Ok, music downloading is here to stay. The "kids" need their tunes but save yourself a lot of time and aggravation. Don't use Kazaa, Lime Wire, or any of the other file sharing programs out there. These programs will expose your system to the internet and allow all kinds of malicious software into your system eventually requiring remediation. If you hire a professional to clean your system, which you may need since some of the stuff out there is quite vicious, you may find that once the dust settles that the "free" music would have cost less if it was bought at the local music store.

The good news is that there is a way to download your essential tunes. Use a legal pay per track download site. Download sites are different from file sharing sites since they DO NOT expose your system to the internet. This is because the download site stores all the music to be purchased whereas a file sharing site only catalogs the files available from its subscribers (that's you) and then allows you to access their PC and retrieve a copy of the desired file. So you can see that with file sharing you are quite literally inviting the world to your doorstep. Yes, it will cost some money, about 99 cents or less per track. That is about the same amount as the cost per track of an average CD. The advantage is that you get and pay for only the tracks you want and your system will stay secure. There are more and more of these legal pay as you go download sites available but the only ones we have tested so far are Apple's iTunes and Jamzilla. We have found them to be safe, fast, and best of all to have a large library. We have posted a link to their sites below.

www.itunes.com

www.jamzilla.com