Cut the cost of digital music, but stay legal

Your favourite albums available for 70p, the day they come out, or even in advance of their official release date? Or individual tracks for just 4p? If you think that sounds too good to be true, the British record industry agrees. This week it promised a legal blitz on a Russian website offering super-cheap music downloads to fans in the UK.

Music downloading has become big business. In 2004, British fans downloaded 5.7 million tracks. Last year, the figure was 26.4 million, with more than £500m spent on music bought over the internet.

The table opposite gives prices for all the best-known music download sites operating in the UK. Pricing is broadly similar, though you'll find slight variations between the sites depending on which artists you're looking for.

The one exception is AllofMP3.com, whose prices are far cheaper than everyone else's. The site uses a different charging model - you pay according to the size of the file you're downloading. You can choose between different levels of sound quality, to keep costs down.

However, there is a major problem with Allof MP3.com. The Russian site says its service is legal because it pays fees to the Russian Organisation for Multimedia and Digital Systems. But the British music industry - and music companies around the globe - insist AllofMP3.com is breaking the rules.

The BPI, the British music industry trade group, this week told a House of Commons Select Committee that its members are so fed up with AllofMP3.com that they now intend to take legal action against it. "AllofMP3.com is illegal under UK law and it is illegal to download from it," says Roz Groome, the BPI's general counsel. "We are going to sue AllofMP3.com in the UK courts."

For now at least, the BPI says it does not intend to go after downloaders themselves. But if a legal action is launched - and is successful - the site may no longer be available in the UK in its present form. In the meantime, British customers must ask themselves whether they want to take the risk of breaking the law - and whether doing so is morally defensible.

All of the other services listed in the table have been cleared by the BPI, though it is not an exhaustive directory of sites that legally sell music in the UK. The BPI's Matt Phillips says that while consumers may not feel qualified to interpret copyright laws, they should be honest with themselves when deciding whether or not a site is legal.

"Look carefully at these sites and common sense will often prevail," Phillips says. "When iTunes and the other major online stores are selling singles at 79p, there's something suspicious about a site offering a download for, say, 4p."

The clearest examples of illegal music download sites are the file-sharing services. These enable you to download music very cheaply or even for free, by linking up the music collections of all users. Via special software, your collection is made available for downloading to other site users; in return you have access to their music collection.

Those who flout the law should be aware that the BPI has begun suing individuals who are signed up to file-sharing sites; there have already been several cases of music fans having to pay compensation to record companies.

Assuming you're spurning the illegal services then, how do you choose a download service?

The first issue for most people is compatibility. If you have a reasonably modern computer, you should be able to use all music download sites very easily, though you may need to upgrade your internet browser or download software such as Windows Media Player. You'll also need the software for the site itself. Usually, anything you need will be able available free of charge via a link from the site.

However, most people download music so that they can listen to it on the move - on a portable device such as an MP3 player. Apple's iPod is by far and away the most popular player of this kind and it has been designed specifically to work with Apple's iTunes music store. Owners of iPods can't download music from the vast majority of rival sites, unless they're then prepared to convert the files into a compatible format.Fans with other players have a much wider choice of download sites, most of which offer music files in different forms. You just need to know the file type your player uses and make sure it's available on the site you want to buy from.

A second question to consider is that some sites have much bigger catalogues than others. Woolworths, one of the cheaper options, has fewer than 300,000 tracks available, for example, compared with more than two million at iTunes and Napster.

Then there is the issue of what you'll pay. Most music download services operate in one of two ways, though a few offer both options. The simplest way to pay for downloaded music is as you go. You'll be charged a fee for each single or album you download - 79p and £7.99 respectively are typical for new releases. Alternatively, you can pay a monthly subscription fee that enables you to download as many tracks as you want in a given month. This can be good value but there are a couple of traps to avoid. First, some services charge a higher price if you want to transfer your music to a portable player or burn it to a CD, rather than simply leaving it stored on your computer. Second, you may get to keep the music only for as long as you remain a subscriber to the service.

Woolworths and Wippit are the cheapest legal operations in the UK. Big Noise Music is also worth considering: although it is more expensive, 10 per cent of the money goes to Oxfam.

One final issue worth considering is how children can pay for music downloads. Most services require you to pay by credit or debit card, plastic that is not usually available to the under-18s. However, some sites now offer pre-payment cards that can be used to pay for music - Naptster sells these in certain electronics shops, for example.

MyCokeMusic has a mobile phone payment facility for under 18s. You text the service for £1.50. It then sends you a code you can use to buy a download on the site.

But at £1.50, this does mean children are paying 50 per cent more than those with debit and credit cards for each download.

Mobile music: the next big thing in downloads?

* Nokia had a new sales pitch when it launched its new N91 (right) handset at the end of last month. Rather than crowing about the phone's value as a communications device, Nokia presented it as a rival to the iPod. It comes with a 4Gb hard drive that can store up to 3,000 songs, broadly similar to the capacity of the iPod Nano.

* The mobile phone networks see music as a possible "killer app" that might finally persuade users to embrace the 3G services for which they have all paid a fortune. In theory that makes sense; why carry an MP3 player or an iPod as well as a mobile phone, if you can get the same functionality from a single device?

* All the networks are already selling music downloads. Via its Music Player store, Orange customers, for example, can download tracks for £1.50 a time. Vodafone 3G sells tracks at £1.50 a time, too, as does T-Mobile. O2's price is £1, though it has a significantly smaller library than its rivals.

* However, it is 3, the mobile phone operator specifically launched to capitalise on 3G, that has been the real trailblazer. In April, its customers bought more than one million songs and videos, and 3's sales helped Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy' to become the first number one single on download sales alone.

* Like most of its rivals, 3 charges £1.50 for each track you download, but for that price you also get a higher quality version of the song for your computer. It also offers a range of tariffs offering special deals.

* If you don't have copies of music downloaded to your phone, you'll be out of pocket if you ever lose the handset. Orange and T-Mobile allow you to back up music on your phone to your PC, but as yet Vodafone and O2 don't.

* Also bear in mind that to download music, you'll need a 3G mobile phone connection and a handset capable of storing and playing the music. For now, the handset options are limited. There are also doubts about the battery life.