What is the best legal music download site?

Answer 1

Napster

Rhapsody

Yahoo Music Unlimited

iTunes

eMusic

Do a search for "Music downloads review" to compare

See Links for sites with reviews and comparisons

Further Information:

• If you want music but don't want the whole album go to iTunes and buy just one or two songs from the album for a buck apiece.

• Please understand that when you download music for free you are stealing. If you think it only hurts the big record companies, you're wrong. Many people lose money every time a song is stolen through illegal downloads: the artist, the writer, the retailer, the record company. Not everyone in the chain of people who create music are making the big bucks and can afford to lose their royalties. Nothing is ever truly free. Everyone eventually pays for theft of any kind. For the music business retail prices increase, concert tickets increase, concert merchandise is more expensive and on and on.

• You can browse for un-signed bands who will let you have their music for free in the hope you'll love it and pass it on and help their profile, which is a great way of hearing what's new.

• For legal downloads your best bets are emusic.com, which charges a fee to download a set number of songs per month; download.com, which offers completely free downloads, although the selection is limited; or a service such as rapsody or itunes, which allow you to pay per song or album.

• The great thing about the internet is that often you can find free music offered by the artist themselves, and, very importantly, by unsigned artists. Buying a CD is a little outdated now, it is a waste of plastic and not that high quality compared to modern file types (i am not talking about compressed mp3s here). Most people don't really want to give money to record companies if they don't have to, it does make things expensive and often results in the severe limitation of the availability of music to those who don't happen to have a high paid job in the western world.

• It is amazing how much you can actually find on Google just by looking. My suggestion is to use last.FM to discover new music and then simply search for it online. Make sure that if you download it free you have the artist's approval, they can often make more money by you paying $5 directly to them for an album than $15 in store.. for which they get maybe 3%.

• To summarize: emusic.com and similar sites are great for monthly subscriptions for people who like lots of music, last.FM is amazing for discovering new music, search for what you like online, using Google, myspace, and music.download.com. It won't be free but you will get more than you ever could by CD alone and you will be ultimately supporting the original artists much more than by buying a CD, and certainly a lot more than by just downloading torrents.