To the point: I used Napster. Downloaded tunes. Burned them as MP3 on CD and play them in my car, which has no MP3 player port, but plays MP3 formats. I like listening to the tunes on my laptop, too.
I would like to keep doing this, but do I have to pay a subscription every month? I don’t want recurring charges of any sort. I’ve canceled XM radio, and I want no recurring fees.
I don’t mind paying for the tunes, but don’t know what service I can use to just ‘pay as I go’, so to speak.
Another vote for Amazon. I prefer it over iTunes because the music is DRM-free. You can do whatever you want with the files once you’ve paid for them. iTunes, notsomuch.
Unless something has changed recently I don’t think that itunes sells MP3 files. They sell ACC files. Make sure your car can play the ACC files. I would not be surprised if it could not.
www.trackitdown.net for dance, trance and alternative. If you’re interested in those genres they have lots of songs and artists iTunes and Amazon do not.
I really like lala.com for this sort of thing. A catalog pretty comparable to itunes, and you can generally buy tracks cheaper than itunes, with the option to buy just the streaming rights for a song for .10. If you decide you want to own it, that .10 gets credited toward the purchase price. Seems very fair and customer friendly to me.
The other part of lala that rocks is that you can have it scan your pre-existing collection and it then gives you unlimited streaming rights for tracks you already own. You then have access to your entire library anywhere with an internet connection.
Napster will sell you tracks that you can keep without having to pay the monthly subscription fee. I used to go on napster monthly for a month or to, ‘trial’ as much music as I could listen to, and buy the stuff I liked best. However, it’s still DRM-ed WMA, and if your microsoft DRM gets fouled up enough, you’ll have to download it all from napster again. I do recommend burning everything that you buy to CDs, so that you have those. It’s also a good way to tell if you can keep something after your subscription gives out - if you try to burn something that you haven’t ‘bought’, just downloaded, napster will either stop you from burning or prompt you to pay for the track.
Also emusic is great. They have non-DRM mp3s, not as great a selection as other places, but really cheap. They do have ‘monthly plans’, but you don’t have to stay on the plan to enjoy your music, it’s just a billing deal where they charge your credit for ten bucks a month, say, and let you download any thirty mp3s you want within the month, instead of paying for each track a la carte or as albums.