This month: MP3 sites!

The music industry is both excited and terrified by this new format, excited because it gives them a new way to deliver music to their customers, terrified because it allows pirates a new way to deliver the same music. MP3 is now one of the hottest formats among pirates. Hotline servers and FTP sites are full of MP3 files of just about any music you could want.

The only thing that's holding back the format is the fact that, as of now, the only simple way to play MP3 files is on your computer. A small handheld player called the Rio is hitting the market, but it's very expensive, and you have to upload the files into it via a link to your computer.

MP3 has been a godsend to anime fans, allowing us to sample tracks from anime CDs before we buy the actual expensive imported discs. Of course, the question needs to be asked "Are you collecting MP3s to sample a CD you might purchase, or are you collecting them so you don't have to purchase the CD at all?" In my case, I feel no guilt, because an MP3 file will never replace a CD for me. I can't take MP3s to work (not yet, anyway), and despite their near-CD quality, they only sound as good as my computer's speakers. I downloaded several MP3s during the research for this column, and now have a short list of CDs I will try to pick up during this year's conventions.

In any case, the moral issue of MP3s is something you'll have to decide for yourself. And to help you decide, here are some of the better MP3 sites to get you started.

First off, you'll need a player. The most popular MP3 player for the Windows 9X platform, and arguably the best, is , a shareware program. There's also MacAmp for the Macintosh, but I'm hearing that version isn't as stable. Once you have the program installed, you're ready to go get some MP3s!

By a close margin, the MP3 archive site that impressed me the most was . Serpent uses a slightly lower bit rate for his MP3s than most others, resulting in minimally poorer sound quality, but I won't complain. Serpent makes up for it in sheer volume, and besides, I can download the slightly-lower-bitrate MP3s in less time. As with most of Serpent's pages, the design looks very busy, but it is easy to get around in. The biggest question I have of this site is why he includes entries for series for which he has no MP3 files. It does get in the way of browsing when you have to page past screens of anime titles most of which have nothing listed. Nonetheless, if you visit this site, chances are extremely good you'll find something to download.

is another can't miss site. As the name implies, the site is primarily devoted to providing a sampling of MP3 tracks for various "JPop" musical artists. The collection is impressive, and is good way to introduce yourself to new bands. (But all their Psy-S links are broken, dammit!) Their anime collection isn't bad either. The one major flaw of this site is that no data is given on the actual MP3 tracks, such as size or length. Given that a small MP3 file can be 3 megs, it's nice to know what you're getting into before you start to download. I found the site easy to use and nice to look at, thanks especially to the images of cute female singers at the top of each page.

The is yet another site with lots on it to browse or download. I like the presentation of this site, colorful and quick-loading. The index pages list only the titles of the anime and the number of tracks available. Click on the title to go to the list of tracks; there you'll see an image from the anime along with links to the MP3 files. Size and length are given for each track.

Of course, even though much smaller than CD audio, MP3 files are still large, several megs each. Very few web authors have the resources to store a large archive of MP3s. Many sites deal with this by featuring a different set of tracks each month or week. An example of this type of site is , a cute little site which features one anime track and one JPop track each month.

Working along the same lines, but updating more frequently, is . This site features a different selection of MP3s from a featured CD each week. The cover and a complete track listing of the CD are also featured. You can download last week's MP3s, if you like, but farther back than that, there is only a listing of what had been available.

Another monthly updating site is . The web author makes a point of encoding all his MP3s himself, rather than grabbing them from other sites. The main reason I'm mentioning this site is that, at the time I write this, the featured MP3 is the full-length version of the theme from Serial Experiments Lain, an anime for which I'm going insane with anticipation. Hearing this great song only made it worse. I know what CDs I'll be buying at Anime Expo, to listen to as I wait in line to see the US premiere of the anime.

Since the main "honorable" purpose of MP3 files is to give you a "taste" of a CD, many MP3 sites, including some I've already mentioned, organize themselves around individual CDs, rather than simply presenting random music from a given anime. One such site is . This site is as worthy of being called a CD review site as an MP3 site. Only a handful of CDs are featured, but for each CD there is a brief but complete review, followed by a couple of MP3 tracks to sample. In fact, this is really the best way to review a CD. You can say whatever you want, but in the end, I'm going to have to hear some of it to know whether or not I want to buy it.

As you might expect, many web authors create MP3 sites devoted to music from their favorite anime. , for example, gives a brief review of every track off a Dragonball Z CD, and provides the tracks in a low-bitrate MP3 format. is simplicity itself. Its single page features the back cover of the CD in question. Click on the track name to download the corresponding MP3. I have to admit to being slightly uneasy about providing an entire CD on a site. Still, considering how long it takes to download it all, and that most people still can only play MP3s on their computers, I have to doubt that sites like these are seriously hurting CD sales.

The is a sizable collection of audio from the anime Saint Seiya, not just the music, but the various shouted attacks and other sound clips. Strictly speaking, this is not an MP3 site; it's an MP2 site. MP2 was the lower-quality predecessor to MP3. It's nowhere close to CD-quality sound, but it gets the job done for a site like this, and the files are very reasonable in size.

Themes of the Revolution is another site devoted to a single anime, in this case Utena. It's a simple yet attractive site. I like the way the links are framed in roses, Utena-style. A good selection of tracks from five Utena CDs is presented, with a brief review of each featured track. It would be nice to list the size of each file, though.

Here's something you have to try. Open up Winamp. Pull down the main menu, select "Play Location". Copy in the following URL: "http://waar.anime-alberta.org:8000" (don't copy the quotes, duh). Click "Open". If everything went as planned, you should now be listening to , a 24-hour Internet-based anime radio station. WAAR features anime and JPop music all day and all night, mixed in with features such as anime and video game reviews. The music is delivered in streaming MP3 format. To save bandwidth, the signal is delivered using only 16 kbps/16 kHz mono. Nonetheless, it still sounds pretty good, beating the hell out of RealAudio at the same 28.8 connection speed. My only complaint is that, like all streaming programming, the sound cuts out occasionally due to Internet connectivity problems. It doesn't cut out any more than RealAudio, though. WAAR has no DJs (at least none that I heard while listening), but the "status page" on their website tells you what song is currently playing and the 25 songs played previously. Is this a neat idea, or what?!

A few more sites of note:

Let's open the ol' mailbag, shall we?