Distribute your songs on-line

The distribution of music over the internet is becoming serious business.

Pioneered by services such as the original Napster which allowed users to illegally download tracks from other people's music collection, downloading music became a way of life for many music lovers, especially those belonging to a younger, more technology-savvy generation.

Millions of music files have swapped and shared by music lovers since the early days of file sharing, mostly with little regard to the legality of the practice, and whilst quick to voice their disapproval of on-line music piracy, the music industry was rather slow in taking advantage of the commercial opportunity presented by the Internet and increased connection speeds.

Ironically, it took Apple - one of the major players in the world of computers - to show the music majors that selling and distributing music over the Internet could work. By creating a form of digital copyright protection for downloaded songs, Apple (the self styled 'lifestyle' computing company) successfully persuaded many of the major record labels to allow their music to be sold on-line through iTunes Music Store. Purchased tracks will have usage restrictions in terms of how many CDR copies you can make, or computers you can transfer them too. Restrictions on the number of portable devices you can transfer to are also in place. (These restrictions are common to virtually all download platforms, with certain exceptions)

With its slick integration with the iTunes media player and the iconic iPod, the iTunes store became a hit with the music buying public in America, selling over a 100 million music downloads in the service's first year. Fast forward a year or so and iTunes stores have opened across Europe (including in the UK), and other large, non-music corporations such as Coke, Microsoft, Tesco, and the now-legitimate Napster have all set up stores in an attempt to grab a share of a market that has recently seen Outkast become the first ever Platinum selling download artists.

So the internet is coming of age in terms of distributing music, but how do you go about putting your music on-line?