Sacramento State students have a new way to download music legally due to a new agreement with CDigix, a Seattle-based company that offers various networks for digital media and course materials to universities.

Students can currently access CDigix’s online music service, CTrax, by signing up with their SacLink e-mail address. The service allows students to download an unlimited amount of music to their computer for free, but it must stay on their hard drives unless they are willing to pay.

If students want to burn music to a CD or transfer to an MP3 player, they must pay $0.89 per song or $9.99 per album. This price allows students to transfer the music to a CD or portable device up to four times.

The website claims to have over two million songs available, with new ones being added daily. Some of these are only 30-second clips for legal reasons, and the service has limitations in its accessibility. Because of limited capabilities, the only way to download music from CTrax onto either Macintosh computers, iTunes or iPods is by burning it to a CD and then ripping the music to a compatible format, according to the CTrax website.

Users of this service can only access it from three unique computers. This means students who use a different computer in the library every day will not be able to access their library of music from all of them.

Supporters of this service hope it will make legal music downloading more prevalent among Sac State students.

“CTrax will provide options and education (regarding) legal ways to download music,” said Andrew Singletary, information technology specialist for the University Union and residence halls.

Singletary said he hopes the service will “make students aware of the correct way to download music.”

To gauge its usefulness and popularity, Sac State will most likely only commit to CDigix’s service for one year, Singletary said. During this time, the number of students using the service will be monitored, and if students actually use the service, the contract will be extended.

“We want to focus resources where students will actually be using them,” Singletary said.

Sac State’s contract with CDigix will not be exclusive, and the university may consider other services, like competitors Ruckus and iTunes U, Singletary said, who also explained that the contract with CDigix has no financial impact.

“There is no charge to the school,” Singletary said. “We don’t get any percentage of that money (from purchased songs).”

CDigix is a company with four separate services for colleges: CTrax, the music service; CFlix, a movie network; CLabs, a way for professors to distribute class materials and handouts; and CVillage, a forthcoming online community.

The decision to use the services of CDigix was made by a committee consisting of staff members from Student Affairs and the Computing Center.