If legally filling up your MP3 player with gigabytes of music for less than the retail price of a single album interests you, then it is time to choose a music subscription service. Digital music is an emerging market with three major players enticing thousands of people to give up pirating their music and actually paying for it.
When taken into consideration that people have been stealing music long before the advent of the MP3 file, which made pirating music a widespread epidemic, why now are people all of a sudden going straight? So many, that 2005 was the first year legal downloads of music exceeded illegal downloads on P2P sites. Thank Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo Music Unlimited for finally offering a model that makes sense. Instead of buying songs or albums, they offer subscribers the ability to rent their entire collection of over 1 million tracks for a low monthly fee. Buying thousands of tracks on Apples iTunes would cost thousands of dollars, where you can easily download 10,000 or more songs to your MP3 player through a music subscription service for as low as $4.99 a month.
Aside from the cost savings, renting music has more advantages over...