legal downloads

Revised: July 25, 2005

I as most other people do, enjoy getting things for little to nothing. In other words I like free stuff. The internet is full of get free stuff gimmicks, due to the above fact that most people if given the chance would take anything if it was free. As such sites the promise free ipods and tester products and the occasional useless item have popped up all over the net. A lot of the time what seems free is actually not, you just have to wade though hours of pop-ups and get 50 friends to sign up to a service and your ?free? item is shipped to you.

Unlike the free ipod and get your free sample of toilet paper websites you can get free music online. There is however three methods of doing this. The two most known about are the illegal file downloads from such places as kazar and other file sharing networks. These networks are however, amongst being illegal (which deters some people) they are often slow, contain spy ware, full of virus infected files and are now monitored by the music industry ?fishing? for people who download, and when they get a bite, you may not get your computer back in once piece.

The second online route, is the recent addition of file downloading, the difference being that its legal. You pay to receive a mp3 copy of your choice of music. Be it the latest single release or an album. Prices can be cheap, and there are many providers such as itunes, napster and even tescos! I have only used itunes in my experience, and that experience had its good and bad points. The good point being that it was a top quality copy, it contained all the mp3 tags and even single cover art. The bad points being that it wasn?t an mp3. It was an encrypted music file, meaning I couldn?t play it on my mp3 player or any other mp3 player on my computer other than itunes. This pissed me off greatly and I eventually found audacity and ripped the sound file to mp3 via copying the stereo track being sent to the speakers as the song played. This was a slow process being only 1x but it?s the only one I could find, and being that it?s that easy to bypass the encoding I don?t see why apple insist on using it, as all it equates to is people only being able to portably play the downloaded music via apples products or a cd player once burnt to cd. I haven?t used itunes since, and choose to buy albums and singles from shops and then rip to mp3 for use on my portable mp3 player. That way not only do I get the mp3 but I also have a solid album that I can keep and maybe hang from the wall or something?

The third online route one that not many people are savvy with is downloading tracks from the bands websites. You will find literally thousands of start-up bands that publish their latest recordings online for you, their future fans to download, listen to and trade. Even some established bands such as The Dresden Dolls and moon publish mp3s from their albums for you to download all you have to do is go to their websites. Search google for free mp3 downloads, and you will find plenty of the first two routes of getting mp3s. This is unfortunate because it took me a long time to find a bands website though searching for mp3 downloads in google due to the first two routes clogging the search results. That band was The Dresden Dolls, and since then I have used their links page and subsequently the links pages of the bands I found to find more bands like them and download music from their sites. The best thing about this is that I?m getting quality music free and legally and I am also broadening my musical taste. And what do the bands get out of it I hear you ask? Well they do so, so people like us can sample full versions of their songs so we may tell our friends and even buy their album. I myself have plugged several bands in this post already, and have decided to add a few albums that I would have not otherwise known about to my ?to buy soon? list.

To save you the job of searching the Internet for band websites, which can be difficult when your not looking for any specific band just a genre you could start at a free music website such as download.coms music library. I have plugged it here once before and shall do so again being that it does contain some very good bands. Bands have submitted their songs to the website alongside a personal review, then the staff at download.com write their own review and you can download their songs from the website, and visit the bands website if they have one, for more music and links.

I have just begun my music hunt, and I wish you all the best of luck on yours. This may be a slower way than using illegal music download sites or even paid music download sites, but it is non restricting and much like an Easter egg hunt, you never know where to look, or what you may find :)

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