AAC - an open standard for formatting music that works as one of many layers within MPG4.
A la carte - buying your music one track at a time for a single fee.
ATRAC 3 - Sony's proprietary format for digital music downloads.
Burn - almost all digital music services offer you the chance to burn tracks, which means you can make a permanent copy on CD.
Converting CDs - You can convert or import your purchased CD music into your computer. Most digital music software will do this for you, also allowing you to choose the format your music is stored in.
Customised Streaming - compile your own programme of tracks and then stream it.
Digital Music File - A digital music file is a computer file that when run, allows you to hear music on your computer. There are a number of different digital music file formats. The most popular are AAC, MP3, Real Audio, WAV, WMA, and MIDI.
Digital Music Player - A digital music player is an installed computer software program that allows defined digital music file formats to be heard though the computer speakers. Most digital music players can be downloaded for free over the Internet. Some examples are iTunes, Windows Media, WinAmp and MusicMatch.
DRM - Digital Right Management: software encryption to control the distribution and use of music in digital form.
iPod - Apple Computer's portable digital music player. Plays AAC and MP3 formatted music.
iPod Sunday - a particularly male - though increasingly female as well - affliction where one member of a household will disappear for long periods of the day of rest in order to rip or import CDs into iTunes for use on the computer and iPod.
iPodectomy - the surgical removal of your beloved iPod.
MP3 - MP3 is a digital music file format. MP3 is a way of encoding recorded sound so that it takes up much less storage space than it would if converted directly into a computer file - yet give you high quality sound. MP3 files are small enough to make it practical to store them on your computer hard drive. As a result, MP3 is the most popular way to distribute digital music currently.
MPG4 - a multi-layered format for audio and/or video, which is an open standard i.e. agreed by all major computer and software companies and none of them own it. Apple uses a variety of MPG4 (AAC) for its music service iTunes.
P2P - Peer to peer, a transport technology or another way of transferring information from one computer to another.
Podderati - iPod-touting fans of the Apple take on digital music services.
Real Audio - Real Audio is a proprietary digital music format from RealNetworks. Real Audio can be 'streamed' over the Internet, which is to say that it will begin playing the music before the entire file has reached the connected computer system - thus giving it a more immediate playback ability. To play Real Audio files on a standard computer system, you need to install a digital music player that supports the Real Audio music format.
Stream - Listen to digital music whilst online
Tethered Download - you 'rent' a track for a period of time or for the life of your subscription to a digital music service.
WMA - Windows Media format. Microsoft's format for digital audio.
