So, as I go through my entire MP3 collection, which is based upon my entire CD collection, I hear some songs that I just don’t recognize at all. Indeed, I can’t even identify the artist… I happened to be in the living room chatting with dad, who’d just showed up to invite me out to supper (it was craft night for mom), so I went into the den to first check who the artist was and second turn off the music (hey, I was going out for supper – didn’t need it playing any more).

Turns out the musician in question was Robyn Hitchcock. Ah yes, I remember now. Several years back I’d heard “Uncorrected Personality Traits” and liked the song. I remembered the artist name well enough to find CDs at stores, but not the song title. So I bought CDs hoping they were the ones with the right song. None of ’em were. Years afterwards, I became an online presence and asked folks on IRC one evening. I got both the song title *and* the album title. So I was able to order the CD finally.

Flip forward to a few years later. I hear a song that I rather like, but don’t know the title or artist. I ask in IRC and someone tells me the title. And *then* I go to one of the many sites available for downloading music at 79-99 cents a piece. Rather than buy several CDs to find one song, I buy the one song. It saves me money and having music in my collection that I’m not terribly interested in listening to. And that’s cool. (The second scenario, btw, was “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” by Eminem, which I bought from Rhapsody for $.79.)

So I’m happy that things are conspiring to make music purchasing even easier for listeners like myself. If only the RIAA could see the possibilities of the Internet rather than suing prepubescents and octogenarians.

Some links to places to buy music legally:

• eMusic.com I preferred them when they were 99 cents a song or $9.99 an album rather than the “download as much as you want for $30” or whatever their current pricing is now.
• Rhapsody You can get to the Rhapsody service through a number of outlets, but this link is for listen.com. It’s a streaming audio site, which has a monthly fee for as low as $9 a month. But you can also buy songs for download for 79 cents each.
• MusicMatch My MP3 player (software) of choice now sells downloadable music for the same prices that eMusic used to. However, they come as .wma files. Thankfully most of my MP3 players (hardware) can handle .wma.
• iTunes Not just for Apple anymore… They sell songs for 99 cents each, however I think they are proprietary files. Ever since I got screwed on a Liquid Music purchase a few years ago, I steer clear of all proprietary music files.

I know there are more dowloadable music sites out there – please share your favorite sites with me! I’m always on the lookout for more obscure songs for my collection and the more sources, the better chances I have of finding stuff. (I’d love to find Nat King Cole & Stubby Kaye singing “The Ballad of Cat Ballou” somewhere!)