In Part 1, TechCrunch compares the pay-per-download services (iTunes and its competitors) (below).

There are eleven total sites that sell downloadable, CD-burnable music. However, two of these sites, AOL Music Now and Virgin Digital, require a paid subscription to their all-you-can-eat service in order to download songs (downloads cost an additional $0.99 each on both services). We’ve therefore left them out of the comparison chart (above).

In Part 2 (below), they compare the all-you-can-eat subscription services.

All of the services (above) require the download and use of a special player, except AOL, which uses a web based approach along with the Windows Media Player.