by Guest Author Marlin Rollins

Many years ago, owning a copy of your favorite singer or band would mean going to a retail store or buying from an online website. With the average song count, you would spend at least $10. If you were one of those who couldn't afford to buy a CD, you would probably have to wait for the local radio station to play the songs you liked.
These days however, several music download shareware programs make it possible to get your favorite songs directly from other uses without having to go out and buy them. These programs will store the songs you download to your hard drive, or transfer it to your MP3 player if you prefer.

If you prefer to keep a complete collection of the songs by storing them to a disc, you'll need one piece of equipment for your computer - a CD burner.

The CD burner comes in two forms: internal and external. External CD burners don't need to be attached to your CPU, and they can be connected to your computer through a USB port with its own power source. The internal type of CD burner is the one that attaches to your CPU and fits on the inside of your computer tower.

The CD burner is quite the piece of equipment to have, as it can copy from one CD to another or even from a hard drive to a blank CD, and vice versa as well.

To use your CD player, you'll need to have software. You can find some types of this software available to download for free on the internet. Some great examples include ISO Recorder, Deep Burner, and Windows Media Player.

If you prefer, you can also purchase quality programs as well. Some examples of these include Nero, Roxio, and Sonic Record Now. The programs that are free have the same burning capacity, although those that cost money will give you more features and overall flexibility.

Keep in mind that CD burners aren't limited to only copying audio. You can also use it to copy document files, programs, games, videos, MP3, and many other types of files.

The burners with DVD burning capabilities will enable you to copy your favorite DVD to another CD in case you want to share it with a friend or back it up. You can also burn a movie to DVD if you downloaded it off the internet, then watch it on your television or computer.

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How to put youtube onto your psp.

For years the music industry has been making great strides and taking extreme measures to prevent pirates from illegally copying and downloading music.

Illegal file-sharing services are responsible for billions of dollars in lost sales.

Now, music industry executives are stating that websites and mobile service which offer listeners access to an unlimited number songs at no cost will begin to increase in number in the near future. These services for downloading music are not truly free; payment is made for the songs when a new cell phone is purchased, or for signing a contract for broadband intern. What this does is hides the cost from the consumer.

Services such as these provide revenue to the music companies for downloading music, unlike sites that simply pirate music.

In the past, the music industry has made the broad demand that sites legally selling downloads should sell them by the track, much like Apple’s iTunes, or Napster.

And over the years, many people in the music business have become skeptical, claiming that offering music in this manner will not be able to replace quickly diminishing CD sales. Music sales fell by almost seven percent worldwide last year.

One of the most popular services "Comes With Music" via Nokia offers unlimited music downloads. The site allows users to download any songs they wish from a catalog which contains over four million tracks. This service is free when an individual purchases a specific Nokia phone or service plan.

ISPs are starting to introduce more programs, which allow users unlimited music downloads. It is services such as these that the music industry feels will help to save it and stop some of the pirating.

The music industry is beginning to realize that they must adopt the "If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em" mentality when it comes to dealing with music pirates.

Shazam has increased its music database to eight million from its previous six million tracks after some new partnerships and direct sourcing activities. Users will be taken from new music discoveries to knowledge about artist biographies and album reviews and finally to beoing able to purchase the music through affiliated partners.

Users can find any song they want to listen to at a moment’s notice.  Tunes can easily be tracked down and purchased through participating operators’ stores.

Shazam’s  music discovery software for Android was released last month, allowing T-Mobile G1 users to discover music that can immediately be purchased through the Amazon MP3 store and then connect with artists through MySpace.

Wired reports that several companies in the recording industry are in talks with universities and colleges to add a flat fee into tuition that would give students legal access to all music on the Internet. All students at a university would pay a small fee—around $5 a month under the plan, which is still in the early stages, and in return would then be able to download music at the university without fear of legal retribution from the recording industry. Limewire or BitTorrent or whatever program or software they already use could be used to download music.

The nonprofit, Choruss,would collect and disburse the money to record labels and music copyright holders; three of the four major labels have already signed on to this "voluntary blanket licensing" experiment.

The universities that have been approached so far are Columbia, Cornell, MIT, Penn State, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Colorado, University of Michigan, University of Washington, and University of Virginia.

MusicStation allows unlimited music downloads, discovery, playing and sharing, on a mass market basis and on a wide range of devices. Whether MusicStation is offered on mobile, on desktop, or on a dedicated home entertainment system, it allows a consumer immediate unlimited access to millions of tracks, any time, any place. Furthermore, a MusicStation user’s experience easily and automatically synchronises across devices and platforms, without wires or human intervention.

Major manufacturers, such as LG and Sony Ericcson, as well as major mobile networks, such as Vodafone, Telenor and Hutchison are key MusicStation partners. MusicStation will power an open and unlimited future for digital music services.

