A Guide to Online Music: What a Great Gift!

The gift of music is a fantastic way to enrich someone's life and make a personal connection. Music comes in so many different formats these days. Of course, vinyl has made a comeback, CD's are plentiful in hundreds of different genres. And songs are available online as individual downloads. Here's an idea: Buy your giftee an ipod and a few downloaded songs to get them started. (I just added that to my own wish list!) You can find downloadable songs for as little as 99 cents apiece at the sites we've listed. If you're new to online music, take advantage of these sites' free trial periods or gift certificates, or just poke around at these sites and try downloading a few songs. It's quite easy.

Napster.com's catalog includes all of the five "major" music labels: BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. Together these labels represent dozens of sub-labels such as Columbia, Geffen, Island-Def Jam, Atlantic, Elektra, Arista, Virgin and Motown. Napster's partnership with the major labels ensures that you will get the music you are hearing on the radio on Napster. When you hear an artist you like on the radio, come to Napster and check out other tracks they've recorded. With Napster you can check out new releases every Tuesday.

Simple, fast, and reliable, Rhapsody gives you unlimited access to the deepest catalog of legal online music in the world. Listen to over 700,000 songs on demand. Create custom playlists and radio stations. Burn mixed CDs. Award-winning Rhapsody is the one service that does it all. Rhapsody's partnership with the major labels ensures that you will get the music you are hearing on the radio on Rhapsody.
Try RealRhapsody for 14 days FREE and get unlimited listening access to 700,000+ songs from 25,000+ artists.