Finding and Downloading Digital Audio Files

With all those MP3 and WMA files floating around the Internet, how do you find the ones you want and get them into your computer?

To download a digital audio file to your PC, connect to the Internet and follow these general steps:

1.	Use Internet Explorer to navigate to a music download site. (Some possible sites are listed below).
2.	Search the site to find the song you want to download, and then click the "download now" link or button.
3.	Specify where on your hard disk you want to store the downloaded file, then click the Save button.

On a old-fashioned 56Kbps dial-up connection, it will take about 10 to 15 minutes to download a typical MP3-format song. The same file only takes a minute or so to download via a broadband connection.

There are literally hundreds of Web sites devoted to the downloading of audio files. Most of these sites feature files in the MP3 format, and most of the songs you find are "unofficial" (re: bootleg) versions, available for free. More reliable are the newer official download sites actually online music stores. These sites let you purchase songs for about a buck apiece, and they're very reliable in addition to being completely legal. It's hard for me to recommend anything but these legal music download sites these days; each site offers millions of songs by just about every artist imaginable, and it's all on the up and up.

The best of these official music download sites include:

• iTunes Music Store (www.apple.com/itunes/store/ not compatible with Windows Media Player, unfortunately)

• MSN Music (music.msn.com, shown in Figure 15.1)

  Figure 15.1. Download music at a buck a song from the MSN Music.

  
  
  

• Napster (www.napster.com)

• Walmart Music Downloads (musicdownloads.walmart.com).

TIP

After you've downloaded the song, you'll want to add it to your WMP Library, and perhaps to a custom playlist. Follow the instructions in Chapter 14 to perform these tasks.