Downloading Music

All About Downloading Music

In our day and age anything and everything can be downloaded from the web. The problem with this is that people also use the net for illegal downloads. Music is probably the biggest part of this illegal game. What this has brought us though is cheaper music. Big record companies were forced to see the web as an opportunity not an adversary. This made iTunes, download.music.com, mp3.com and their friends pop up around the net.

Torrents

Torrents have become synonymous with the word illegal, while many programmers and specialists know that the technology is astounding. Torrents really are a great way to spread files, and they aren't always illegal. If you would like to share your own composed music with the world this may be the best way. Similarly, if you want to download someone else's music it is fast, easy, secure and efficient. As long as the owner permits this activity you can download it. As the technology becomes more and more dominant it is possible that record companies will start using it, so be on the lookout.

On-line Shopping

The biggest difference between online and offline shopping is that you can pay per track if you wish. You can usually listen to a sample of any track and make a better decision because of this. There are also monthly fees available in some stores too. You can pay a larger fee but then be able to download all month, albeit in most cases with some sort of limit. Sites also contain versatile search tools and provide you with some basic info about the songs and bands you are looking at, they may even have some useful links to follow up on that band. The positive side is that while you do have to pay a small fee, you do get the files legally, and if for nothing else, at least you feel good. Imagine you just released a CD in 1000 copies on sale at the local store. How would you feel that instead of getting $5 per CD, $5000 about 10 people would buy the CD, then they would just spread it using torrents. This means you get $100 and you just ran out of local customers.

Small Stores

Through personal experience I find that small stores selling CD's from relatively unknown artists can be a goldmine. I have a very good experience with these stores, especially, CD baby.com. Their customer service is above excellent, and despite the fact that my CD's were shipped 6000 miles, they are spotless. This particular store doesn't allow online downloads, but has extensive listening features, you can opt to play all songs from a CD, many of these may be full tracks.

Some other small stores do allow downloads so check them out, many care deeply for their customers and will help you with whatever you need. Another common feature is that, especially at CD Baby, the control is in the hands of the artists, so if you do care somewhat about the people behind the music you could sometimes download from these sites as this is a big help for them.