It wasn't that long ago that the music retail business was up in arms at the hands of Napster, the then-king of music download sites, which allowed music buffs to go online, download their favorite songs whenever they wanted - all for no charge. Because of Napster, record companies experienced a dramatic loss in sales and, as a result, a significant loss of money. From the perspective of the consumer, however, Napster was a godsend. Instead of having to fork out money for their favorite CDs, music lovers could simply download the songs they wanted free of charge.
Napster was inundated by legal action as a result of their actions, and several parties were charged with stealing music. Because the songs were not paid for, the downloaded materials were, in essence, stolen. Finally, record companies forced Napster and similarly negligent music download sites to shut down. Since that time, Napster has revamped itself to offer legal music downloads to its customers.
The attack on Napster didn't spell the end of music download sites offering free music downloads, however. But these days, to download music from one of these free sites is to run the risk of having your computer invaded by spyware, adware, and viruses. The new incarnation of Napster is considered safe and it remains one of the leading music download sites on the Internet. In an effort to protect the rights of the artists and other rights holders, download restrictions have been placed on some songs available on Napster.
And all the while music download sites like Napster and Gnutella were being bombarded by enraged music-industry members, other music download sites saw the opportunity to carve out a niche for themselves. Since it was fairly inevitable that the age of downloading music for free was going to come to an abrupt end, other sites cropped up who charged a fee for downloading.
Napster and other music download sites like Emusic.com and Listen.com charge users a subscription fee to use their service. In exchange, users are granted access to unlimited downloads. Other sites, like iTunes and Musicmatch.com, allow users to purchase music on a per-song basis, for those who prefer not to buy subscriptions.
These days, legitimate music download sites have become the leading way to capture music for personal use. Personal Mp3 players have become mainstream and downloading digital music is now the rule rather than the exception in many cases. There are still those who prefer to tempt fate by downloading music illegally, but oftentimes they learn that the price they pay is more than the few dollars they saved. The law is keeping pace with technology, and most illegal download sites have now been driven underground. Although there will almost certainly always be the fight between those who want to do what is right and those who want to fight a way to fight the powers that be, digital music is unquestionably the wave of the future and, as a result, technology will continue to need to evolve to keep the usurper at bay.