A music download is a purchase of a song or album available for downloading on the Internet. Downloading music first became popular with file sharing technologies such as peer-to-peer networks, with people breaking copyright laws by not paying for any of it. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed that this practice was damaging the music industry, and a series of law suits led to many of these networks being closed down. However, those who support such technologies argued that the music industry said the same thing about recordable tapes and CDs, and even when recorded music came out as before then artists got their money through live performance, and that the industry should embrace the advancements in technology rather than enforce prohibitions on the practice. Very little publishable academic research has been done to clarify this form of massive consumer behavior. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... A song is a relatively short musical composition. ... An album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. ... This article is about the computer terms. ... // Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence expressed through time. ... File sharing is the activity of making files available to other users for download over the Internet, but also over smaller networks. ... A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... Copyright symbol Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. ... The RIAA Logo. ... The music industry is the industry that creates, performs, promotes, and preserves music. ...

There is a great deal of freely available music online, which is distributed by the copyright holders for various reasons. (For instance, some university orchestras have high-quality recordings of their performances.) This fully legitimate free music is often overlooked by the popular media and is hardly a new development on the Internet.

Music stores

The second phase of music downloading was the online music store, whereby songs could be downloaded at a price. In 2003, iTunes saw the popularity of legal digital downloads skyrocket. Other online websites include URGE, Napster and MSN's Music store. The sales of downloaded music has now surpassed the sales of 'physical copies' in some countries; this has been indicated in the UK where Crazy by Gnarls Barkley reached the top spot in the UK Singles Chart based on download sales alone^[1]. The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. ... This article is about the iTunes application. ... Urge Music Store on WMP 11 Beta for Windows Vista URGE or URGE.com is an online music service announced on December 13, 2005 and released on May 17, 2006. ... Second version (revised 2001) of Napster logo: Cat wearing headphones. ... Alternate covers Promotional CD and digital download single cover Crazy is the first single from Gnarls Barkley, a musical collaboration between Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, and is taken from their 2006 debut album St. ... Gnarls Barkley is a Grammy-award winning musical collaboration between DJ, multi-instrumentalist and producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) from Baltimore, and rapper/vocalist Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Callaway), from Atlanta. ... The UK Singles Chart is currently compiled by The Official UK Charts Company (OCC) on behalf of the British record industry. ...

Music downloads offered by artists

Some artists allow their songs to be downloaded from their websites, often as a short preview or a low quality sampling. Others have embeded services in their sites that allow purchases of their singles or albums, as demonstrated by Metallica's official website. A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Metallica is a Grammy Award-winning American heavy metal/thrash metal band formed in 1981[1] and has become one of the most commercially successful musical acts of recent decades. ...

In addition to this and to music stores, peer-to-peer downloading programs or websites such as Limewire, Kazaa and many others are very popular. Additionally, Torrent filesharing is another common method of peer-to-peer transfers. There is much controversy relating to filesharing due to copyright restrictions that apply to recorded media. and developed by varun kumar saxena. A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... LimeWire is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Java Platform, which uses the Gnutella network to locate and transfer files. ... Kazaa Media Desktop (once capitalized as KaZaA, but now usually left as Kazaa) is a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol. ... BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. ...

See also

• Music and movie download controversy
• EU Copyright Directive
• iTunes Store
• Peer-to-peer

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ... The European Union (EU) directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, commonly known as the EU Copyright Directive or short EUCD, is the EUs implementation... The iTunes Store is an online business run by Apple Inc. ... A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few servers. ...

Notes