Music Piracy Alternatives

“College student sued for downloading music illegally!” is an all too often news headline. Music piracy and the consequences that result are constantly making today’s top stories. If you download music illegally, it is important that you protect yourself from becoming just another court case by ensuring that you use free legal alternatives.

With iTunes charging nearly a dollar per song it is not surprising that many people who want to amass a large music library are turning to cheaper alternatives; dirt cheap if you get my drift. While there are several file sharing programs such as Limewire, Bearshare, Morphious, and many others, which allow you to download music for free, these programs can also put you at risk for a lawsuit over copyright infringement if you use them incorrectly. To ensure that you are not breaking any such laws it is important that you confirm the copyright filter (under the settings of your program) is activated. Once this filter is activated you will only see search results that are not copyrighted and therefore “A OKAY” for you to download and distribute.

Another option for illegal downloaders who have now seen the light is to simply listen to songs over the radio instead of downloading them. While at first this may sound absurd because of the inconvenience one might assume there would be, it is actually quite easy and efficient due to modern technology. Now you can listen to radio over the Internet, commercial free, and specify exactly what type of genre you want (I suggest Pandora.com). With the boom of free internet radio, downloading illegal music just doesn’t seem worth the risk.

If Internet radio just isn’t for you, don’t worry you can still download all the songs you want for free, and best of all legally too. There are now several sites that will allow you to download songs from virtually any artist (all the way from Enya to 50 Cent), and don’t charge you a dime. Undoubtedly, you are now asking yourself “what’s the catch?” Well, the catch is that the music you download is wrapped in a DRM (Digital Rights Management) shell. What the DRM does is different for every site. For the example, www.SpiralFrog.com requires that you visit the site every six months in order for you to continue playing downloaded songs. This is a small price to pay when you take into consideration that you are getting tons of music for free, but, of course, there will always be a few music purists out there who will refuse to have their songs corrupted by DRM.

In conclusion, the next time you consider downloading a song illegally, stop and ask yourself if it’s really worth the risk, when all you have to do is simply use one of the many free and one hundred percent legal alternatives.