Monday, August 17, 2009

Legal Music Downloads Will Cost You Money

By John Roberts

Legal music downloads are only legal if you pay for them. Obviously, there are still peer-to-peer sites out there that you can get free music from and it is always tempting to use those instead of paying for your music library. After all, there are so many people out there in cyberspace, how could anyone possibly be worried about one lonely person is doing?

Since the music industry is losing million of dollars through piracy and that they have successfully won several battles, they are taking notice of who is doing what out there in cyber space. They have the money and the time to go after the worst offenders. Several counts of piracy may not seem like a big deal but when you consider that every original download is one count and every upload is one count of piracy, the numbers can start to skyrocket.

Many peer-to-peer sites will download a song from several sources so you do not have control of how many times you are sharing music. If you have just one popular song, you can owe thousands of dollars from just one song. Most suits that the record companies' pursue end up settling out of court.

However, the average person cannot afford several thousands of dollars in fines so it is best to pay the money upfront and save you the headache in the future. Since many of the legal music downloading sites have taken care of the DRM restrictions, once you pay for a song you can do what you will with it. You can share the song, put it on your digital music player or copy to your own CD mix.

Most people only want a track or two off of an album, so you are looking at cost of $0. 99 to $1. 29 per track. This is not a moral decision. By paying for your music upfront you could be saving yourself a lot of money.

Most of us remember recording music from our radios to our cassette players but what most of us did not realize is that we were pirating music then, too. The record companies did not have a way to track us and just has to live with the infringement.

Since the age of the internet, everyone can be found sooner or later. So, it is best to pay for legal music downloads now. You are getting the better deal when you consider the alternative.

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