By MARYANNE MURRAY BUECHNER	Email this article to a friend

April 7, 2003

If you want to listen with a clear   conscience, try one of the   sanctioned services DIGITAL VISION

Like millions of other scofflaws, I've used file-sharing services to acquire free music. So I know the thrill of getting something for nothing, the rush of instant gratification with each successful search-and-download made swift by my DSL connection. Every time I nabbed a song on Napster (back in the day) or Kazaa (my more recent fave) it felt deliciously naughty, which made it a heck of a lot more fun (not to mention cheaper) than getting new music the old-fashioned way.

But now I've turned legit. And I don't mean that I'm back buying CDs off the rack. Lately I've been expanding my personal collection using paid subscription services. Each of the five major record labels has invested in one online service or another, hoping to reclaim control over the digital distribution of their wares and salvage some of the action they've lost to illegal song swapping.

It looks like a few are finally pulling it off — or at least getting closer. Listen.com's Rhapsody, MusicNet at AOL, MusicNow and PressPlay all offer a combination of all-you-can-eat streams and downloads, charging extra for those tracks you want to permanently own. There is still a lot of confusing terminology. A burn on one site is a "portable download" on another; "downloads" aren't real downloads, because they only exist within the music program and disappear from your hard drive if your subscription expires. But the menu options make more sense than they used to. And song selection has ballooned in recent months as more and more licenses have come through from both major and independent labels. Each service has its own look and feel, so take advantage of the free trials before you commit. You've got nothing to lose but the respect of your file-sharing friends.

Yes, some might call you a chump, but remember that subscription services are much more reliable than the file-sharing services they're using. On Kazaa and Morpheus, you often have to pick through the trash (mislabeled files, corrupt files, even porn) to get to the good stuff. Sound quality varies and downloads can inexplicably fail. And these programs are notorious for depositing spyware, those insidious programs that report your online activities to an outside database, on users' hard drives-no thanks.

With a subscription service, what you see is what you get. Searching and browsing is a breeze, and there's lots of extra content: artist profiles, commercial-free radio stations, and suggested tracks based on a user's tastes ("If you like this artist, may we recommend..."). Every song you stream or download from one of these services is CD-quality. But here's the rub: the files are in a secure format, meaning, they're wrapped in what's called digital rights management (DRM) technology to prevent you from making more copies and redistributing them. Unfortunately, that also makes it difficult to enjoy your playlists away from your computer. Most digital audio receivers and other equipment designed to pump music from your PC out to your living room stereo can't read secure formats. (For more about networking your PC to your stereo, see next story.)

Of course, any tracks that you burn on to a CD you can take anywhere, but at 99 cents a pop, the going rate these days, you'll probably want to be picky.

Here's a rundown of the four services I tried:

RHAPSODY
(www.listen.com)
Selection: 320,000 songs available on-demand (streaming or downloading), about half of them available for burning.
Cost: $9.95 per month for unlimited streams and unlimited downloads, plus 99 cents for each song you burn.

My favorite. This slick, well-organized site lets you search by artist, track, album or composer, and offers brightly written artist profiles and samples of an artist's best tracks for a quick initiation. If Rhapsody doesn't have the rights to the artist or band you're looking for—say, The Beatles—you can click on "The Beatles Radio" for a continuous (commercial-free) stream of Beatles songs mixed with other "similar" artists, both predictable and obscure (The Chocolate Watchband anyone?). A cool custom radio feature combines tunes from artists you specify. Subscribers can log on from any PC with a broadband connection. Burning tracks is a snap.

MUSICNOW
(www.musicnow.com)
Selection: About 200,000 songs, just over half available for burning.
Cost: $9.95 per month for unlimited downloads plus 99 cents for each track you burn or download to a portable device (so far the secure music files are only compatible with a few hard drive-based players).

Formerly known as Full Audio, the service relaunched under its new name in March with a new look and a few new features. Not backed by any of the major labels, it has still managed to secure licenses to a couple hundred thousand tracks. Be sure to have Windows Media Player 9 to access this service. It took me a little longer to find my way around the service and to figure out that the songs I clicked to save (you have a choice of Play, Save or Buy) were being stored under My Playlists in my Windows Media Player's Media Library. Song streams seemed to take longer to load than on other services. Favorite feature: TrackPaks, well-chosen mixes you can add to your playlist (and in some cases burn) featuring artists similar to the one you were just searching. Each of the service's 37 radio stations (such as Acoustic Café, R&B Oldies and Modern Jazz) has at least a few TrackPaks. The service works with a dial-up connection-once you've downloaded a song you can play it offline, as long as your subscription is still active-but a broadband connection is recommended.

MUSICNET AT AOL
(www.musicnet.com, or AOL keyword: MusicNet)
Selection: About 250,000 tracks, roughly 80 percent available for burning.
Cost: $3.95 per month for 20 streams and 20 downloads; $8.95 a month for unlimited streams and downloads; $13.95 per month for unlimited streams and downloads, plus five tracks to burn (coming soon) and $17.95 a month for unlimited streams and downloads, plus 10 burns. It's a use-it-or-lose-it deal; unused burns don't carry over to the next month.

Its very existence is sure to bring about greater consumer awareness about digital music services in general, and it's pretty straightforward, but it's buggy. A couple of Norah Jones hits were marked available for burning, but repeated attempts to burn them failed, and they still counted against my total. (A spokesperson, calling it "kinks in the armor," told me to call customer service and get it straightened out.) A "music style" search option seems to deliver arbitrary results. If the artist you're looking for isn't available, the service doesn't make alternative suggestions, but I'm told that a new version, planned for release in May, will. You can browse through artists alphabetically but so far there's no genre search (that's also on the to-do list, the spokesperson said). Internet radio is available under AOL's separate Music channel. A different version of MusicNet is also available through RealOne as part of its MusicPass. (AOL is owned by the same corporate parent as TIME.com.) The service is available to dial-up subscribers, and you can access your library when you're off-line. Bottom line: wait for the spring update.

PRESSPLAY
(www.pressplay.com)
Selection: More than 250,000 tracks, 75 percent of which are available for purchase.
Cost: $10.95 for unlimited downloading and streaming; portable downloads (that you can either burn or transfer to a compatible portable device) are sold in packs of five ($5.95) 10 ($9.95) or 20 ($18.95).

One of the first and most visible (it's co-owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music), it stumbled badly out of the gate. But its third and latest iteration, released a couple of weeks ago, offers a much cleaner design, an easier interface and a lot more creative content. It still doesn't look terribly exciting, but it does the job, with comprehensive search and browse tools and nice perks like Billboard chart lists, including the top tracks for every year going back to 1957. The Community tab lets you scan other members' playlists (AOL says it plans to add this feature to MusicNet in the spring). The home page has a datebook section packed with historical trivia.

If you search for a song or artist that the service doesn't have the rights to, it will suggests other songs (in place of No Doubt, it offered Smash Mouth, Sublime and The Red Hot Chili Peppers—not bad). Some songs are marked "PA" (for parental advisory), indicating material deemed not appropriate for minors; you can set preferences so that those songs won't come up during searches. Radio PressPlay works nicely too; click to start streaming a station and the song list pops up, telling you what's coming up, and which tracks can be downloaded.

NEXT: From PC to Jukebox