Over the past few years, there have been a wide range of legal music download stores where one can purchase music tracks or take out a subscription for 'unlimited tracks'. A few examples of online music services include iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music and Sony connect. Unfortunately, just as the number of legal music services start up, so do the number of scams and other websites that try to sell file sharing services that are freely available. Many of these websites are designed well enough to fool even careful users, however most of these have tell-tale signs that give them away.

Even though there is a wide selection of music download shops to choose from, most novice users and even those familiar with online shops would not know how to determine which sites are genuine and which ones are not. Some scam and con websites claim that their services are legal since they effectively sell their ‘service’ and are not responsible for the music that is transferred through the ‘service’ they offer. For example, many scammers trick consumers into paying for freely available software such as Limewire, Winmx, iMesh, Kazaa and so on.

The main thing to watch out for when choosing an online music service is to ensure that the shop uses a format and DRM system that is compatible with your MP3 player (if you have one). The main three audio codec’s in use include Apple’s AAC, Sony’s ATRAC3 and Microsoft’s WMA...

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