Proliferation of music services results in cacophony

The early days of legal online music downloading were so simple. You loaded iTunes onto your computer (first for Macs only, later for PC too), bought MP3s from Apple’s iTunes Music Store for 99 cents each and transferred the music to your iPod.

End of story, for better worse.

Just how much times have changed became obvious earlier this month with the release of Yahoo! Music Unlimited. So this week, Inspecting Gadgets examines the four main music services – those from Apple, Real Networks, Napster and Yahoo.