Music Downloads

Digital distribution seems to be the preferred way of purchasing music by a lot of people. Unlike the CD, music downloads enable the consumer to buy a single song without buying the whole album. Music labels and music publishers have been coming up with new ways of marketing music through music downloads, yet the arena is still open to new business models.

The controversy between music downloads and copyright

For quite sometime, there has been a battle between the legality and legitimacy of music downloads and the major record labels. The dawn of the MP3 format allowed people to get music downloads because it is relatively a smaller file than other formats and still maintains a good sound quality. Peer to peer services (P2P) were one of the first to capitalise on this new technology. It allows users to share files and music downloads in a network for free. Copyright organisations and a number of artists strongly opposed this and have filed several lawsuits against these companies due to piracy and copyright infringement.

Purchasing music downloads through online stores are considered a more legitimate way of distributing music digitally. These stores sell music downloads per song or at a discounted price when a whole album or a bulk of music downloads is bought.

The advantage of getting music downloads

The advantages of getting music downloads are felt by the artists, independent labels, music publishers and music lovers, in general. Because of this new way of distributing music, artists and independent labels have found a less expensive way to market and distribute their music, giving them a fighting chance against the major players in the music industry through music downloads. There have been a lot of tools provided by the Internet to help the "do-it-yourself" musician make a mark in the industry.

A marketing strategy employed by a lot of artists and businesses is to give out free music downloads. This way, the audience is given an idea of how an artist's album would generally sound like. If the audience likes it, it may purchase the whole album. Some people say that music downloads are a win-win situation for everyone involved in the music business. For some time, major record labels have opposed to this idea. But nowadays, a lot of them have been trying to capitalise on more opportunities offered by music downloads. They consider music downloads as a new business model.

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