Students pay for legal music downloading services

As it becomes more of a risk to illegally download music through programs like Kazaa and Morpheus, several companies are taking advantage of the situation by providing consumers with innovative, convenient and -- perhaps most importantly -- legal alternatives in order to make a profit.

Two students at MIT have taken this matter into their own hands. On Monday, graduate student Keith Winstein and junior Josh Mandel launched a campus-wide music library called Library Access to Music Project (LAMP). This system allows students and faculty to listen to any of 3,500 CDs owned by the school through the campus's cable television network for free. The quality of the system's analog signal is higher than that of FM radio, but slightly below that of CDs. According to Winstein and Mandel, this failure to exactly duplicate the CD track is what makes the system legal.

Students on other campuses, however, are turning to a new barrage of legal downloading software. BuyMusic.com beat Apple to the PC user market by launching its pay-per-download service several months ago at a price of 79 cents per song. However, the service has been plagued by reports of unreliability and a less than stellar music selection.

With the release of a Windows version of its iTunes software two weeks ago, Apple began to tap into a market containing the majority of college students, 99 cents at a time. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a statement that one million songs were purchased from iTunes in the first five days of its Windows release.

Junior Tim Creedon, a recent PC to Mac convert, estimates that he has bought over 30 songs from the iTunes Music Store since getting his Apple Powerbook laptop three weeks ago.

"I'm trying to limit myself, it's pretty easy to go on there and lose control," said Kreedon, whose newly downloaded -- and legal -- music library includes complete albums by the Cure, Ben Folds, and the Postal Service.

Even though the option to download the same songs illegally through programs like Kazaa still exists, Creedon says he prefers to own the music he listens to.

"I feel as though I'm supporting the bands," he said, noting that the best way to make sure a band gets a percentage of the sale is to buy the record. "I just prefer to own an entire record in its original, genuine form. Music is much more of an art form than entertainment for me."

iTunes users are quick to point out that Apple has included a number of bells and whistles in its software.

"I like that it's not just an MP3 player," sophomore Amanda Hart said. "[iTunes software] will go through your MP3 ID3 tags and sort your music into folders. You can rip MP3s off of your CDs. You can burn MP3 CDs or regular audio CDs to play in any CD player. The interface is easy to use and it's attractive and streamlined."

In this way, Apple seems to be pushing online purchasing as well as acknowledging that CDs are an important element of the market. If an iTunes user plays a CD bought on the computer, the program will automatically search an online database for the track names and information.

Another popular iTunes feature is the ability to listen to music on other computers networked locally, allowing students to safely let others partake in their musical selection without "sharing" their copyrighted songs online.

The system isn't perfect, though. In Creedon's opinion, the Apple Music Store is sadly lacking in less mainstream, "indie" fare. To fulfill his need for independent music, Creedon also subscribes to eMusic, a service that advertises 250,000 songs from 950 labels and charges by the time period instead of by song. eMusic allows Creedon to download as much as he wants over a certain period of time, depending on the pay plan.

"I also share my account with a bunch of friends because once you download a record or a song, they have that on record and you can keep downloading it infinitely," Creedon said.

By mixing, matching, and experimenting with the myriad new and upcoming services, students are managing to cope with the hard times music downloading has fallen on. With the release of Napster 2.0 this week and Microsoft's announcement of an upcoming Music Store of its own, the pay-to-download market is set to burst wide open. Apple has declared its intent to sell 100 million songs by April of next year, and will work to achieve that though a promotion with Pepsi, which plans to give away 100 million free downloads under Pepsi bottle caps in February.

While the services vary in quality and features, music connoisseurs like Creedon see the proliferation of legal music downloading services as a good thing.

"I support the existence of a number of different services," Creedon said. "The competition keeps the market innovative and relatively inexpensive."