If you have decided you want to get yourself a portable MP3 player or digital music player, you've probably discovered that there are plenty of choices. Not only that, you can spend the money of fifty or five hundred dollars on an MP3 player.

In this article, I will go over the three main categories of MP3 players, with tips for choosing the best.

1: MP3 CD Players
MP3 CD player is a digital music player that plays CD - either standard audio CD or MP3 CD. MP3 CD uses a different file format that standard CD, so it may contain several times the number of songs on a standard CD can. With most computers, you can easily burn MP3 CDs for use with the player.

2: flash-based MP3
As of Flash Player uses a static form of media, such as a memory card for storing your digital music. The Flash-based players that contain anywhere from 64MB (about 15-20 songs) up to several gigabytes of music.

Flash players are general the toughest of the three types, and can take the best shots and explosions. My flash-based player (a Rio Sport model) is dropped and kicked several times during the execution, but still going strong.

Most flash players use a USB interface to connect the computer to load with music.

3: Hard drive based MP3 Players
As its name implies, an MP3 player uses a hard disk drive to store music. They generally have greater storage capacity, up to about 100 GB of music, which will hold all but the largest music collections. As players flash players, hard drive using a USB interface to connect the computer to load with music.