The cost of purchasing music for our iPhones can quickly exceed our budgets. I love music, but I was finding that the price was a serious roadblock to my desire to grow my music library. After doing some research, I discovered that there are basically three ways to obtain music for free or almost free.)
1) Find free music websites online by searching. This can be a lot of fun because many of these sites provide musicians with a way to get “discovered” by us. so that we can be among the first to discover a new talent!
Artists who offer their music for free can be found on websites like sounclick. The music is provided under “creative commons license” – which just means that the musician is willing to let you download their music for free – and even, in some cases, let you remix or make other changes to it. One way to get a unique ring tone perhaps (how to do that is covered on my squidoo lens – the link to it is at the bottom of this article)
Additionally, a good iPhone converter is required. You should visit websites like download.com because they guarantee that the software has been scanned for spyware and viruses. They frequently offer free software that you can try out. There are reviews of iPhone converters there.
2) Find websites (other than Apple’s) that sell iPhone music by the song; these can be difficult to find, but Napster plans to offer music for iPhone users later this year, so keep an eye out for them.
There is iTunes, of course! Although it does not take long to exhaust your budget (you DO have a budget, right? ), at about $1 per song. – because it is real easy to overspend when you pay out only $1 at a time -believe me The limitations on sharing and even playing the music on other devices with iTunes are a problem (I know because I have experienced it firsthand.)
3) Use subscription websites, where you can pay a fee and then download a virtually limitless amount of music.
Numerous websites provide a variety of subscription options. We advise choosing the pay-once-to-join option because it is the least expensive way to become a member (and is also less expensive than buying a song at a time).
(Musicstation, which is not accessible to US users, is an example of a pay-as-you-go membership site. At $6US (3UK pounds) per week, the costs quickly add up; by the end of a year, we are looking at 52×6= $322 (156UK pounds). Don’t let slick-looking websites like this fool you!)
It doesn’t take long for the subscription option to outperform downloading if you consume as much music as I do—I currently have a library of 386 songs and instrumentals. Downloading all of these songs only cost 13 cents each with a subscription. And the price of each download gets lower as more music is downloaded!
But be careful — downloading iPhone music can become addictive!