapsody (http://www.rhapsodydirect.com). These services either sell songs one-by-one at around $0.99 for each song or have a monthly subscription service. While the initial price of the subscription service may be appealing (one price and you can download any number of songs you want), when you cancel your subscription, you don’t get to keep the songs.

Second, how should you NOT download music? There are a number of “peer-to-peer” networks (or P2P) available where individuals can share music online. This is not only illegal, but is one way the Recording Industry of America Association (or RIAA) is catching individuals illegally downloading music. Stick with the pay services listed above and you’ll be ok.

Finally, it is ok to “burn” compact discs that you own onto your computer and transfer those songs to your MP3 player too. Most of the services, including the iTunes store, allow you to do this very easily. You’re not doing anything illegal here as long as you own the CD already.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.