Download Online Music

Where to Download Online Music Legally

When downloading online many times the question is not where ti find the music but rather weather it is legal or not. Technically in many countries downloading any material in itself is not illegal, the law is broken only when you share files with other users. However I would not advise you to download illegally as laws are continuously changing and while domestic law may be unclear on the subject international law may bind the country. As a guideline, stay away from copyrighted material that you obtain for free.

There are a lot of alternate sources for obtaining music If you are browsing for new artists try looking at their web pages of your newly found bands as they might contain some music you may download for free. Where I live a very famous local band offers all their albums free online despite the fact that they sell it in stores.

If you are looking for international stars like Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Elvis and so on you really should look to the pay sites that offer mp3's for download. These sites provide per song payments with usually $0.99 a song. This is not that steep, downloading 10 albums every month will cost you about $80, that's not that much. In addition iTunes for example now has movies available for download for $9.99 - $14.99 and getting Pirates of the Caribbean for your iPod legally is pretty cool.

Smaller stores offer very good prices and there are some that will also ship you the CD if you want. These places generally sell unknown artists' music, but I found that this is not a negative thing, if anything its positive. You can listen in and decide for yourself if you like it or not, so its not just a shot in the dark.

A very different approach was taken by Metallica. They started a music site named Metallicavault. They uploaded a lot of songs that were live performances from their early life up till now and now the archive has blown up to 5-10 times its original size. The cost? Free if you have bought their new album. Pretty ingenious idea and one that most people were very pleased with.

A very good alternative source is listening to blog radios. While this does not technically mean a download it may be the same feeling. Blog radios are totally legal "stations" built up by users from any amount of tracks they own. You can then tune in and choose the track. The radios are searchable so you can find any song you want, you don't have to wander around aimlessly through their content. The amount of these radios has risen a lot in the past with the blogging craze reaching an all time high so a huge amount of music can be leafed through this way.