MP3 101: What it is, how to do it and where to find it Where to go Listen.com -- This site has it all -- literally. Not does it offer a wide selection of music for digital download, but Listen.com also acts as a comprehensive reference guide and links to legally licensed downloadable music. One of the goals of the site is to completely categorize all the downloadable music that is out there. This site is extremely user-friendly and offers a wealth of information. AtomicPop.com -- A really fun site, this one is worth a visit even if you're not interested in digital download. They have great animated graphics and 'radio' shows you can listen to. They also feature MP3 news and information and a daily MP3 spotlight. You can get Public Enemy singles for $0.99, as well as the new Tori Amos single, the first download a major label has offered for sale. MP3.com -- At first glance, this massive 100,000 song-packed site looks like oh-so-many others, with music articles, downloads, pictures and all the other baloney that inevitably comes along with a search for great digital tunes. But the best thing about this site is their newest addition, PCDJ. You can download this free player and use it to play DJ and mix MP3 tracks from all over the internet. The dual-mix system of this player will let you re-mix dowloads and make your own custom presentations. Look for PCDJ under "Featured Players." StatePress.com -- Have to give a nod to our own WebDevil. Their MP3 site is small but growing, and best of all everything on it is free!! (With the artists' approval, of course) You'll find samples of music from some of Tempe's best here -- from Yoko Love and Bit o Jane to the ASU Marching Band -- complete with biographical information on the groups. www.cductive.com -- If you're the kind that likes to know everything about music down to the most obscure artists out there -- you may think you've died and gone to hevan on this site. This is an area that features artists from more than 300 small independent record labels. There's enough selection there in dance/electronic, hip-hop and indie rock, to really find something unique -- that is if you're willing to spend a little time perusing artists you've never heard on the radio. By Kim Prendergast State Press Magazine More people are searching for it on the web than sex, according to infobeads research, an information channel delivering market data and analysis on the web. And more than 67 million PCs around the world are equipped and ready to download music from the Internet using MP3. For new artists especially, [MP3] is probably the easiest and cheapest way to get their music out to a world-wide audience. MP3 is an audio compression format which allows users to transfer whole tracks from CDs to their computers. What makes MP3 so attractive for Internet use is that the sound files are saved at near-CD quality and only take up 3-4 megabytes of space on one's computer. (In most other audio formats, the file would occupy 30 MB or more, or else heavily sacrifice sound quality.) Listeners get their MP3s from online sites, such at MP3.com, or by recording songs themselves using special software that can be downloaded for free from MP3-related sites. The most recent versions of Real Player and Apple QuickTime support MP3 playback, as do a multitude of shareware programs available on the Web. Most MP3 players can be downloaded for free. While the recording industry for the most part looks at the new audio format warily, independent and veteran artists alike have begun to distribute and market their music on-line, often charging a small fee to download a song in MP3 format. For new artists especially, this is probably the easiest and cheapest way to get their music out to a world-wide audience. Forrester Research Group predicts that digital downloading will add $1.1 billion to the music industry by 2003. However, because it does function over the Internet, there is no guarantee that the digital downloading is totally secure. Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3.com, said in a press release that because MP3 is a file compression method, there are technologies, such as watermarking, preventing digital broadcasts from being saved and restricting the playback of an audio file to one computer, to regulate use of the MP3 files. He added that MP3 is an open standard, which means that no one controls it and is therefore the de facto standard. To create an MP3, download an encoder from MP3.com (or other related website) and put a CD into the CD drive. Click on the red "record" button. A choice of tracks will appear in the window -- check the ones you want to copy. After your selections have been made, click the start button and wait a few minutes while the track is encoded into the MP3 format. To listen to MP3 tracks, simply click on the MP3 file and hit the "play" button. Because of the fact that MP3 is the cheapest way for both music listeners and artists to share music, many in the industry have cried out that billions of dollars are being lost to MP3 piracy. Recording and distribution of MP3s without the consent of the artist is considered piracy, regardless of whether or not money is being made, and the industry is cracking down. In late August, University of Oregon senior Jeffrey Gerard Levy was convicted under the 1997 No Electronic Theft Act for his collection of about 500 MP3 files on his website, as well as pirated software and theatrical movie clips on his hard drive. A May 1999 survey conducted by Webnoize Inside, an Internet magazine devoted to the digital music revolution found increasing numbers of people using legitimate Internet sources to download legal music. Though a majority of MP3 downloads are still shady dealing, this publication reported an increase in legal downloading from 1.7 percent in Dec. 1998 to 13.5 percent in April 1999 -- almost an 800 percent increase. Websites that legally offer music for digital download operate on a contractual basis with the artists whose music is available. The artist signs a release allowing the website's operator to post the songs or CDs. With the wealth of good and bad information and websites out there, we thought you could use a little advice if you choose to enhance your CD collection via the Internet. So we've comprised a little list of a few of the better sites to download music. Happy hunting.