Music

The Evolution of Music In the olden days, if you wanted to buy music, you’d go down to a record store. You’d fork over your cash – often $10-17 for a record, tape, or CD, and you’d go home and sit and listen. Now, record stores are pretty much done with, except for collectors and music geeks who love to browse through obscure metal bands and stacks of old LPs. It’s much more convenient to find and buy music these days, thanks largely to the Internet. Perhaps the biggest change the Internet has had on music is through iTunes. Not only is iTunes a great piece of software that makes organizing your music easy, but the iTunes store has revolutionized the way we purchase music. Apple and the record labels set music prices at $.99 per song and usually around $10 an album. This is cheaper than the old days of record stores. You can download your music almost instantly, adding it into your collection and syncing it up to your portable music player or iPhone. Through tools like Genius, iTunes can also recommend new artists and songs based on the music in your collection. This is a great way to discover music you would otherwise have missed. An alternative to iTunes is eMusic. eMusic is a haven for independent music, like Alternative, and Jazz. Tons of smaller labels and independent artists offer their songs on eMusic. eMusic is affordable as well, offering a free trial that includes a month of listening and 25 free downloads (with no DRM, or digital rights management, meaning you can transfer them from computer to computer or to as many music devices as you’d like). If you opt to keep the service, it’s just $11.99 a month for 25 songs, or under $.50 a track. That’s an even better deal than iTunes!