The default download format is MP3, and this is probably what you want. These files play back beautifully in Apple Music, Windows Media Player, your iPhone/Android phone, etc. and include high quality cover art, accurate artist and track names, and lyrics when available. Our MP3s use variable bit-rate encoding (VBR) to shrink the size of the files while maintaining the highest quality, so you get fast downloads and can fit more cool island songs on your iPhone.

You can also download in FLAC, ALAC (Apple Lossless), AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and AIFF formats. These options are, ahem, for “audiophiles and nerds.” If you aspire to become either, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Burning a CD? Your best bet would be to download in WAV or AIFF for an audio CD (most common) or in MP3 for a data CD.

When you download an album, it arrives on your computer in a compressed format called zip. Before you can add the music to your library and listen to it, you’ll need to decompress, or “unzip” it. Doing so is very easy:

If you’re on a Mac, double-click the file. You’re done.

If you’re on a PC, right-click the file and choose Extract All... You’re also done. Don’t see an “Extract All...” option? Try renaming the file to something simple, like “music.zip”. The important thing is to make sure the name ends with “.zip”. Then right-click it again. You should now see “Extract All...” in the menu. If you still don’t see an Extract All... option, double-click the file. This will open a window listing the files inside. Press Ctrl+A to select all the files, then drag them into a folder or onto your desktop. This will extract them, for sure.

What!? That doesn’t work either? You may be amongst the elite few who simply don’t have unzipping software built in to their PC. Easy to rectify: there are some free unzipping programs for Windows such as Zipeg, 7-Zip, and PeaZip.

If you’re on an Android device, In your Downloads folder, tap on the .zip file to open it. If it won’t open, download an app like File Manager or something similar. More info

Unzip the file to your Downloads folder, and then move the unzipped music to the Music folder in your phone’s file system. More info

Open Play Music and listen to your tunes.

If neither of these sets of instructions work, you may need to download to a computer first, then sync to your device.

I downloaded music, now how do I get it into Apple Music or Windows Media Player?

To add music to Apple Music, just launch Apple Music and choose File > Add To Library.

To add music to Windows Media Player, you can either: a) select the audio files, then right click them and choose “Add to Windows Media Player List”, or b) drag and drop the audio files onto the Windows Media Player window (if that doesn’t work, try the drag/drop operation again, but make sure the Library tab is active in Windows Media Player first).

Yes if you have an Android device. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t allow direct downloading of music to iOS devices like iPhones or iPads. Apple users much first download to a desktop and import into their devices.