Musana lets you store your online music legally and securely and listen to your tracks or favorite albums from any web browser or mobile phone wherever you are. You can touch your CDs, look at their covers, read about the artists, get music recommendations according to your own taste as well getting into existing services and discuss your favorite playlists with friends. Everything you do in real life plus the power of the internet, discovering new online music and new friends is found at Musana.

Musana features:

• Each MP3 can be up to 15mb

• Unlimited Storage, upload as many MP3s as you want.

• Capabilities to stream from your mobile phone.

• Automatic album art and correct song title retrieval / display.

PartyStrands gives you more ways to have fun with the people around you at bars, clubs, or house parties.

How does it work?

At a bar music is chosen from the bar’s music library or a pre-selected playlist, and the song and album art are displayed on the screen, together with the names of the the people choosing the song. Some DJs or venues want to decide what music they play and when so they can disable their social programming tool and have full control. In this case, partyStrands displays the album art and song name on the screen. DJs can even display the name and images of their custom mixes. Merge your online, mobile and real worlds.

If people join as members of an online community (Myspace, MyStrands, Last.fm), the music will be played based on their music tastes as indicated by their online profiles. Their profile pictures or avatars will also be displayed together with the text messages they send.

The day after, partyStrands helps go over what happened last night; it creates a web site automatically for each new venue, where users can go and see the text messages, photos, partygoers, and the playlist, from last night’s party. All this information is updated real-time to the website and mobile website.

With a touch screen you can whip through images with the swipe of a finger.  There is also a full keyboard.  The G1 can download music, display online maps, play games, store photos, show videos, e-mail, instant messaging, access GPS and communicate at 3G and Wi-Fi speeds.

It is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone, but isn’t as stylish and elegant. G1 has a real-world keyboard which makes it easier to use right out of the box and is more fingernail friendly. The iPhone has a virtual layout. The G1 is a multi-tasker and naturally integrates Google’s  search and other applications. The G1’s battery can be replaced by the user, unlike the iPhone which needs to be sent back to the factory.

Here's a comparison of the G1 to the iPhone:

Keyboard and Ergonomics: The iPhone's virtual, on-screen keyboard has a lot of getting used to and some people never adjust, despite its eye appeal.

The G1 solution has a keyboard that slides out from under the screen like on the popular Sidekick phones.  It is less elegant but more practical. The keys are relatively uncrowded because they run nearly the length of the phone. There are also separate number keys.

One problem which will need working out is the G1’s asymmetrical keyboard which puts a strain on the right thumb and causes numbness with heavy texting. Having a real keyboard also makes it heavier and more clunky

Larger screen size is won by the iPhone.  Both have clean playful animations and backdrops.

Internet:  The G1 has search everywhere and the familiar Google box on its main screen. Song titles can be searched easily with a touch on Google, YouTube and Amazon. Both phones are great to surf and offer near-full views of websites verses scaled-back mobile versions on other phones.

There is a handy back button on G1 and great email, instant messaging and texting. One down is the add accounts is mostly a miss. It can run instant messages at the same time as other applications.

The G1 has a big plus with picture messaging between cell phones.

Music: iphone has it over G1 in ease of transferring music fom the computer to phone.

Apple can’t be beat with its iTunes software for ease in organizing and downloading music.  The G1 has drag and drop between devices, which is more difficult.

Music from iTunes will not play on G1. MP3 format music works fine however.

Music storage is 1 gigabyte on G1 and 8 GB on iPhone for a slightly more overall expense in products.

Applications: This is where iPhone has a huge difference with hundreds of games, fitness, health care, social networking, travel, sports and other kinds of software, all ready for downloading.  Many are free: others are as little as 99 each.

There are only a small number of applications available on G1.

Here is a new music downloading program that doesn't give viruses like Limewire can. See if you like Frostwire.

Downloading music legally without any programs such as bearshare, napster, limewire etc. following this simple tutorial.

20 years ago software piracy was a big deal.  The estimated losses were $1 billion per year.  By 2002 the losses due to software piracy were estimated at $2 billion.

Industry researchers have however seen the rate of software piracy decrease since they began publicizing legal ramifications, business issues and ethical considerations relating to software piracy.

Since 1999, however a shift has been made to downloading music piracy especially since Napster and Kazaa have surfaced.

“Music piracy – especially among college students – is viewed as socially acceptable,” said Woolley, an assistant professor of accounting in the College of Business and Economics. “What one’s friends think about illegal downloading influences one’s thoughts and behaviors. Unfortunately, professors or authority figures do not have the same kind of influence.”

Woolley has been analyzing downloading music piracy among university students for several years and he has found that the majority are not ashamed to admit downloading music illegally off the internet.  95% of those who responded to surveyed freely admitted illegally downloading music.  63% admitted to copying a CD.

Again Woolley states that the students may not see downloading music illegally to be “immoral behavior” because they have no first-hand knowledge of prosecutions. . “They also view recording labels negatively and think that it does not hurt the recording artist,” he said.

The new iPod Nano is reviewed.