What services are free?
At the moment most of the legal services are paid-for, either per track like Apple’s iTunes Music Store or with a monthly subscription like Napster, although many offer some free downloads and band websites may offer free tracks as a way of promoting themselves. There are lots of places to listen to music for free, like MySpace, Bebo and of course the bands’ own websites. Last.fm also lets you stream music to your computer, but you can’t save the tracks you listen to unless you pay. Some music services offer free downloads as an incentive to sign up: Rhapsody give you 14 days of unlimited access, eMusic offer 25 free downloads. Qtrax announced a free, advertising-supported service early in 2008 but this is not yet live.
