Hi, my wife has used Kazaa to download music files.  I would like her
to use a pay site.  But, my understanding is that many of the pay
sites use their own formats.

The file formats my wife uses the background music for family videos
is AVI and WAV.

So what I need is a pay site that will let her download music that see
can use in her family videos that use the same format as Kazaa.

Thanks

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Request for Question Clarification by leapinglizard-ga on 29 Dec 2004 10:42 PST

How about a legal music store whose files are easily converted into
WAV format? If I name such a store as well as a free tool that
performs the conversion, will you be satisfied?

leapinglizard

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Clarification of Question by just4fun2-ga on 29 Dec 2004 12:28 PST

Hi, thanks for your interest, I would rather just download the music
without the doing the conversion.  If that is not possible than the
software would be helpful.

Dear just4fun2,

The file format used for almost all music files on Kazaa is MP3.

    Kazaa Media Desktop (once capitalized as "KaZaA", but now usually
    left as "Kazaa") is a peer-to-peer file sharing application
    using the FastTrack protocol. It is commonly used to exchange
    MP3 music files and is (as of late 2004) the 2nd most popular
    application for this purpose (the first being BitTorrent).

Wikipedia: Kazaa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa

The WAV format is very rarely used on Kazaa, or anywhere else on the web
for that matter, because a WAV file takes up about ten times as much
space as MP3 without offering significantly greater audio quality. In
most cases, listeners can't tell the difference between a WAV file
and the equivalent MP3 file. This is especially true if the MP3 file
is encoded at a high bit rate, such as 192 kbps. I assume, therefore,
that your wife has been downloading MP3 files from Kazaa and will be
happy to use MP3 files in future.

    As file sharing over the Internet has become popular, the WAV
    format has declined in popularity, primarily because uncompressed
    WAV files are quite large. More frequently, compressed but lossy
    formats such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Advanced Audio Coding are used
    to store and transfer audio, since their smaller file sizes allow
    for faster transfers over the Internet, and large collections
    of files consume only a conservative amount of disk space.

Wikipedia: WAV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wav

As you point out, nearly all of the pay sites that are completely legal
-- unlike allofMP3.com -- and that offer albums from artists most people
have actually heard of -- unlike music.download.com -- use a proprietary
format such as WMA or NAP.

The only major music store that lets users download files in MP3 format
is eStore. To get an idea of the music selection available on eStore,
take a look at its charts.

eMusic: Home
http://www.emusic.com/promo/home.html

eMusic: Charts
http://www.emusic.com/charts.html

Among the smaller music stores featuring lesser-known independent artists,
my favorite is Magnatune. Actually, Magnatune is a record label that
treats its artists fairly and offers liberal licensing terms to music
buyers. On the Magnatune website, you can preview albums by listening
to their full content in streaming MP3 format. To purchase an album,
you can download it in WAV format for a fee that depends on how much you
like the music. The artist receives 50% of your payment, and you get to
choose any whole-dollar amount from $5 to $18.

Magnatune: Home
http://magnatune.com/

So if your wife purchases an album from Magnatune, it will be in WAV
format, which is what you say she uses in her family videos. Music
purchased from eMusic is in the MP3 format, the same one used on
Kazaa. She won't need any additional software to use either type of file
for listening purposes.

If, however, she seeks to convert a file from WAV to MP3 or from MP3
to WAV, she'll have to use a program made for that purpose. One such
program is Waver. I can't vouch for it, but you can download a 30-day
trial version for free. The full version costs $29.95 to download.

Waver: Home
http://www.mp3towav.com-http.com/

Waver: Download
http://www.mp3towav.com-http.com/downloads.html

I have enjoyed addressing this question on your behalf. If you feel that
any part of my answer is unclear or incorrect, please advise me through
a Clarification Request so that I have a chance to fully meet your needs
before you assign a rating.

Regards,

leapinglizard

There's also free software (that you may already have) that easily
converts files into WAV format. Would this be of interest to you?

Kriswrite

Hi,

I highly recommend using the site allofmp3.com. Allofmp3 is based on
how much you download (1 cent/mb - price will be 2 cents/mb soon). It
supports many formats that you might consider using like Mp3, Wma,
Ogg, Mpc, FLAC, Monkey Audio, Mpeg - 4 AAC (iTunes compatible).

As for converting it into wav format which i highly do not recommend,
as it just increases the file size by uncompressing the file. Your
wife might be able to switch to one of those seven other formats.

There are many available mp3 to wav converters that are free and would
probably suit your needs for converting it into a wav format.

A .wav to .mp3 converter:
http://www.freewareland.com/audio/965/

or

-This one i personally prefer because you can convert mp3 -> wav or wav -> mp3
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/acmconv.htm

Hoping this helps,
'IEatNoobs' - i dont actually =]

As you may know, Kazaa lite is no longer an option. You can find a
good, solid, no-spyware alternative here:
http://www.secrets2freesoftware.com/