CDTs Warning List of Deceptive Music Sites to Avoid
As I respect intellectual property rights of artists and musicians, I've always been careful to avoid peer-to-peer (P2P) based sites offering "free music". These P2P sites often contain malware, that represents another danger for users in addition to potentially violating copyright laws.
The sites identified below promote themselves as major subscription sites, where users pay a fee for these services. While these companies differ from the clearly illegal P2P based sites, subscribers could still experience some of the following issues:
-- A subscription fee must be paid (and it may be difficult to be reimbursed properly after paying)
-- These sites are not authorized for legal downloads of all artists as documented by the CDT
-- These sites may not have all the mainstream or popular artists
-- Adware, spyware, or other malware agents may even be present on a few of these sites
Sunbelt Blog - List of deceptive music sites
http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/list-of-deceptive-music-sites.html
QUOTE: The CDT has published a list of deceptive music sites. As you know, there are people out there who actually believe that by signing up with these services, the music is somehow legit. Of course, these are basically pirate sites.
CDT - Music Download Warning List
http://www.cdt.org/copyright/warninglist/
QUOTE: Thinking of signing up and paying money to a music download service that looks legitimate and perhaps even claims to be “legal?” Check our list first.
Unfortunately, some sites may be happy to take your money, and may leave you with the impression that they are legal sources of a full range of music – including the top performers and music labels – but they are not licensed distributors of at least a substantial quantity of mainstream music. In particular, the sites on our list promote themselves in ways that suggest their music catalog is relatively comprehensive, when in fact they appear to have done nothing to license or otherwise ensure the legality of any downloads from the major music labels.
In short, if you are an Internet user in the United States and you pay money to one of these services with the intention of being a lawful online music user, you may get less than you bargained for.
CDT - Music Download Web Sites to Avoid
Note - URLs have been altered to avoid accidentally navigating to these sites
allcoolmusic (dot) com
allmusicdownloads (dot) com
e-mp3now (dot) com
easymusicdownload (dot) com
ezmp3s (dot) com
free-music-downloads (dot) cc
freeaccessmp3 (dot) com
freemusicnow (dot) cc
howdoiwin (dot) com
imp3download (dot) com
imusicaccess (dot) com
imusicsearch (dot) com
klitetk (dot) com
mimusicamp3 (dot) com
mp3-all-free (dot) com
mp3-download-lyrics (dot) com
mp3-freebie (dot) com
mp3-freedom (dot) com
mp3downloadhq (dot) com
mp3downloadnet (dot) com
mp3downloadsnow (dot) com
mp3favorites (dot) com
mp3musichq (dot) com
mp3rocket (dot) com
musicjustfree (dot) com
my-free-songs (dot) com
my-music-now (dot) com
myipodaccess (dot) com
mymusicinc (dot) com
netmusicaccess (dot) com
netmusicsite (dot) com
realmusicnow (dot) com
unlimiteddownloadcenter (dot) com
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I personally enjoy almost all types of music. A great legitimate resource was found last year, while searching for MP3s to assist our daughter on her high school project. While many mainstream and popular artists will not be found on this site, I've personally built an excellent library of MP3s during the past year.
EXAMPLE OF A GOOD LEGITIMATE MUSIC RESOURCE
CNET's music.download.com site has about 75,000 songs on it. These are mostly from "starving artists" rather than the most popular ones. However, this is a safe, DRM-legal, and malware-free site. There's no need to register for anything, as you simply pick a musical category and start downloading. The overall concept is that these artists hope you'll find something in the samples you like, and maybe purchase some of their works.
Still, when it comes to some of my personal favorite categories (e.g., Celtic, Classic, Jazz, Gospel, Contemporary Instrumentals, etc.), the price is right -- if you have some time to download & review these. I've found some "gems" here that are great to load up in the MP3 player. These are all free, and some are streaming only links, and I skip these going for the MP3s (which are in the great quality 192 kbps formats).
Steps for finding artists by category:
1. Select on the left menu pane, the type of music desired (JAZZ in my example)
http://music.download.com/
2. This takes you to the JAZZ main section (which you can drill down into sub-categories, or use the entire topical area)
http://music.download.com/2001-7985_32-0.html?tag=MDL_nav_dir&
3. Click on ALL Artists tab
http://music.download.com/3605-7985_32-0.html?tag=MDL_head_all
4. Then you can download available MP3s for individual artists as desired. Sometimes, only an on-line streaming link is offered rather than a sample MP3 and I skip these.
5. To build the MP3 library, I usually keep track of what has been downloaded in a text file over time. I delete those items that I won't listen to again. I usually create an overall folder for the music type (e.g., Classical, Jazz, Gospel, etc). and then create sub-folders for each artist.
6. Finally, for good backup, I create CDs of the MP3 library or copy the folder to USB Flash drive so they can be loaded on my other PCs.
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