Apr122009
Illegal Music Downloads
It really is quite scary how many sites are out there which both actively and passively promote the illegal action of sharing and distributing illegal music over the internet.
Any computer-savvy internet user these days can log in to any one of hundreds of file sharing networks and get themselves pretty much any piece of music or software that they want. 100% free, but 100% illegal.
Now, I’m no saint, I’ve bent the law a couple of times in my lifetime, but when it’s come to downloading music, I have always made a point of paying for for what I download. For one thing, purchasing music legally helps to support the artists and producers that made the music in the first place. If no one paid for any music, there soon wouldn’t be an industry left to make the music that we love and look forward to every weekend.
Secondly, by paying for your music, you are guaranteed a high studio-quality version of the track which will sound great on any loud sound system even when turned up loud. If you download music illegally you are never guaranteed a quality 320Kbs mp3 file and the results vary wildly.
Everytime you illegally download a piece of music you are stealing. There are no other ways of looking at it. The trouble is, with downloading illegal music, its a bit like breaking the speed limit. A lot of people do it, it happens every day and a lot of people never get caught.
Reports have shown that as much as 95% of all music downloads are illegal, which is shockingly high.
ISPs have quite rightly stepped up their efforts recently in order to stem the flow of thier customers illegally downloading music however I feel that their method of approach in warning off potential threats by means of a strongly worded letter is somewhat pathetic at best.
What we need are a good selection of places where you can download music from for a low cost. And I’m not talking about iTunes here simply because I beleive music should be able to be played on any device you choose. Why hould I have to buy an iPod or iPhone just to play the music I have purchased?
Having said that, recent reports show iTunes is slowly introducing DRM-free music into its store which should make digital downloads that little bit more flexible.
Amazon have decided to muck in too and have now released their digital download mp3 store with thousands of low cost commercial songs available for under a quid, although you must be prepared to download and use a piece of Amazon software that is wrongly forced upon you before you can aquire your music.
The upside to using amazon however is that you can get your hands on some tracks for as low as a credit-crunching 27p!!! Laughably, Amazon announced this price drop at the same time that iTunes announced their price increase.
7digital is a good service, but unless the music is mainstream, don’t expect to find much there. Which brings me to my next point. What if you can not legally find the music you are looking for?
While writing this article, I have been putting together a DJ mix that incorporates quite a lot of tracks from about 10 years ago and a lot of it was only available on vinyl back then. None of the music I wanted was especially underground and so I thought I would have been able to find it easily to legally download.
This has not been the case.
I have spent many hours searching for tunes that I am happy to pay for but I can not find it anywhere to legally purchase online. So what are my options? Scour eBay in the hope that someone is selling a CD release of the track I want? Or do I just download it illegally? Even if I do buy the music legally on a CD, when I rip it to an mp3, I am still breaking the law.
What a lot of people do not realise is that its not just illeagal to download music from shady websites and peer to peer networks, but it is also illegal to change the format of a piece of music from the original format in which you have purchased. For example, if I buy a CD and convert it to mp3 this is illegal. If I buy an mp3 and convert it to a .wav this is illegal. If I buy a vinyl, record it and burn it to a CD this is illegal. It is not just the duplication of music that is forbidden, it is the conversion of medium that is illegal too (arguments for making personal ‘backup’ copies to one side).
In this situation, I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t and it makes me realise that a lot of the time the law is too confusing for people to understand it, and too underpoliced for people to care about repercussions.
Look at it this way, if you can afford to own a computer, then surely you can afford to spend a pound or less on a music track. This applies even more so if you are a working DJ and you are using these tracks to earn a living. How many other professions can you name where you steal your materials before doing your job? It’s wrong and it’s immoral.
But that’s ultimately the point. I guess at the end of the day it comes down to morals and how you choose to live your life. Downloading music illegaly is easy and free, but I sincerely hope that the next track you download from the internet will be legally purchased, if not to help support the artists that made the music, then to help you sleep at night with a clean concience.
You can get some of the latest funky house tracks from these great online stores:
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