eMusic offers a free track of the day to download. Being a bit lazy or forgetful I wrote a script to download the track for me. To make use of this script you need a computer that runs Perl and cURL. To set up the script to run automatically you ideally need the computer to be permanently switched on and connected to the internet.

Step 1

Download the eMusic download script, unzip it and edit the following lines:

Then upload to your remote shell account if you are going to run it that way.

Don't forget to make the script executable.

Step 2

Create a 'files' folder in the same place as the script. This is where the mp3's will get downloaded into.

Step 3

If you want to have the script run automatically then you need to set up a cron rule.

My comparison of music download services. Note that I have only included the bigger more mainstream services. There are many niche services, see the bottom of the post for a list of these.

I've included the Zune service for the sake of completeness even though it isn't available in the UK yet.

I have omitted Napster's basic services as it does not allow you to move the music to a portable player.

Personally I do not buy anything from stores that use DRM as I play my music on an a wide varietly of platforms. An iPod, a PSP and a Linux jukebox to name but three. Also who is to say what I'll be playing music on in the future.

Undoubtedly the best in terms of both cost and quality of files is Allofmp3 but this site is of questionable legality and it looks like it's days could be numbered.