Ripping & burning: where to go for digital audio.(Tech Life)(Column)

We've gone from 45-rpm vinyl platters to 450-Kbps digital downloads of the music we want to hear. Music in many digital formats and in every genre is out there somewhere on the Internet. Here's where to find the music and how to play it on your audio system. There are three main sources for music, including CDs you already have on hand. Here's how the sources compare.

SONG SITES

What's available. Major record labels are now part of web sites where you can download songs for a fee. Other sites serve as repositories for selections from numerous artists.MusicNet, for example (available at www.musicnet.com), rents songs provided by EMI,AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and Zomba. Cost: $9.95 to download 100 songs per month, which can't be copied onto a CD or MP3 memory. MP3.com, a file-sharing site, charges $3 a month for browsing, file sharing with other subscribers, and other capabilities.

"Free" copyrighted music from a Napster-style central site is extinct. Free music is available through peer-to-peer networks such as Grokster and MusicCity. Unlike the old Napster, which made file sharing notorious, these networks don't catalog songs on their site. Rather, they aid in search requests and provide software that helps you contact other users' computers to access the music files you want.

Songwriters and movie studios have sued peer-to-peer networks for copyright infringement, and a judge has shut down one network based in the Netherlands.

Song sites have the widest range of artists, but they tend to favor concert recordings of better-known performers and fringe artists working in many different genres.

How it works. Each song is a digital file. You can burn the files onto a recordable or rewritable CD (a CD-R or a CD-RW, as they're known) or copy them to the memory card in a portable MP3 player. You can also leave the file on your computer.