Archive for January 2012
Legal Free Music Downloads – Songs You Want at No Cost
January 31, 2012 | 
Author It’s all over the news these days. Download music from the Internet and you could be sued, fined, and/or go to jail. The truth is free music downloads, done correctly, are completely legal.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) aggressively prosecutes copyright violators. And well they should – it’s piracy plain and simple. But there are millions of free mp3 downloads legally available. RIAA doesn’t want you to know this and wants you to believe any music downloads you don’t pay for are illegal.
You’ll quickly attract RIAA’s attention by using file-sharing services like Kazaa and Grokster. The technology is not illegal (yet), but using it to share downloadable music is at best a grey area. And make no mistake, RIAA can and will find you!
First understand the difference between restricted and unrestricted copyrights. Nearly all songs have an artist or record label copyright. Many copyrights restrict gratis downloads. But many musicians want to share their music at no charge through free downloads.
Why, you might ask? Some are unknowns looking for exposure, but many famous musicians know it’s in their interest to offer free downloads. It inevitably leads to more CD, concert and merchandise sales. Plus it boosts their image and popularity.
Posted in free music | 
Tags: Grey Area, Recording Industry Association Of America, T Pay | 
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Advantages of Downloading Free Music
Downloading free music from the Internet has become extremely popular because of the various advantages it offers and because of its user-friendliness as well as cost-effectiveness.
Undoubtedly, music is the food of one’s life. It is a healer for a number of discomforts and one of the greatest motivators. A good piece of music can really fill a person with enthusiasm and vigour in some of the most challenging circumstances. Music has the ability to set mood for occasions like a fast number can force everyone to dance on the floor, it can add life to an evening and a prayer can add solemnity to an occasion.
There are websites that have understood this widespread passion for music and have provided free music download features to allow music lovers to download their favourite music without the need to pay anything. After all, music is one of the most valuable gifts of god and nobody should be restrained from it because of financial reasons.
Websites that allow downloading free music have become extremely popular across the globe among the music lovers. As Internet knows no boundaries, these websites have made their step-marks in almost every part of the world. One of the main reasons for such an increased popularity of free music downloads is that one can get access to his or her favourite music cutting across all the barriers of culture, country and language.
The entire world’s music is laid in front of the visitors and all they have to do is to choose whether they want to download free music of the latest movie or a hit number of the era gone back. If you go to buy a CD of your favourite music in the market, you have to buy the entire one even if you don’t like the other songs in the album.
Through downloading free music from these sites, the users have the choice to download only the track that is their favourite rather than downloading the entire album. Thus you save your space as well as money by download music from these websites. The greatest thing about downloading free music from these websites is that the users are able to create a big music library for themselves and that too without breaking the legal requirements.
After you download free music from these sites, you can also burn these songs to CDs or transfer them to your MP3 player or iPod.
There are many new artists who submit their creations on these free music downloads sites in order to reach out to their potential audience. This way, you may also come across some hidden talents through these sites, which you may have never found on commercial market places. On such music download sites, you can find a wide variety of almost every kind of music satisfying your individual taste for music.
Downloading free music from these websites is increasingly becoming more and more popular as this gives the facility to download and store a large number of songs and that too without occupying much space on your storage device. The process of doing this is also extremely simple and fast, as you have to give your mouse a few clicks, that’s all.
Music Download Sites – What Makes a Site Legal Or Illegal?
The introduction of music download sites to the internet has revolutionized the way we consume music. Though easier and much less expensive for consumers to get their hands on the latest music from the comfort of their home, the break through began with an illegal method of downloading music which unfortunately opened the door to others that are still around to this day. It is up to the consumer to be educated on which sites and services are legal to use, and which are not. To better understand the legality of music download sites, it is best to take a look at the first popular illegal online music download solution.
The start of illegal music downloads.
In 1999, the world was introduced to the first music file sharing software called Napster. Created by Shawn Fanning, the technology allowed users to share their music files freely with other users. This would bypass the entire legal music market and let anyone who could operate a computer and simple software get their hands on the music they wanted absolutely free. The software quickly became noticed as violating copyright laws as it never had permission from the artists or their labels to distribute these files.
Metallica, a heavy metal act, discovered one of their demo songs “I Disappear” was circulating and even played on certain radio stations before the track was ever released. They were of the first to file a lawsuit against Napster for copyright infringement. A month later, Dr. Dre also filed a lawsuit asking Napster to remove all of his content from the service. These acts, along with many record labels pursued Napster in court for the massive copyright violation.
The media embarked on the story and in turn, indirectly made the service even more popular, putting a spotlight on music file sharing and increasing the amount of active users to over 26 million in Napster’s final stages.
On June 3rd, 2002, Napster filed for bankruptcy but the damage was done. The world was introduced to file sharing and online music consumption. Many imitation sites and software sprung up after this incident and to this day, you can still find illegal peer-to-peer file sharing solutions offering illegal music downloads.
So what makes a music download site legal or illegal?
There are very basic principles a music download site needs to follow in order to provide legal music downloads. Simply put, they need permission to distribute each music file on the site from whoever owns the copyright of, or legally represents the music. This can be either the artist, the artists publishing company, and/or in most cases, the artists record label.
In our first example, Napster took copyrighted material and without permission decided to make these files freely available. Neither the artist nor record companies were compensated. This is where the big problem lies. Music is like any other product on the market. Someone or a team of people put time towards creating a song or album and are selling their product. If you want the product, you have to pay a legal distributor of that product so everyone who was involved in creating it gets compensated for their work. If they are not, and have not agreed to make it available for free, you are stealing their product.
With music, stealing songs is infringing on copyright laws which are in place to protect artists and labels, and assure they are in control of who can distribute their art while in turn, getting compensated when someone does buy a copy of a song or album.
I did not know the site was illegal. It is not my fault.
Well, unfortunately any way you look at it, it is your fault. You are responsible for your actions on any music download site or service. The small loop hole in file sharing software and sites is that a user can use it legally. If I create an eBook on the best music download sites for example, and as the writer and sole copyright owner, I choose to distribute it for free to anyone who wants to take a read, I can put it on file sharing software and sites. If anyone downloads it, it is legal as I am not looking for any compensation. In this case, the user of the file sharing software or site is not doing anything wrong.
If a user downloads a copyrighted file from an artist or label that is looking to being compensated and never gave permission to the source of the file to distribute it however, then the user who downloads it can get into trouble and it is completely their fault for not doing their research before downloading the music file.
How do I know if a music download site is legal or illegal?
In order for any music download site or service to distribute music files legally, they need a distribution agreement with the artists record label. To make things simple, if you are looking for music from top 40 artists, most of these acts are signed to one of the major record labels; Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group. A music download site would need a distribution agreement with these companies to legally make this music available on their site.
If a music download site went through the trouble of putting together a distribution agreement with the 4 major labels, chances are they are proud of the accomplishment and would have this written somewhere in their “FAQ” or “About Us” section of the site. If it is not written, it is up to you to contact them and make sure they have the legal right to distribute the music files you are looking for before you download anything from them.
In the end, our generation has the luxury of having many legal music download sites available to us. It is simply a question of doing a little research before hand and making sure you go with a site that suits your needs, has the music you are looking for, but more importantly, offers legal music downloads which rightfully compensate artists for their work.