Munich - There are major differences between the big music download shops, particularly when it comes to selection. That was the findings of chip.de, a Munich-based technology portal. Because it is difficult to determine how many songs in total are offered by any given shop, the testers selected 50 representative artists and counted up how many hits they found.
The winner, with 22,995 songs and 1,271 albums, was iTunes. The Nokia Music Store came in second, with 15,823 songs and 960 albums, while Napster could only claim 11,515 and 646 respectively.
Comparison shopping can pay off in terms of price as well. Albums cost an average of 9.64 dollars at Amazon's MP3 store, compared with 9.95 dollars at Napster and 10.06 dollars at the iTunes store. The most expensive stores included the Nokia Music Store (11.01 dollars on average) and Musicload at 12.24 dollars.
The reviewers complained that Napster and Nokia sell music restricted using DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, while iTunes provides songs in Apple's AAC format, which not all players can handle.
The testers at chip.de also evaluated the ease of use for the online music stores and the sound quality of the music on sale there. iTunes took the top rank here as well, followed by the Amazon MP3 store.
