I'm thinking of finally joining the modern world and buying one of those music players with internal memory.
I want to transfer my cd's onto this new machine, but I also want to download some music that I don't have.
What sites do you use?
Which are the best?
Do they all provide the same quality music or do they vary?
Is there somewhere I could get a cheap deal for buying loads of music all at once?
Cheers,
Tom

itunes

http://ccmixter.org/
creative commons. free copyleft music. legit and you aren't feeding big corporate greed – donate to the cause or direct to the musicians if you want to.
http://magnatune.com/ listen to entire albums, then decide if you want to buy. you choose how much to pay too…

Had a look at those two basspine. Searched for a few tunes and they didn't seem to have them. Are they quite selective?
What websites have a huge selection and are good value?

Is itunes really that good or do people just use it out of habit because it was one of the first? Tried to have a look round it but the site was loading pages incredibly slowly so I gave up.

if you download spotify, you can get the option to buy songs….

neither of them will have big label/general release groups on them. They are indie in the old sense of the word.
If you want mainstream music, Itunes is probably what you want.

If you're naughty, spotify+audacity=music
ahem. I wouldn't recommend that sort of thing.

iTunes / apple players give the best variety / best complete ecosystem that works easily. you can rip all your cds and still buy from amazon if you'd prefer. you can also get the odd tv show or movie that will also be automatically stuck on your pod. simple.

Is itunes really that good or do people just use it out of habit because it was one of the first? Tried to have a look round it but the site was loading pages incredibly slowly so I gave up.

The catalog is massive, it's convenient to browse your music, people can buy you vouchers as pressies. Loads of reasons. And the audio is DRM free and high quality AAC (better than MP3).

I've also used eMusic and spotify to buy music in the past. Also okay, but the range is not so good as iTunes.

Itunes is the obvious choice.

If you download a lot then perhaps a subs service? I went with the Nokia Comeswithmusic promotion with my last phone, cost me about £40 on top of a normal phone service, plus a little more for a DRM breaker 😉 I've certainly had a lot more than my money's worth from it.

Amazon is probably the best other non-sub service. Emusic has terrific range, but you have to pay a monthly subscription and you get your choice of a set number of tracks. iTunes normally loads quickly, even on my phone, but it may have just been your connection was a bit slow. TBH, I would get my music mostly on CD, online prices are very low, and rip them into iTunes at a bitrate of 320Kb; the reason being, if you have a serious harddrive crash, you have hardcopy backups. There is software that will let you retrieve music from your pod as well. I point this out because computers can and do die, and having it happen with several thousand music tracks on is very upsetting. I lost over eight thousand tracks off my laptop trying to do something dumb. Fortunately I got them back off the pod. It may never happen, but it never hurts to be prepared. Oh, and Sky are now offering a music download service that works with iPods, the advert was on a couple of minutes ago.