Battle of the digital music download stores

Posted by Michael Sawh on Tue 7 Apr 2009

All the best digital music stores under one roof

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few weeks, you'd have struggled not to spot the likes of 7Digital and Amazon going for iTunes' jugular.

As the download heavyweights indulge in the kind of price slashing that'd make even Radiohead albums look expensive, T3 has helpfully sifted through the mess of music discount messages to bring you the ten best ways to get your digital music fix.

1. iTunes

It may still be sitting at the top, but the downloading champion that is iTunes finally has some real competition. It will always have lightning download speed in its favour, and a gargantuan library of songs, albums, TV shows and the latest films, but the newly introduced 99p pricing structure may well test the loyalty of many of its users.

Link: iTunes

Price of Top 5 UK albums

Lady Gaga - The Fame £7.99

Kings Of Leon - Only by the Night £7.99

Annie Lennox - The Collection £7.99

Ronan Keating - Songs For My Mother £7.99

Flo Rida - Roots (Route Of Overcoming The Struggle) £7.99

2. Amazon

So much more these days than the place to buy elaborate gym equipment you're never going to use, Amazon has come up trumps with their arrival on the music download scene. With the backing of the four major record labels, their 5 million-strong catalogue all comes DRM-free and having recently slashed the prices of many of their songs to 29p, this is definitely digital music to our ears.

Link: Amazon

Price of Top 5 UK albums

Lady Gaga - The Fame £5.47

Kings Of Leon - Only by the Night £5.47

Annie Lennox – The Collection £7.49

Ronan Keating - Songs For My Mother £5.95

Flo Rida - Roots (Route Of Overcoming The Struggle) £5.47

3.7Digital

Lurking in the shadows of Apple, 7Digital is doing their very most to de-throne iTunes from their music download mantle. With bold moves that have seen them recruit album-building marvels Spotify and seal a deal with AOL to supply Winamp tracks, they also already have the four major labels on board to sell DRM-free tracks in their UK store.Throw in high quality (320kbps) MP3 file format to match their four million song library, and Apple could well be looking over their shoulder.

Link: 7Digital

Price of Top 5 UK albums

Lady Gaga - The Fame £7.99

Kings Of Leon - Only by the Night £5.00

Annie Lennox - Collection £7.99

Ronan Keating - Songs For My Mother £7.90

Flo Rida - Roots (Route Of Overcoming The Struggle) £5.00

4. O2 MyPlay

In a collaboration that should be a match made in heaven, 02's joint venture with Sony BMG brings 02 customers download rights to bands and artists signed to the record label. The first operator-driven mobile music store offers music tracks at 99p, videos at £1.50 and ringtones at the rather ridiculous £3.50. If you decide to part from the network provider, you can keep hold on to your Springsten tracks on the phone memory, or an external memory card. MyPlay.com can be accessed direct fom 02's web portal, 02 Active.

Link: MyPlay

5. e-Music

Twenty five free downloads when you join, over 5 million tracks to choose from, and songs as low as 23p, so what's the catch? There's not a Duffy or AC/DC in sight. The entire MP3 catalogue is made up of independent labels and artists, so if you are top 40 fanatic stay well clear. If you are the kind of audio fashionista who loves the odd rare find, e-Music will be right up your audio alley.

Link: e-Music

6. Nokia Comes With Music

Its noticeable absence from the Nokia 5800 and likely evasion of the forthcoming Nokia N97 is not great sounding, but all the same Nokia's Comes With Music offers 12 months' unlimited downloads that can transfer to your phone quicker than you can say 'boogie'. Your unlimited download antics will however, be slave only to your mobile and PC.

Link: Comes With Music

7. Napster

Once the piracy kings of the illegal download, Napster is all legit and despite no longer free, you won't have to break the bank for your DRM-free MP3 purchases. With over 7 million tracks to choose from, Napster has thrown in a host of audio-related features to enhance your experience like mood manager (colours with your tunes essentially) and the usual playlists and radio stations. It will cost you around 79p for a single track, but on a subscription basis, £9.95 will get you unlimited music for the month, while an extra fiver will let you transfer the music to your MP3 player. Napster remains incompatible with Macs or iPods.

Link: Napster

8. Tesco Digital

Championing the most affordable way to buy a bag of apples, the supermarket giant has widened their aisles to deliver digital music to go with your loaf of bread. Of the 3 million music tracks available, most come happily DRM-free and are encoded at a CD-quality 192Kbps in WMA. While also serving up movies, videos and games to widen you shopping basket, Tesco Digital has had mixed feedback, but none the less is a handy way to do all your shopping in one.

Link: Tesco Digital

Price of Top 5 UK albums

Lady Gaga - The Fame £5.97

Kings Of Leon - Only by the Night £5.97

Annie Lennox - Collection £5.97

Ronan Keating - Songs For My Mother £7.80

Flo Rida - Roots (Route Of Overcoming The Struggle) £5.97

9. Play Digital

They may well have jumped ahead of the queue of Amazon with their UK digtial music download service, but despite offering up DRM-free tracks from just 65p and albums for around a fiver, with just EMI as their only major record label on their side, they fail in comparison to Amazon's mammoth back catalogue.

Link: Play Digital

Price of Top 5 UK albums

Lady Gaga - The Fame £6.99

Kings Of Leon - Only by the Night £6.95

Annie Lennox - Collection £9.25

Ronan Keating - Songs For My Mother £6.45

Flo Rida - Roots (Route Of Overcoming The Struggle) £8.99

10. HMV Digital

The daddy of high street music shops also maintains a presence online offering a Napster-esque subscription "rental service" for your MP3 player delights. You no longer need to download within the confines of their management software and while you can listen to audio clips of every one of their two million-strong song library, it's an admirable effort from the continual purveyors of the antiquated CD.

Link: HMV Digital

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