You may be sur­prised to hear that I haven’t down­loaded a single song illeg­ally for two months. But it’s true. I’ve dis­covered a web­site, eMusic.com, which feeds all of my music needs. It’s rel­at­ively expens­ive, yes, but it’s well designed, and it’s cheaper than iTunes or any other legal down­load ser­vice I’ve dis­covered. Also, one of the huge pluses is that it doesn’t use DRM. That means that when I down­load a track, it’s mine to keep forever. eMusic also allow me down­load it as many times as I like, so even if I acci­dent­ally delete a track, I can just re-download it. The site recom­mends music to me based on my down­loads, which is a nice fea­ture, but I wish it would link to Last.fm and offer me recom­mend­a­tions based on that.

HOWEVER, pay atten­tion here: if you like main­stream music, maybe eMusic isn’t your thing. The Big Four refuse to sign con­tracts with eMusic, because eMusic refuses to put DRM in its down­loads. That means that you can’t, for example, down­load music by Kylie, or Madonna. But if you’re inter­ested in slightly less main­stream acts, then maybe eMusic is a good idea. Check out the web­site, do a few searches before sign­ing up, just to check that they have music you like, and then, if you want, sign up. Then you can sit back, know­ing that you’re giv­ing a fair price to musi­cians, and not to greedy record labels, and you’re not break­ing the law.