has undergone a rapid transformation over the past few years. A wide variety of software is available in music and hardware stores, as well as over the internet. Numerous websites allow you to download music, often giving away to make themselves popular. To successfully make the best use of the facility, we need to familiarize ourselves with a few basic requirements. Let us examine these requirements for a successful music download.

First and foremost let us look at the hardware requirements. Apparently, a PC or a laptop is the primary requisite. Your PC/ Laptop should have a minimum of 128 MB RAM if you want good quality output. Latest systems come with much higher RAM, and it's a simple case of the more the merrier. Get a 1GB RAM and see that music fly along!

A Hard Disk Drive with at least 2 MB free space is essential. If you have more, it is better as the more the free space, the better will be the performance of the system. Though most motherboards today support audio, for improved output you may need to think of installing an additional audio and/or a graphics card, which will also do the job admirably.

A high speed modem of min capacity 56 Kbps is a must, as is an internet connection to go with it. If you can manage to hook on to a high-speed broadband connection of 2Mbps or above, well; your job will be done in a fraction of the time. Most music files, even MP3, are fairly large for a dial-up connection to handle comfortably; hence a high speed connection will definitely be an asset as it will allow much faster downloads. If you are planning to download music videos, then a min internet speed of 512 Kbps is absolutely essential.

While laptops come with inbuilt speakers, good quality PC speakers may be chosen from famous brands like JBL, Sony, Yamaha, or the very boss of them all - Bose. Branded PCs, of course, come bundled with their own speakers.

Coming to the Software. If you have a Windows based system, anything that is Windows 98 upwards will do just fine. Red Hat Linux also supports music downloads. If you have a Mac, well- you need look no further.

Besides using the basic internet browser to connect to the internet, you will need a good Audio/Video player to enjoy the results of your efforts once you have downloaded your music. Windows Media Player comes bundled with the operating system itself and is a powerhouse in itself, offering a host of mind-boggling options. Interested in trying out something new? Take your pick from other good players that are available freely on the internet. Try out Jet Audio, VLC Media player, Music Match to add interesting options to your basic music player. These are audio/video players with a lot of playing options for different music experiences like Jazz, Rock, Classical, Vocal etc, automatically setting the equalizers for the best output for each of these music forms. Further, they give several options of enjoying your music with the varied output effects of sitting in a hall, big or small room, theatre etc. A number of interesting visualizations are bound to add to the enchanting experience. You can even set your own equalizer settings, depending whether you like more bass or not.

If, however, you are planning something more advanced like studio recording etc, go in for higher end that has sound editing and audio ripping capabilities. Some of the freely available ones are N-Track studio, MIDI Maestro, Chord Composer, MusiGenesis and VF160EX Fostex digital recorder.

So don't think any longer about how your colleague is a hit with the opposite sex, just because he always seems to be up-to-date with the latest music. Step out and become an expert yourself.