How to Download Music

You pay for each track downloaded. Prices vary, but can be as low as 29p per single to around £1.50. The artist receives a royalty on each download, just as they would if you bought a CD in a shop.

Downloading music is perfectly legal as long as all the copyright holders of that particular piece of music have given their permission.

To download a piece of music, follow the instructions on the website. It makes sense to store your music in one place on your computer. On a PC, the folder titled 'My Music' is an obvious choice. It can usually be found on the 'C:' drive, in the 'My Documents' folder.

The average size of a typical 4-minute track, stored at 192Kbit/s, is about six Mbytes. To download this track on a broadband connection should take you about one to two minutes. On a dial-up connection, expect this download to take around 15 minutes.

Once you have bought the track it is by and large yours for as long as you want, just as if you had bought it on the high street. Unlike a CD that you buy on the high street, however, if you lose the track, or delete it by mistake, most sites allow you to come back and re-download it. Don’t forget to keep a record of the original transaction in case you need it.

Some tracks will have a licence limitation on the number of times they can be copied on to a CD, or transferred to a portable music player. This is known as the 'rights' that you have been given with the licence for the track. Once you reach the licence limitation, you will not be able to copy or transfer that track any more.

The track that you are looking for may not be available to download. There are many artists who have not made their music available for downloads, and the record companies have not released their entire catalogue of songs.

Try

• http://www.napster.com
• http://www.tescodownloads.com
• http://www.tiscali.co.uk/music/downloads
• http://www.apple.com/itunes