Music online

If you join Real Networks' Rhapsody service, you can listen to almost every piece of music ever recorded for zero use fee, just the $9.95 monthly fee. And if you choose to download to an MP3 file, it's only 79 cents per track.

i use emusic, $24.95 gets you 90 downloads

good selection of music, lots of reggae/world beat stuff

I found three free one's at Vitaminic

I'll keep looking.

You have to register here but it claims the downloads are free.EZTracks

try epitonic, lot's of free downloads there

If you just want samples Amazon should have them.

For samples download Itunes, which works fine on PC is free. For your own information, virtually all software and hardware uses the same system for displaying titles and artists i.e. the Gracenote CDDB (including iTunes and iPod) , the only difference Itunes is more user freindly (IMHO).
I've given a link to a Yamaha product powered by Gracenote, browse the site and you will find dozens of products and software that use the CDDB.

Music Cast powered by Gracenote

itunes music store.

99 cents a song. download only what you want. Gauranteed quality.

Edited to add that itunes songs are actually ACC files (not mp3) so you will not be able to use them on portable players that only support mp3s. You can however use them on ipods and any computer with itunes (windows and mac versions are available).

Soz... since I know you have a mac, I do know of a way to convert itunes ACC songs to mp3s if you are interested.

This past week I tried to buy songs on-line from Walmart at 88 cents a pop. It's done in a two-stage operation. First you download the song. When that file is on your computer, then you have to download a security file for it. Unfortunately, to download the security file you have to have Windows Media Player 9.0, and because I'm only running Windows 98, I can only support Windows Media Player 6.0, so the darn thing won't work.

I tried doing it at work this past week, where all the machines have Windows XP and Media Player 10, but the company firewalls etc wouldn't allow the second file to be downloaded either.

I guess I'm going to have to wait to start downloading music until I'm home for good next year.

See, the terminology is part of the general cluelessness (you guys are helping, thanks.) What I want is to go somewhere that has free songs -- doesn't have to be a large selection -- and download the song to my eMac and play it. Or click on something and play it, whatever. Nothing fancy about portables or nothin'.

Oh and "samples" was a misnomer I think, I'd like the whole song.

I was hoping that it would be the same principle as ebooks, in that there are classics that are available free, not a lot, but some.

I have found some of these -- "The Lime in the Coconut" trail of breadcrumbs led me to a kid's site that has a lot of kid's songs for free.

And Swimpy's links look great! Thanks!

Epitonic also looks really promising, thanks djjd.

Ooh, epitonic has Bad Brains!