I took part of Mr. Tanana's advice and checked out emusic.com recently. It's a great deal to my mind--100 free downloads to start, then $9.95 per month for up to 40 downloads a month, (and the important part) cancel at any time. I've been downloading a lot of songs ranging from the ridiculous to the only somewhat less ridiculous. (At least their store doesn't need some fixin'.) I've found some '80s throwback faves, some odd covers, and a couple of complete albums by bands I already liked. I also now have a favorite Finnish surf rock band.

I still have 53 downloads, from an exceptionally quirky catalog; I've exhausted the prior set of suggestions, and am open for more.

I also have a question that I leave to the expertise and ingenuity of my readership. The first 3.5 gigabytes of music I put on my computer were burned off CDs and went straight to My Music. I played them in Windows Media Player. Then I downloaded iTunes. The first time I opened it, it transferred a small but not insubstantial (15-20%) amount of the 3.5 gigs into its own memory, without affecting the My Music folder. However, everything I've downloaded from iTunes itself and now from emusic seems to be available in iTunes but not WMP.

The question is this: is there any easy way to make all of the music on my computer accessible to one or both programs? I'd rather make it all accessible in WMP, but I'd glady settle for making it all available in iTunes. Suggestions?