The Benefits Of Digital Downloads
Music holds a special significance to the human race. A form of communicating heightened emotions, music is not only relaxing to the mind but also acts as a great entertainment source for many. Whether you are a person who considers himself a music freak or someone who listens to music for relaxation or in social gatherings only, you will swear by the fact that listening to your favorite music is an elevating experience. While listening to music privately at your home or even while travelling is a hassle free task, it was not the case some decades ago. Earlier, there were no real contenders for the word ‘portable music players’ and the only portable music players that were used by the users were walkmans and Discmans. While the walkman played music from cassettes, Discman used CDs for playing music. Both the media contained 10-16 musical tracks and required the user to carry his favorite cassettes or CDs in order to listen to more songs.
The world of music has changed a lot since the time cassettes and CDs were used to listen to music. Today, mp3 files and stamp sized memory cards have taken the place of their older counterparts. Not only is it cost effective to use a memory card instead of cassettes or CDs, using memory cards also saves space as one memory card of just 1Gb can contain at least 200 songs which is equal to 17-20 CDs! Today, iPod and other such portable players are used by millions of people to listen to music. These players have the ability to contain thousands of songs and are portable enough to be carried in a pocket.
The arrival of portable music players has also changed the way music is sold. While CDs or music albums are still released, a growing trend to distribute music is through online services like iTunes. With the services of iTunes, users do not need to buy the whole CD for listening to their favorite song but can rather select a single song and download it by paying a fraction cost of what a CD would have cost. The songs downloaded through services like ‘iTunes’ are called digital music downloads and are gaining huge popularity because of their cheap, legal nature and excellent quality.
With the ability to pick your favorite song from the list, download it and transfer it to a portable music player, users can easily create a library of all their favorite songs and enjoy them anywhere they want. Digital downloads provide sudden gratification to people who want to buy or listen to digital music. The internet is filled with thousands of websites that will provide you with the facility to download digital music on demand.
WMA (windows media audio) and mp3 are two of the most used formats for the distribution of songs for digital download. Almost any windows based computer will be able to play both WMA and MP3 files. Even a computer with the basic configuration of 233Mhz and 64 MB ram should have the minimum requirements to work with mp3 and WMV files.