Online Music

Sam the Record Man recently shut its doors forever, leaving the building and the neon sign to Ryerson University. I used to buy my classical music CDs from there, for bargain prices of around $7. There were also knowledgeable salesmen who could advise me on the smallest details from the quality of the recording studio to the proficiency of the musician.

At another music store, this time a second-hand one, the owner was describing how he was losing customers due to online music stores for CDs and DVDs (Amazon.com is a well-stocked online store), as well as downloadable music (iTunes is a popular download program available for free).

Patrons can also find all kinds of help online, including a community of like-minded aficionados, where discussion boards, blogs, and other sources of information have replaced the music store salesman.

These digitized music sources are a great advantage for music on websites. Downloadable music from iTunes (or other web sources) are relatively easy to acquire since you can usually buy a single piece of music at at time, rather than whole CDs.

Once at iTunes, you can convert these songs into the appropriate files, which you can then incorporate into your website for whatever purpose you desire: either as samples of music, or as a background music for your website.

Or, if you have even the rudimentary software, you can convert your songs from your CDs into digital files, to use for your website.

Of course, you have to provide credit for the music, to avoid copyright issues.

Here is a good comprehensive web article which describes all the various facets of online music.