The answer to my problem is now clear-

I changed my ISP a short while ago - the one I was with was fine but I was charged by the minute and as I wanted to download music, it was costing a fortune.

So I changed - I won't say which one at the moment, I'm saving that for later when I ring them up and get their response.

I'll let everyone know which ISP is the culprit if their response is unfavouable - then you can avoid it like the plague and pass this on to friends who like to download music and who won't be able to using this particular ISP to do so.

The reason I know for definite is :-

After trying for many hours to find out why I couldn't connect and trawling through endless amount of FAQ's I saw a post which mentioned ISP blocking.

So having still got my old ISP care4free.net - I logged on using them --- and bingo all was working well - I've even managed to download a file I've been looking for for ages.

Ironically, I'm back where I started before I changed - paying for my downloads by the minute. That was the reason I changed in the first place.