Digital music-scene primer

There are so many ins and outs to digital music - the costs, pluses, and minuses of playing, renting, and owning - that few kids, much less parents, can keep up with it all. So the New York Times's David Pogue has provided quite a service in walking us through a bunch of them. For example, if you rent/subscribe and want to move tunes to your MP3 player, note that you need to connect it to "the mother ship" service once a month so those songs don't self-destruct; Yahoo Music lets subscribers swap tunes via Instant Messenger; Wal-Mart has a limited library, but it will press a custom CD for you; and you can only listen (not burn) Rhapsody's free 25 songs a month, but they'll give you a good feel for what's happening on the pop scene. Check it out, and you may be able to help music fans at your house stretch their music budgets. While we're on the subject, a fascinating development in Japan following iTunes's debut there (where, in just four days, people downloaded 1 million songs): Musicians there are defying their record labels and trying to get their songs into iTunes, the Associated Press reports. Sony Music has not yet signed up to join Apple's service, the AP added.