Why Legal Music Downloads Are Better
August 9th, 2009 by John Roberts, under Music. No Comments
Millions of people download music from the internet but we all need to be careful that these are legal music downloads. It is easy to be tempted to download music for free on peer-to-peer sites but this practice can lead to a very massive legal headache and fines in the thousands of dollars range.
Although there are only two or three cases that actually made it to court, there are thousands of cases that have been settled out of court. Every time you download music for free it will be considered as one count of piracy. And every single time you share that song that is another count of piracy. So you can see how quickly this can grow into a substantial case for the record companies.
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, in today’s economy who can afford several thousands of dollars in fines and court costs? The benefit of paying for a song or album is that once you pay for the music, it is yours. You can do whatever it is that you want to do with it. Most of the music sites have taken care of the DRM restrictions so that their customers do have to worry about what happens after the purchase.
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.
