Best music download site

stevemcol

Trying to find the best singles download site. I downloaded a track from Napster (79p) last night bu it will only play on PC, not MP3 player. I assume this is copyright protection of some sort. I'd like to download music to play on PC and MP3. Not just chart but older stuff as well

Happy to pay the going rate which does seem to be 79p per track..

superscaper

What's your mp3 player and what format is the single from napster in? Usually you are allowed to download to mp3 player at least once so maybe it isn't in a type your mp3 player can play.

I'm_With_Stupid

I'd be interested to know this as well. I tried getting one track off iTunes once, and it refused to play on anything except iTunes and Realplayer (but only the realplayer on my computer, not the one on my phone). To be honest, just buy CD's but for single tracks it's about time the music industry starts considering it's paying customers. The irony is that you can illegally download the copyright protected M4U files if you wanted and listen to them as if you'd paid for them yourself anyway, so they might as well just let you buy basic MP3 files. In the meantime, if you want to listen to new tracks, you're probably better off just going onto the artist's MySpace page, because if you're gonna have to sit at the computer to listen to it anyway, you might as well just do it for free. Just don't pay for any downloads and you never know, they might eventually get the message. I doubt it though, they'll just continue with the same policy that's been so successful so far. And so more and more people will continue to download tracks illegally, when they would've had no problem paying for them if someone was selling them in a format that they could use.

I'm_With_Stupid

superscaper wrote:

What's your mp3 player and what format is the single from napster in? Usually you are allowed to download to mp3 player at least once so maybe it isn't in a type your mp3 player can play.

I think Napster sell WMA files with some sort of limited use policy on them.

superscaper

Please edit your post, we're not allowed to talk about p2p on these forums. And we're certinly not allowed to recommend illegal actions.

superscaper

I'm_With_Stupid wrote:

I think Napster sell WMA files with some sort of limited use policy on them.

That's what I was getting at, if the OP's mp3 player can't play wma then it doesn't matter what copy protection is there.

I'm_With_Stupid

superscaper wrote:

That's what I was getting at, if the OP's mp3 player can't play wma then it doesn't matter what copy protection is there.

Yes, but it's just ridiculous that there doesn't seem to be a single place out there where you can purchase MP3 files to play on your MP3 player. I mean they're called MP3 players for a reason. All this copyright protection stuff does nothing but hurt the paying consumer. I refuse to buy any CD that has copyright protection won't let me rip it to the computer, because that's what I expect when I buy a CD (*cough* Kasabian *cough*).

superscaper

It's a technical matter, mp3 can't have ANY copy protection added to it and I personally wouldn't want mp3. It's a very inefficient compression format and I would rather have wma. It's down to the copyright holders what format they want to release their music in.

wolfman

WMA over Mp3! Mp3's at around 220Kbps (variable) using the LAME encoder will give a decent output. Not quite transparent, but still very good. I'd never use WMA though.

Ogg Vorbis or AAC is the way to go if you want the best lossy encoders. Preferably Ogg as it's open source, although it has less support.

And if you start getting near 320Kbps, you may as well just use lossless compression, like FLAC.


Buying the CD is still the best option. You can often get some very good prices if you look around. There is one site I'd recommend, but we're not allowed to mention such russian sites on here.

I'm_With_Stupid

superscaper wrote:

It's a technical matter, mp3 can't have ANY copy protection added to it and I personally wouldn't want mp3. It's a very inefficient compression format and I would rather have wma. It's down to the copyright holders what format they want to release their music in.

I know, and it is precisely because of their completely ineffective copyright protection policy, and refusal to release it in formats that people can use (and a lot of MP3 players, especially on phones, will only accept certain file types) that they are not getting any money from people like myself and the OP for singles. I personally believe that there actions are actually increasing the number of people that download illegally. But anyway, that's a whole other point. If anyone can recommend a site which sells MP3 files, I'm all ears.

trets77

i can reccomend a site where tracks are cheap , without conditions and 100% completley legal.

EBAY . and there are 1000's upon 1000's of hard copy mp3's for you to choose !!!! 79p a track i consider that premium price for a whole album !