During 2009, 98.6% of singles were sold in digital form

This means the days of having to pay a pound or two for a CD single are a thing of the past.

However, you still need to be on your guard. Those who buy from the more expensive retailers could still end up paying hundreds of pounds a year too much, though comparison sites have sprung up to help you find the cheapest.

If you’re happy to listen to music once, without downloading permanently to your computer, you can do so for nothing.
The website Spotify.com offers this service, though you’ll have to put up with adverts and you have to be invited by a member.

Or you can pay 99p a day or £9.99 a month to get instant access without ads.

If you want to download tracks so they are yours to listen whenever you want, singles mostly start from 29p a time, though retailers will occasionally offer tracks for free.

Price comparison sites can help you find the cheapest place to buy a track or album. These include Comparedownload.com and Tunechecker.com which compare online retailers such as Amazon, iTunes, Orange and Tesco.

Research shows regular downloaders could save hundreds of pounds a year by buying from the cheapest retailer each time.

A study by Tunechecker shows if you downloaded all 2009’s top 40 albums from the cheapest retailer each time it would have cost £1,980 (£4.85 per album on average).

Those who bought exclusively from Amazon would have paid £490 more, £601 more at Tesco, £864 more at iTunes and £1,031 more from HMV.

The average cost of a single is 95p from HMV and 88p from iTunes, according to Tunechecker. However, Play and TuneTribe charge a typical 69p.

If you have an iPod or iPhone you are not restricted to downloading tracks from iTunes alone as you can usually transfers songs bought elsewhere to your iTunes library.

The British Recorded Music Industry says the UK Top 40 is now almost entirely comprised of downloaded singles.

During 2009, 98.6% of singles were sold in digital form.

By Richard Cohen