|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Birth of Legal Music Downloads |
|
|
The recent trends show that people are moving away from buying CDs at an increasing rate. This is due in no small part to sites like Napster and the growing desire for free music downloads for windows media player. The metoric rise of MP3 players such as the Ipod are at the heart of this shift in where people are buying their music.
The Internet has made it very easy to get the latest music downloads, and the buying public has embraced it with zeal. After all, it's a lot cheaper to buy the singles that you like, as opposed to paying for a CD full of tunes that you don't want.
Recently there has been a music industry wide crackdown on where you get your free Weird Al music downloads, country music video downloads free and whatever else you may entertain yourself with. Legal music downloads have now become the standard after years of file sharing and illegal downloads.
The creation of legal music downloads came about because of the complaints of many artists and musicians. They pleaded with the government that they owned their music, and it therefore should not be available for free downloading through shareware like Napster.
The government decided that shareware sites are indeed illegal, and allowed companies to provide music downloads for a small fee, as long as it was not free or through shareware.
As a result, music downloading websites began popping up online, with ITunes being the most popular. Napster also began providing legal music downloads to consumers for a monthly subscription fee.
ITunes became increasingly popular mainly because they provided legal music downloads for a very nominal fee of only ninety-nine cents per song, and it was also more convenient than other sources.
You don’t have to pay a costly monthly subscription if you just want to one or two songs. There are now more than a hundred of sites that offer music downloads ranging from small start up companies to established ones like Yahoo and ITunes.
There are even a handful of international sites that offer legal music downloads. Russia has the most popular and widespread international sites. However, they are monitored very closely because they offer songs for as little as five cents each.
Music companies and artists are not very fond of music being sold for that little. It has been difficult to crack down on them because other countries do not fully recognize intellectual property laws.
You can find legal music downloads in several ways. It is advisable that you go through reputable and well known sites such as Itunes or Yahoo. You can also take a risk and download your music through one of the international sites that currently offer legal music downloads.
However, you have to run the chance of a government crackdown or glitches in the site that can prevent you from fully downloading the music you paid for.
|
|
|