paying for downloads
 

Alright.. well I'm gonna do it... I'm going to start to PAY for my music downloads as getting them free is becoming increasingly more difficult and unreliable. So I am wondering what you people here on TFP use?.. I know itunes is vastly popular and I'm familiar with it as my girlfriend has it. However I don't like that uses mp4 format or something like that. I want files in mp3 format.. period. So whats the easiest, fastest, and cheapest program out there that will do this? thanks for the input.

iTunes, you just set it for mp3s ;) (you can do it for ripping, I think you can do it for downloading as well?) At the very least, iTunes can convert from .aac to .mp3 after you've downloaded songs.

I mostly buy my music in stores, but iTunes is my online choice :)

As far as I know the only format you can buy from iTMS is "Fairplay" 128 kbps AAC. If you like electronic music (and if you don't, maybe you should), beatport.com is great. they have a huge selection and you always get no-DRM no-bullshit 320 kbps MP3s. you can even pay an extra $1 per track and get uncompressed PCM, though I find 50-75% markup to be too much considering you have to be a spectrum analyzer to tell the difference. Audiojelly.com and trackitdown.net are similar to Beatport, but they're more expensive, especially for Americans because they sell in Euros and Pounds and the dollar doesn't buy many of those these days.

The easiest - but could be unlegal must be like allofmp3.com or some of the russian sites (ending in .ru with mp3 in their names)

You only pay for traffic, and can download to any format you wish (on-demand encoding)

Get AllTunes from AllOfMp3.com - really neat, although a little shady concerning the legal issues...

I like beatport as well. Good interface and tons of music.

I second the allofmp3.com, it may be shady but I think the music industry is pretty shady as well. I use iTunes when I cannot find something I really wat else where but $1.00 a song to me is way crazy expensive. Especially for something from the old catalog.