this whole IPOD thing

[powellrj]

wow that is cool. what is the service called?

Its called freegal.com, I really haven't had a chance to look around it yet to see if there is anything else or if its just a library service. The books are downloaded from overdrive.com

 

[mountdew1]

I have never had an Ipod. Downloading mp3's became illegal at the end of my being in college, so I gave that up and actually buy music. DH is a college professor and EVERYBODY has Ipods on campuses.

First off, downloading MP3's isn't illegal. Downloading certain MP3's without paying for them may be illegal. So you can legally download music all over the place. Some PP's have mentioned the free section on Amazon, iTunes usually has free music, Starbucks has been offering a song a week from iTunes, etc etc.

So how do people have thousands and thousands of songs on their Ipods?
I looked at the Itunes store and a cd is the same price as it is in the store. I'm sorry, but I don't believe that all these high school and college students have spent tens of thousands of dollars on songs for Ipods. A couple years ago I took an art class and one girl told me she had over a million songs- a girl on financial aid at a community college (so unless she won the lottery under the table somehow, there is no way it came from the itunes store)

Are normal people just illegally downloading things all over the place and I'm just naive? Are there really cheap places to buy songs? How do those of you with Ipods and families of Ipod owners budget this sort of stuff?
How does this work because I wanted an Ipod until I realized that I was going to have to re-buy everything I want to hear. What I don't need is a new way to spend my whole income.

As PP's have said, ripping CD's you already own is pretty much legal. If you have a copy of media, be it audio, video, whatever, it is pretty commonly accepted that you can convert it into another form, as long as you don't that form, and don't use more than one copy at once. Also, there are plenty of legal ways to obtain music. You may not be able to get the latest pop star cd for free, but there are plenty of amazing musicians that offer single tracks, or entire CD's online for free.

It also depends on your feelings as to the legality of buying music. There are several services that offer music where you pay based on the size of the file. These tend to claim to have licensed the music from the recording industry in some place outside the US. Russia is often one seen. That way you can get a whole cd for a buck or two. Is it legal? Depends. The RIAA will usually claim its not, but they only have jurisdiction in the US. So the music may be perfectly legal in the country they operate, but it may be iffy to download in the US. But how many people have bought stuff online to avoid paying sales tax, or driving across the state line to buy say fireworks? Probably most people on this board.

But yes, plenty of people download all sorts of music illegally. Most of the people that have massive music collections, odds are they obtained some of it illegally. But those people tend to be of the teenage/college age. Many family members don't have massive collections, and they tend to have obtained most of their music legally.

Well the laws are to protect the industry, which sounds bad until you remember that the heart of the music industry is the muscians and writers of the music. Those people created something, and deserve to be paid for that creation.

Except that I don't believe that any law specifies digital music. The laws were written before there was such a thing as digital music.

And the RIAA doesn't speak for all artists. It doesn't actually speak for the artists, their members are the record labels and the distributors. So no artist directly benefits from any lawsuit or settlement that is obtained. And after the lawyers, RIAA and label take their cut, very little money if any is left for the artists. And the accounting methods used by the RIAA mean that practically nothing from any legal sales go to the artist. I can't find the article now, but a multi platinum artist tried to find out how much he had earned through his digital sales. A year or two later, the label still hadn't been able to produce any accounting of his sales. But he knew that people had bought his songs. He happened to be friends with someone in upper management, who reached out and pulled a few strings and then eventually was able to get an accounting from the label. They ended up saying he had earned a buck or two. Over the course of a few years. For a multi platinum artist. That was it. Now with ethics like that, how can you say that the industry cares about its heart? They clearly don't. If you want to support the artists and writers, deal with them directly. Many groups make most of their income from direct merchandise sales and touring. Keep that in mind when deciding where to spend your music bucks.

 

[I*heart*MickeyMouse]

We used to have a HUGE cd collection (over 8,000!!!!) and my dh (god love him) bought an external hard drive and loaded every single cd on there so we could get rid of them!

I have, on a few ocassions, downloaded illegally. If you're just curious, google "free mp3 xxx" and put in a song or band you like and you'll be surprised.

Not sayin' it's right, just sayin'.

 

[bored]

My younger brother was in college when limewire came on line. He and his buddies combined downloaded over 9000 mp3 files in one semester. They'd start 20+ and go to bed and they'd be done when they got up. Do the same and go to class etc... Didn't help they had a T1 line to their dorm.

 

[Shleedogg]

The majority of the music on my ipod is from cds that I've collected over the last 15 years. People buy me itunes gcs for Christmas/Birthdays, so I usually end up with 2-3 new cds in mp3 format per year. I also have stuff that was illegally downloaded in my freshman year of college before I really understood that it was wrong, from audiogalaxy. All of that stuff was burned onto cds for the car and then went onto ipods. In case you didn't know, you can put any music on a cd that you own on your ipod. You don't have to re-buy all of your music.

But yes, I have friends who still use kazaa to download music and think nothing of it. One friend in particular always has tons of new music and she freely admits to downloading illegally. If she really likes something, then she'll buy it.

My sister likes really obscure bands and they typically offer their music for free on their site or some other sites, so she gets tons of free music that way.