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Canadian Music Downloads

HMV.com and CDplus.com both offer Liquid Audio downloads, of individual songs or CDs. HMV is cheaper. CDplus is way easier to search on, and has way more free downloads.

Chapters.ca has Liquid Audio free downloads, but doesn't actually sell any downloadable music as far as I could tell.

Canadian Music Searches

The best (legal) music searches seem to use the Listen.com engine. The only Canadian music searches I could find were frontends for US sites.

music.excite.ca is a general interface to musical information, including searching which you can also do directly at listen.excite.ca which seems the easiest interface. Both it and music.yahoo.ca use Listen.com to search the US sites. The Yahoo interface gives more detailed information for results.

music.sympatico.ca has lots of resources but no search feature. There is a search capability on the US site music.lycos.com

US Music Downloads

For buying tracks or albums the main US sites (at least in terms of search responses) seem to be CDnow.com and dimple.com for Liquid Audio, and EMusic.com for MP3s.

EMusic seems to be the nicest system, and it has a large library.

Articles

The online music scene changes every week. Here are some articles that may help you to figure it out.

Going Online For Legal Music.
Buying Digital Music
(Press Release) MTVi and RioPort partner to become industry's first to offer paid downloads from all five major record labels April 4, 2001
Universal to Buy EMusic for $25 Million Apr 09 2001
Online Music Goes Legit gives a good summary of the current situation as of April 16, 2001
MP3.com Goes Universal May 21, 2001
On-line music becomes a game for superpowers May 22, 2001
The music revolution will not be digitized June 1, 2001

The Major Labels

The 5 major labels are consolidating into two groups:

MusicNet - AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI
Duet - Sony, Vivendi Universal

In the meantime music from the various major labels is available as follows:

EMI and Warner - available at the LiquidAudio sites listed above
BMG - www.getmusic.com
Universal - www.bluematter.com (some ridiculous Windows only "secure" format)
Sony - www.sonymusic.com

umusic.ca is a site from Universal Music Canada to promote their acts. It has a lot of interviews and information.

It looks like both BMG (in MusicMatch Jukebox Windows only format) and Universal music is also available from musicshop.lycos.com

Radio and Music Streaming

If you have a broadband connection, rather than going to the work of picking and choosing files and downloading them, you might enjoy just listening to streaming radio stations on the net.

Sympatico-Lycos Music and Radio Resources lists Canadian stations along with many others.
MP3.com allows you to turn any set of MP3 files on the site into a streaming audio channel, as well as listen to the many channels that have already been created
Listen Radio
Live365 is a central site for locating and listening to tens of thousands of channels of audio. They also provide easy tools for setting up your own net radio station.
Nerve Radio Note: Nerve is a site intended for adults.
MSN Music You have to login using Passport. It's PC Windows only, of course.
Radio MTV.com
VH1 atWork Radio
NetRadio.com has 100+ programmed music channels
Chapters.ca Radio 23 channels. Integrated with Chapters site for music purchases.
HMV.com has a single radio channel, with a "Buy It" button that connects to the HMV site.
Friskit is a gizmo for searching out and playing streams from all over the web

Alternative Channels

Some of the odd streaming music channels you can find out there.

EMusic has a bunch of channels on WiredPlanet (which is now part of Listen.com). These include Radio Enterprise (all Star Trek music) and Radio Sci Fi.
The Celtic channel on MP3.com usually has some stuff I like. These channels are a good way to discover new groups and new music. Without this channel I would have never found the perennial favourite "Bagpipes make my balls itch".

And yes, I have my own Internet radio station too.

General Guides

Where to Hear Radio Online from CNET Music
Radio Gaga from Yahoo Internet Life February 2001

Other Musical Experiences

What music tour would be complete without some sample tracks from Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space. If you liked that, you may also enjoy Shatner Rocks (which actually features "music" from a variety of Star Trek actors).

30 seconds of dementia: Where No Mandolin Has Gone Before from the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble.

And while on the subject of timeless musical classics, there's always the free EMusic Classical Album (in MP3 format).

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