More and more music services are opening up all over the world to cater to legal downloads. This could be partly due to the (major!) efforts of the recording industry to curb illegal downloading but it could also be due to more people seeing the benefits of legal downloading. Of course, we cannot discount the possibility of companies trying to gain some benefit (monetary and otherwise) from opening legal paid download services.

In any case, there is another service that’s opening in Europe. Bigwig Hewlett-Packard is joining the fray and is opening up a music service in some European countries. Dubbed the MusicStation, this will be preloaded on some of HP’s personal computers. They will be released in the following countries:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Britain
• Italy
• France
• Germany
• The Netherlands
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland

More from Reuters:

The service has been developed and is managed by British digital music firm Omnifone. HP runs a similar service in United States with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody.

Such new subscription services helped to lift sales of digital music 12 percent last year to $4.2 billion, industry trade body IFPI said last week.

“As the world’s biggest PC vendor, HP has huge opportunity to create a viable competitor to iTunes due to its scale,” said Rob Lewis, chief executive of Omnifone. Apple’s iTunes — with a pay-per-download business model — is the leading digital music distributor.

How much is this going to cost? 10 euros for a month for unlimited access. Not too bad.

Tags: Europe, HP, music service, Paid Service

Categories: Downloading Legally, Music, Paid Service

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Everyone knows what happened in Haiti recently. The earthquake that hit them ruined the country and has brought so much suffering to the people. Even today as I write this post, countless Haitians are on the streets and still suffering.

The international community has been quick to do what it could to help out but it seems that there can never be enough help doled out. The infrastructure of the capital was torn down by the strong quake and a lot of Haitians are not being reached quick enough. Worse, there is a lack of medicine, water, food, and other basic necessities.

While many have already given what they can, we can still help in other ways. One of these ways is by downloading the music from the recently concluded production Hope For Haiti Now. I don’t know if you got to watch the telethon but I did and it was very touching how it was all put together.

I have to admit, the musical performances were one of the main reasons I watched it and they were all great! The songs were perfect for the theme and the artists gave their best when performing. It really is worth getting that music. Even better, when you buy the album, you will be giving directly to Haiti.

Hope For Haiti Now can be downloaded from Amazon at 0.99 cents per song. You may opt to get music song by song or download the whole album. The latter option will save you a bit of money.

Tags: Amazon, charity, Haiti, MP3, Music

Categories: Downloading Legally, Music, Paid Service

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