Downloading Dance Music

[Hank]

The local record store rarely carries music that is suitable for dancing, and when it does I end up paying $15 for a CD that has one useable song. This expense adds up quickly. Since I now have a computer with a writeable CD, I thought I'd give downloading music a try.

I went to:
www.listen.com
www.musicdownloads.walmart.com
www.napster.com
www.k-lite-legal.com

Only Walmart lets me search their catalog to see if they have what I want prior to paying 88 cents/download. Unfortunately, Walmart didn't have the songs I wanted. The other sites all require me to pay an upfront fee just to view their catalog, which seems like a scam to me.

Anybody know a music downloading site with an extensive catalog that lets me search prior to paying for the download?

The songs I want:
I'm Outta Love - Anastacia (Amazon.com has the single at $2.99)
Last Night - Chris Anderson & DJ Robbi (Amazon has the single at $11.99)
Road Runner - Microwave Dave (Amazon has the album at $15.98)

Paying $30.96 for 3 songs and waiting days or weeks seems like a poor value.

[Bronzestudent]

Yeah Hank,

Others may have better ideas, but when I read your post, it reminded me exactly of the situation I was in a couple months ago. Having a computer that will burn CD's, a good program to do it with, I was ready to start making my own dance mixes!!

But I needed the songs, and my previous source, Audiogalaxy, is now some pay-per download company, and I didn't want to go that route. I was willing to pay, but would prefer a monthly membership type payment.

So after searching, I ended up thoroughly checking out www.ezmp3s.com
I joined - at the time I got the $15 1-year membership which was like $1.25/month, now I don't think they even have that. I just checked it out and they have a 2-year membership for $0.74/month, which is $17.76, and a $23.52 lifetime membership.

I've made over 150 downloads. It's the basic sharing concept, with anywhere from 2-4 million people on-line any time. It's done through a suprisingly user-friendly program called Kazaa Lite. You can search for songs by title, artist, album, all that good stuff, plus it tells you the file size, quality (ie. 128 kbps), and song length. And you can pause the downloads and resume them later, all kinds of conveniences like that.

I'm happy with it, as maybe you can tell. I've been pleased with the quantity of songs that are available. After searching for the 3 songs you mentioned, I found they had the first 2, and the 3rd one they had, but by different artists.

It's probably similar to the www.k-lite-legal.com site you mentioned. I checked it out, the prices were different, but who knows, it's probably the same program.

Keep us updated on what you find and decide on.

[ShyDancer]

I use www.limewire.com to download all my music.
I have yet to find any song they dont have and that includes all the latin ones Ive searched for. Ive made myself cds for salsa, cha cha, rumba and am in yhe middle of collecting some mambo tracks to put on a cd.
Its free to download and use, and doesnt install any spyware like kazaa.Its also a lot faster than any music site I have personaly used.
You have the option of upgrading to limewire pro which is around $18-$19 a year I think.

[pygmalion]

The day of the totally free download is mostly over, I suspect. Lots of web sites that used to offer free MP3 downloads have just disappeared. Lots of backlash from the napster case.