Free Music Downloads
There are a variety of online sources for anyone seeking to download music. However, these music downloads are of varying legality. Some methods which were once illegal means of obtaining free music downloads have since become legal, but are no longer options for users seeking free music. Methods which allow users completely free music downloads generally remain outside of the law.
Free music downloads were first made popular by the application Napster. Napster was founded in June 1999 by Sean Fanning and Sean Parker. Fanning, a student at Northeastern University in Boston was searching for a simple method to download free music that having to go through existing search engines to find those free music downloads. Although MP3 music downloads were already popular before the creation of Napster, it was the first application to provide a centralized database. The biggest advantage Napster had in letting people find free music was a simple user-friendly interface. The popularity of the service peaked in February of 2001, with 26.4 million verified users around the world using the application to download free music. However, the record companies, upset that people were able to obtain these free music downloads without worrying about the copyrights which affected the free music, organized themselves into the Recording Industry Association of America and sought an injunction against Napster because the free music downloads violated copyright laws. A March 2001 court injunction forced Napster to cease allowing users to download free music. Napster was forced to shut down for a period time. In an attempt to satisfy the restitution it was obliged to provide the RIAA, Napster attempted to charge for the previously free music downloads. After whetting its appetite with free music downloads the public found other options.
Following Napster’s shut down, music downloads ceased to be hosted by a central server, making it harder for the RIAA to stop widespread efforts to find free music. Since the files were now hosted on individual computers the RIAA elected to now go over those users downloaded the most free music. Free music downloads had been pushed onto peer-2-peer file sharing applications. The most popular of these which are still in use are Kazaa and Limewire. These systems probably allow more free music downloads daily than Napster did at its peak, however the volume of free music that passes through these applications is difficult to determine because of the decentralized way in which the programs’ users download music. One of the complaints often leveled against peer-2-peer file sharing is that users are dependent upon the number of who have the free, as well as upon both users having a fast Internet connection. One way around this obstacle to getting music downloads is the use of torrent files, which share data between multiple users at once, and are hosted on websites.
The most successful music downloading method however was found by Apple. In addition to charging less than a dollar for most singles and less than ten dollars for many albums through its iTunes store, it also offers several free music downloads on a weekly basis.
