The Microsoft model would also allow customers to download a significant number of files for less than average cost of $1 per song. Microsoft is another company that is also locked out of iPod. They will distribute songs via Microsoft approved portable mp3 players.

This new pricing model is radical change for digital music industry. This came about because success of iTunes has highlighted all that is good and bad about ways music is sold online.

It shows that customers will buy online and they will browse through digital catalogs for individual songs rather than entire albums. But, it also shows that a lot of work needs to be done to make mp3 security codes and portable players more compatible. If Apple continues to dominate portable mp3 player market with iPod, then customers will only have three choices:

1. Subscribe through iTunes because they want iPod

2. Hack iPod which Real Network is doing already

3. Or, ignore most reliable portable mp3 player out there and deal with having a few files on their computers or on another less prominent player.

This is all great news for digital music fans, but we’ll have to wait and see how recording industry responds to this cheap-for-all music model.

Is it sufficient to bring back revenue streams that songwriters and singers have been losing to totally free services such as Kazaa and Grokster? No one knows.

Anything else I should look at when I’m considering a free mp3 to wave converter?

Yes, how about wave to mp3 converter. One advantage of many commercial applications is that you can go backwards. If you have your wave files, you can turn them into mp3 and that reduces them to one tenth and up to one fourteenth their actual size. If you are going to be storing all this stuff on your computer, size matters. If you store smaller, more compact files then obviously you can store a lot more information on your hard drive.

Batch conversions Check documentation on your program to see if you can do batch mp3 to wave conversions. There might be a few limitations on free programs. If you have any type of mp3 files on your computer, are a music fan and haven’t been living under a rock for past two years, you know why.

What are some of more advanced features of an mp3 to wave converter? 1. Take old wave files and turn them into mp3s 2. Rip cd files directly into mp3 format 3. Organize mp3 files with id tags, catalogue them and more 4. Compress wave to mp3 files in same format