MP3 stands for MPEG layer 3 audio, where MPEG stands for a form of compression used both in video and audio. The reason why compression is used, why not just capture digitally? The reason is size, in this case, size of captured files is a WAV file (the standard for CD) which produces massive files which even with the event of broadband connections are just too big, for example a 1 minute file equates to 10mb of storage.

CD's provide a high quality recordings that faithfully reproduce the music but in ones and zeros (digits). It does this by sampling 44,100 times a second and storing the value of each sample. This is a from of compression and it means that the whole analogue signal is not stored but the human ear can't really tell the difference between a sampled version. Plus digital recordings do not suffer from noise or degradation which allows copies to be made without losing quality much to the annoyance of the music industry. Peer-to-Peer file sharing softwares such as Kazaa, Morpheus, iMesh, Grokster, and Blubster or widely used Macintosh file-sharing programs like Poisoned, LimeWire, and mlMac are used to share music files on the Internet.

Consumers can now get music online via a range of payment methods, including paid-for downloads and subscription, from online sites such as MSN Music Club, Virgin Downloads, Tiscali Music Club, HMV Digital Downloads, Fnac, TDC musik, Karstadt and MTV. Demand for these services, powered by the pan-European distributor OD2, rose sharply in 2003. There are now many websites that offer music downloads, usually in the MP3 format. This is convenient because it takes up lesser space and therefore is downloaded faster by the customers. Many go to search sites like google.com to search for music and land up on different sites where that particular music is found. These sites usually have free mp3 download written all over it, but usually it does not work. Nothing comes for free, especially. when the Internet is being controlled more strictly. Usually most sites will offer you a sample, 20-30 seconds, of the song that you want to download. Then it is up to you to buy it.