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HEATHER NEWMAN | DIGITAL LIFE: Digital Music Fans: Should You Rent or Buy?

Posted on: Sunday, 19 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By Heather Newman, Detroit Free Press

Feb. 19--Ask Frank Ginis of Troy about online music services a year ago and he could not have cared less.

His collection of CDs, ranging from classical to jazz to blues to show tunes, kept him more than entertained. He didn't own a digital music player. He didn't plan to download music.

But in the past 12 months, all that has changed. He got an MP3 player as a freebie when buying some cellular phones. And while Ginis, 42, still prefers CDs when purchasing albums, he's now shopping for a good music service to use for singles.

"There are certain songs that I like that I don't want to buy an entire CD for," he said. "I'd like to be able to play those songs when I like, because they aren't on the radio too often. I'm just looking for stuff I can burn on a CD. I can't imagine I'll be a download junkie ... but you never know."

Fortunately, Ginis has a pile of alternatives for finding that copy of Todd Rundgren's "Hello It's Me" and the other two dozen songs he's looking for. (iTunes alone has a couple dozen versions of the track.) Music services, whether they rent you a song for a month or let you keep it forever, have become part of the American entertainment landscape.

One sign that the selection out there is maturing is that you've now got two choices when you go to buy music downloads: You can rent them by the month, or buy them and keep them forever. Some services offer both options.

Rented music acts just like the real thing -- it sits on your hard drive, where you can play it whenever you want. Services like Napster to Go even let you download it to compatible MP3 players, so you can take it with you. But like your electric service, if you fail to pay your bill, at the end of the month the lights go out -- your tunes will no longer play.

Purchased songs are yours to keep forever, but even they might have some limitations. Some can only be listened to on a limited number of computers or portable players. Some can only be burned onto a CD once.

Others allow unlimited personal use -- including just about the entire collection of Audio Lunchbox, a nifty alternative music service.

If your music tastes change often -- you get into a song, love it and then are ready to leave it after a while -- then renting music is something you should seriously consider. Rental is much cheaper than buying tunes because you have access to the service's entire catalog -- Napster to Go has 1.5 million songs, for example -- at any time. (A basic Napster subscription runs about $10 a month; Napster to Go, which allows you to take the tunes on a portable player, runs about $15.)

But if you love your songs and plan to keep them forever -- even as your budget and your attention shifts to other things -- you might consider sticking with a pay-as-you-go plan. Most services charge about 99 cents a song or $9.99 an album for music, thanks in part to Apple's industry leading iTunes price plans.

Nathan Bomey, 21, a senior at Eastern Michigan University, used Napster through the university's cheap agreement with them before switching to iTunes. He listens to contemporary Christian and Top 40 music in his car, walking around campus and working out at the campus recreation center.

"It was a nice experiment ... With Napster, you can't keep the songs permanently. I didn't see the point in renting the songs. It was nice being able to get a taste of every song, but I generally know what songs I like, what artists I like," he said. "iTunes isn't perfect, but it seems to supply better options for me."

There are notable holes in the collections of all the music services. While you'll find two dozen versions of that Todd Rundgren song, you're not going to find much from the Beatles. That's because some bands, or their publishers, haven't made deals that cover digital music rights.

Out-of-print songs, including older versions of your favorites, are typically not available. Think of the major services as incredibly complete big box stores of music: You're not going to find everything there, and there isn't anyone around to help you track down obscure tunes. For those, you're better off searching sites like eBay for original CDs or LPs.

Fortunately, for some genres, there are niche services that can help. Audio Lunchbox has a terrific collection of alternative bands, ranging from metal to hard rock to pop to folk. Recent Top 10 sellers included folk singer Stephan Smith's Mark Knopfler-esque, mostly spoken ode to people who aren't cowboys, and the cheerful, hook-y rock stylings of Hellogoodbye. Well-known names include Death Cab for Cutie, Marcy Playground, Blink 182 and Queens of the Stone Age.

Al Tochet of Bloomfield Hills wrote recently to say he's thinking of moving into digital music to find some of his classical favorites.

"I do not have an iPod or anything similar, but am ready to take the plunge," he said. "I am a fancier of classical music and pop music of the '50s and '60s."

Tochet will likely find what he's looking for at eClassical.com, another niche service that caters to the classical music crowd.

Regardless of your tastes, digital music has definitely hit its stride. It's commonly available, cheap and legitimate, and the software that comes with most sites makes it a one-button operation to burn a CD or transfer music to your portable player.

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Source: Detroit Free Press

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