Geek Girl Report: Name That iTune – The Best Places To Find Music Online

I love music. And from classic rock to current hits to even the most obscure video game soundtrack, I’m always on the lookout for new and cool songs to listen to. Luckily for me, there is no shortage of websites where I can find the latest and greatest songs, and more than a few songs I’ve never heard of, but now can’t live without. Here are just a few places where you can find your newest “all-time favorite song.”

iTunes

Hands down, iTunes is the most popular music downloading service out there. And when you take a look at what they can offer you, it’s easy to see why it’s become such a hit. Once you install iTunes on your computer, you have access to one of the biggest library of songs you can find on the web (8 million songs and counting, if you want to get specific). Also, browsing and searching that massive library is a piece of cake, with a handy “power search” that lets you look up songs by artist, title or just keywords. And it’s not just music, iTunes offers a huge variety of movies, TV shows, audiobooks, even college lectures. In fact, the only downside about iTunes is that it’s only useable by Apple devices like the iPod and iPhone, but even that can be worked around...

Amazon MP3

It makes sense that the biggest online retailer would also have an impressive music download service. One of the big draws for Amazon is that all of their songs are digital rights management (DRM)-free. That means you can download a song and put it on as many portable device, burn it to as many CDs, and download it to as many computers as you want. Their prices are also pretty agreeable, with some singles costing as little as $.79, and very few albums over $10. They don’t have quite the massive selection that iTunes does, but Amazon MP3 is definitely a worthy competitor.

Napster

The site that started the person-to-person file sharing phenomenon got into quite a bit of hot water in its early days with “stealing songs.” Now that it is a legitimate music download service, it’s still a musical powerhouse. Napster is more of a subscription-base service, but it does have quite an impressive library, and you can still choose to purchase individual songs and albums. However, Napster requires you to install its own in-house music player to use its songs, which I found causes quite a few problems if you have another media player already installed. And right now, it is a music-only service, so if you're looking to pick up some podcasts or audiobooks, you’ll have to look elsewhere.