Is There Such A Thing As Free Music?
Many people, when they envision the future, think that at some point, we will all be able to access free music at any time we want. The idea of free music is very appealing to the music lover. Since CDs cost twenty dollars in some cases, building a music library often takes a long time and many music fans find that they always want more music than they have - or can afford. Free music seems to be the answer. The Internet seems to offer many avenues of free music. There are many thousands of web sites that will offer you free music. You may even wonder if this offer of free music is too good to be true. Unfortunately, in most cases, the answer is yes. To understand how free music claims work, you need to understand how music copyright works. Basically, when anyone in North America creates a work of art - including music - their work is copyrighted right away. That means that the work, under law, belongs to them. It becomes illegal to take or copy that work and it becomes illegal to pass that work off as your own - all rights belong to the artist. When music is produced, the copyright is protected even further and musicians and music companies make royalties. That means that every time someone buys the music - either from a legal music download site or from a store - some money from the purchase goes to the music studio and the band. The money is for the use of the music. When you illegally download free music, you violate copyright, because the people who own the music did not give permission for the music to be distributed on sites such as KaZaa and other illegal filesharing sites. When you illegally download free music, the people who own the music do not get paid royalties. However, this does not mean that you can't get free music. There are a few places to listen to music for free: •The radio and Internet radio allows you to listen to free music, although you are not allowed to record what you hear for your own use. •The library allows you to borrow music. Many