(MONEY Magazine) – There's nothing more annoying than having a song stuck in your head--especially when you can't get your hands on a copy of it. Any music fan knows the feeling, and I was reminded of it myself not long ago. Entranced by the old R&B/pop hybrid background music at a bar, I finally asked the bartender about it. "Great band," he said enthusiastically, brandishing a CD whose cover featured members of a 1960s girl band posing among props meant to connote childhood.

The band was called The Toys, and I started looking for the disk the next day, poking around the record stores near my home and office. I wasn't sure where it would be filed--oldies? rock? pop? R&B?--but I checked everywhere I could think of. If you've gone on similar missions, looking for something that's not a current hit or by a big artist, you probably won't be surprised to learn that I came up empty.

Well, what about those Web-based music merchants that are generating so much hype these days? All claim to have massive catalogues and to beat the real-world stores on price, even on chart-topping releases you can find anywhere. There are plenty of smaller specialty sites, and lately Amazon.com has started selling some music as well, but I decided to see if the four retailers with the biggest buzz live up to their promise. I checked prices on about 50 titles, from hits to obscurities; I poked around to get a feel for each site's search engine, overall ease of use and various extras; and I placed orders on all four.

On balance, I was pleasantly surprised. For starters, finding disks on these sites was a snap; although some have to be back-ordered, I hardly ever hit a dead end. (The exceptions were mostly classical selections, probably because the classical search engines on these sites made it hard to zero in on specific CDs.) In contrast, about 20% of the disks on my list were out of stock at the biggest music store in my Manhattan neighborhood, a Tower Records outlet.

To compare prices, I narrowed my list to a basket of 10 of the CDs that were actually in stock at my local Tower--four big hits and six lesser-known or older selections that would fit into any mildly ambitious music collection. This basket would have cost $156.90 (pretax) at the store--higher than any online total for the same disks. Still, there were differences among the sites in terms of both price and usability. So here's how the big four stacked up, ranked on star scale descending from five (a smash) to one (trash). On with the countdown.

WWW.TOWERRECORDS.COM **

The online adjunct to Tower is easily the least appealing site to look at--all reds and yellows against a black background, it resembles a bad concert T-shirt. Using it was a mixed experience. For nonclassical releases, all these sites let you search by artist, title and song; on Tower's, you can also search by producer. But Tower's frustrating classical engine didn't allow enough variables to narrow searches for well-known composers or conductors.

And while the home page boasts that the "Top 1,000" releases are "always on sale," the site consistently finished last in my price survey. Big sellers went for $12.99 (Pearl Jam's Yield) or $13.99 (Garth Brooks' Sevens), which is a bit of a discount--but the most popular new releases were often on sale at the real-world Tower outlet for the same prices.

Because the online sale extended to more selections, the 10 disks that would have cost $156.90 at my local outlet would have been $152.85 online, counting $3.95 shipping. That's a pretty minor difference, considering that you're not likely to buy 10 CDs at once.

When I placed an order through the site, I picked two CDs that were out of stock at my local store, plus the lone item in my survey for which Tower offered the best price: the $9.99 Township Jazz 'n' Jive. Though the site warned me that this selection might have to be back-ordered, everything arrived four days later. It was satisfying to have these disks, but I did better elsewhere.

WWW.KTEL.COM ***

If Tower's site is garish, K-Tel's is overly subdued. Though its offerings are not, as you might assume, limited to Captain & Tennille-heavy compilations, there's hardly any of the support material (review summaries and the like) offered on the other sites. I also found the limited search function to be the weakest of the lot, particularly when used for classical music.

Still, K-Tel's pricing was aggressive, if inconsistent. Sevens went for $11.88, but Grammy winner Radiohead's OK, Computer was $14.43--more than I would have paid at my local shop. One major plus: Order three or more disks, and pay no shipping. This meant the hypothetical 10-CD basket totaled $135.61. My actual three-CD order arrived about five days after I placed it. A good transaction but not exceptional.

WWW.CDNOW.COM ***[1/2]

CDNow offers a fast-changing lineup of daily special sales, plus the best extras--reviews, links to related artists and the like. Its search function was easy to use (you can also look by record label). The weakness on the usability front was, once more, the classical engine, which was better than Tower's or K-Tel's but still pretty clumsy.

In my price test, CDNow was a frequent winner, especially on more recent releases and big sellers, often priced $11.88. Plus, I found one outstanding bargain: the critically lauded Anthology of American Folk boxed set was just $51.08. That was easily the cheapest price online (K-Tel was closest at $62.03) and way lower than the $75.99 price tag at my nearby Tower.

But for me, the Web's big strength is in tracking down less ubiquitous music--and when you get beyond the big-selling releases to prices on CDs that I'd heard or read good things about but that aren't exactly topping the charts, CDNow was less impressive.

The basket of 10 totaled $134.22--the lowest sum by a nose--but shipping added another $4.97. Even with shipping, though, my three-disk order (including the Anthology set) cost $67.54, instead of the $105.97 I would've paid for the same stuff at the local Tower. Two items arrived three days after my order, and the third, back-ordered disk came a couple of weeks after that. Not bad.

WWW.MUSICBLVD.COM ****

I ended up being most impressed by this other big fish in the Web-music pond. The site offered decent support material and a good, if basic, search engine. It also had the best engine for classical music, partly because it's the only one to let you search by catalogue number.

While Music Boulevard doesn't quite match CDNow's prices on the newest releases, the difference is often balanced by better pricing on other disks--and by the fact that, like K-Tel, it levies no shipping charge if you order three or more. Consider: For the three CDs I ordered for $44.47, the prices are nearly identical to those of CDNow's. But figure in a shipping charge, and they would have cost $50.44 on the latter's site. (The 10-disk basket would cost $136.40 on MusicBlvd, more than $20 cheaper than at my local store.) My order arrived in five days.

Though I'd forgotten the title of that Toys CD (A Lover's Concerto/Attack), the cover was reproduced on a couple of sites, so I snapped up a copy for $11.49. A colleague suggests "A Lover's Concerto" stuck in my head because it's based on a classical tune, perhaps from a Bach minuet. Could be. I've been so busy buying, I haven't had time to listen.

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