Help!...Music download sites?

[imloulou]

I am looking for a gift card for an 11 year old friend of my daughters (birthday gift) to download music online. She has a Creative MP3 player and I am pretty sure she has a Mac computer.

Any recommendations for a good site to download music by the song (no monthly fees)? A few of the sites that come up in a search just dont look right for an 11 year old to be browsing around.

Walmart has music downloads and that would be perfect but I think her family has a Mac and it specifically says "no Macs" under system requirements.

Does iTunes work for all players?

Any suggestions?

[jmarie]

Rhapsody.com and Urge.com come to mind. I haven't used them, as I use a peer to peer service...but I have heard of others using these services successfully!

Good luck and let us know what you decide and how it works for you!
Joyce

[sneezles]

Rhapsody has a monthly fee and I cancelled after one month. The best place to download, IMHO, is iTunes...no monthly fee and the songs are 99¢ and they have the widest selection.

[Laura B]

I use Napster for my music purchases. You can sign up for free for a "Napster Lite" membership to buy songs and albums (and also hear previews of any song). The songs are 99 cents and album prices vary, but most are $10. I also have a Creative mp3 player, and the WMA files from Napster are compatible.

[blazedog]

If the family has MAC's then why not just get her a gift certificate for the iTUNES store as I am sure the family is using iTUNES to manage their music.

Although the music files are downloaded as AAC files, iTUNES easily converts them to mp3 files in the event her mp3 player doesn't accept these files.

FWIW, none of the legitimate music filing sites download as mp3 files because of their licensing arrangements with the music companies.

[leightx]

As far as I know, you can NOT convert AAC files (from iTunes) into MP3 without first burning them on a CD and then ripping them to MP3 - a huge inconvenience. I've learned this the hard way, since my iPod died a while ago in the middle of a run on the treadmill, while resting in the cupholder. :mad: It will most certainly never be replaced - I've heard way too many horror stories, and I'm quite happy with my Creative now, although I still have a TON of music that I haven't converted to MP3 because it is such a huge hassle.

There is apparently software that you can get here: http://www.hymn-project.org/ that will conver AAC to MP3, but it doesn't work with the new version of itunes, and it goes against the itunes user agreement.