My Legal Digital Download Experience

Due to an overwhelming response from my reader*, I went legal. I went to I-tunes to give it a shot and downloaded two songs, because I had two soda caps which were worth one song each. I had to download the software which took about an hour on dial up, but that is how long to took me to download Kazaa-lite **. I went to search for my usual suspects > Metallica, The Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins, Led Zeppelin. Not a single hit, only tribute albums. I remember reading that certain artists sign up with certain services, so for a good cross section you would have to download several different applications. Or, you could just download Kazaa-lite * which handles all of these and for free. I finally found something I wanted, some vintage Scorpions. The download interface was pretty decent, and the sound quality was excellent. Also, it does allow me to burn the track to a CD for my own use... which many don't. I would say it was a decent and pretty user friendly experience, but the downside is very limited selection. Let's not forget that even though the RIAA is purely evil, downloading music for free is stealing from the artists. This is wrong, unless your downloading Metallica... because Lars is cute when he is angry and litigious. Would I recommend I Tunes over illegally downloading, not really.. the choice is too limited. Also, rather than 99 cents a song, I'd like a set amount like $10 or $15 a year for unlimited access. Now that the excitement of downloading and burning CDs is over... I only download about a song a month. * well, not my reader. Actually one of Roy's readers... snowball. ** implying that I had downloaded and used Kazaa, which I have not. That would be stealing. I'd much rather pay $19.95 for a CD that cost only 23 cents to manufacture.