Offered DRM-free (in other words, playable on pretty well all computers and MP3 players) at 192kbps, the downloads compare well in both quality and price with sites such as Chandos's www.theclassicalshop.net. "Full-price" albums are generally £7.99 (though Chandos's reduced price is carried over to this new site, so a "full-price" deleted album will cost £4.99, the same price as a Naxos recording); and buying an entire album is still the most economical way of acquiring music. Take Chandos's Gramophone Award-winning recording of Prokofiev's Symphony No 6 coupled with three numbers from the Waltz Suite, Op 100 (Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi): bought as a complete album it will set you back £4.99; if you buy it track by track the bill comes to £9.14 (it's rather like assembling a car from spare parts).

In design terms, classicsonline looks good, with clean lines and a cool aesthetic that comes closer to iTunes' benchmark than any other classical download site. Payment is easy, offering the alternatives of PayPal or credit card, and the download manager for PC (the Mac version was not up and running when I was sampling the site) easy to use. As with all download sites apart from iTunes you then pull the download into your preferred player (which, of course might well be the iTunes jukebox). The process is easy and becomes intuitive once you've done it a couple of times.

The test of any DSP (digital service provider, aka download store) is the quality of its search. And having been familiar with Naxos's search engine from its Music Library, I wasn't surprised to find a superior method of searching here. The options are generous: alongside the expected Composer/Arranger/Lyricist, Artist (Soloist/Conductor), Performing Group (Choir/Ensemble/Orchestra) and Label, there are options for Genre and Music Categories, Period, Country and Instrument searches. You do have to be prepared to try a few different options: a search using "Classical" for Period, "Austria" as country and "Piano" as instrument rather surprisingly won't turn up anything…but do persevere. Another nice feature is the Music Browser which helps narrow your search by opening boxes across the screen - Apple users will be familiar with the way it works).

The featured composer on the site when I visited was Kalevi Aho and besides a biography there were links to the substantial number of BIS recordings of his work: a favourite of mine is the Symphony No 11 and the Symphonic Dances (£7.99), and I'm just getting to know the most recent recording in the Aho/BIS catalogue, the Tuba Concerto and the Contrabassoon Concerto, amazing pieces (see page 60). And for Featured Artist, there was a profile of one of the most talked-about of the new generation of young conductors, Yannick Nézet-Séguin: his eclectic discography from the Canadian ATMA label includes Mahler's Fourth, Saint-Saëns's Third, Weill's Second and a Nino Rota collection (all are £7.99).

The Naxos site is "à la carte" - in other words you pay for what you buy - but www.emusic.com (or .co.uk) offers a different model (frequently discussed here). For £8.99 you can download 30 tracks each month (and you can supplement that by paying for extra tracks). Recently, emusic has been adding dramatically to its catalogue: the Danish label Danacord is very well represented. The label's star pianist Oleg Marshev has virtually his entire discography available for download. His Prokofiev concertos are well worth considering but I've been drawn to more unusual fare like the series of Danish piano concertos: Vol 3 has works by Otto Malling, Ludvig Schytte - still a little troubled about how to pronounce that one - and Siegfried Salomon. If you're drawn to late-flowering romanticism, why not start here?

On the subject of Danacord, don't pass up the opportunity to sample a volume or two from the quite wonderful series "The complete Aksel Schiøtz Recordings 1933-1946". As a taster I'd recommend Vol 4 which contains a selection from Die schöne Müllerin coupled with Danish songs. The shortness of his career - he suffered from partial paralysis of the face which curtailed his vocal ascent - combined with the beauty of his voice make him a special singer with a justly deserved following.

One of James Inverne's recent Editor's Choices has recently popped up on emusic: it's the Pentatone recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. It's a tremendous performance: both Julia Fischer and her conductor Yakov Kreizberg let the power and passion emerge from within the music rather than laying it on from outside as so many less subtle artists do. With the benefit of Pentatone's top-notch recording, this is a real winner. I've been wandering round London listening to it on my iPod and have loved every minute of it.

And this month's Download Playlist? With Ian Bostridge offering Handel on our cover, how about a clutch of the most appealing of recordings of this wonderful composer? Biggest bargain must be the disc of excerpts from Alcina with Natalie Dessay, Renée Fleming and Susan Graham conducted by William Christie - £2.99 from iTunes. Coming pretty close is John Eliot Gardiner's Erato collection of the Op 3 Concerti grossi (another £2.99 from iTunes). For Messiahs, I still think that Trevor Pinnock's mid-1980s version sounds tremendous (£14.99 from iTunes and classicsandjazz.co.uk) and for a completely unauthentic but rather wonderful Giulio Cesare, lend an ear to a recording under Ferdinand Leitner with Walter Berry, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich and Lucia Popp (60 tracks on emusic). Having warmed to Pierre Boulez's magnificently big-band Fireworks Music with the New York Phil on my Radio 3 Classical Collection show, a good counterbalance might be Trevor Pinnock's English Concert version (£7.90 from iTunes or classicsandjazz). Handel discs that never fail to warm the spirit: duets from the oratorios sung by Carolyn Sampson and Robin Blaze with OAE (18 tracks) and one of the most potent and poignant aria collections - the late and great Lorraine Hunt Lieberson at the top of her considerable form. Unmissable!

James Jolly