Digital Music Stores While Apple's popular iTunes store seems to be getting the majority of kudos (and profits) for selling music online, there is a legion of other digital music stores to shop at, each with its own pros and cons. Some stores offer songs a la carte for 79 to 99 cents each, as well as entire albums for about $10. Others offer unlimited music for a monthly subscription fee. Some let you burn songs to a CD for posterity. Others secure the music so you can only listen to it on your computer or digital music player. Still others will only let you stream the music to your PC at the moment of selection. Some online music stores, such as iTunes and MusicMatch, require you to download their software to browse and buy their tracks. And each store supports various digital music formats--MP3, WMA, and ACC, to name a few. Where to shop? Here, in alphabetical order, is a rundown of the top music download stores you'll want to check out. eMusic: The only music service to let you download in MP3 format, eMusic has over half a million tracks that can be transferred to any digital music player, including the iPod. For $9.99 per month, you get to download 40 tracks, and the first 50 tracks are free. You can also burn your downloads to a CD. Much of the music on eMusic comes from independent labels. iTunes: You'll need the iTunes software to download these 99-cent tracks, which are encoded in Apple's protected ACC format. Once downloaded, you can play the tracks on an iPod, on your PC, or burn them to a CD. The library has a million tracks, and Apple sometimes strikes deals with popular artists allowing iTunes to premiere certain tracks. MSN Music: The music site of Microsoft offers the latest hits in all genres of music, including classical tracks, for 99 cents per song or $9.90 per album. The protected WMA format requires you to have Windows Media Player, but you can burn the purchased selections to a CD and transfer them to a compatible music player. MusicMatch: With more than 800,000 tracks, MusicMatch offers songs for 99 cents each or $9.99 for an entire album. Once you purchase a track, it is yours to copy to CD, move to a player, and keep in your music library forever. Tracks are WMA format and work with the MusicMatch software, Windows Media Player, or any WMA-supported portable player. MusicNow: With a library of a million tracks, MusicNow uses protected WMA format, which means you can transfer purchased music to your portable player, burn tracks to a CD, or listen on demand from your PC. And you don't need special software. Most songs are 99 cents each and $9.99 per album. For $9.99 per month you can listen to any track, plus listen to thousands of radio stations on your PC. Napster: Boasting a library of one million tracks, Napster charges $14.95 per month for unlimited downloads to Napster-compatible players that support WMA files and PCs running Windows Media Player 9 or later. The Napster To Go service offers pre-packaged playlists of 30 to 50 songs that you can quickly download to you MP3 player. You cannot, however, burn the tracks to a CD. Napster Light, the company's 99-cent-per-track service, does allow CD burning. Rhapsody: RealNetworks just took the wraps off several tiers of service. Rhapsody 25 allows users to listen to 25 tracks for free each month and then buy individual songs a la carte. The standard Rhapsody service costs $9.99 a month for access to Real's million-plus song library. The ACC-encoded songs usually go for 99 cents each, but some popular tracks, including new releases, cost as little as 49 cents. Rhapsody To Go gives you unlimited downloading and radio station access for $179 a year.