Am I the only one on DS to download music legally? If not, where are the rest of you, and where do you get yours?!

I get the majority of tracks from mainly Russian websites that are cheap as chips but still legal & with no evil DRM. I run an internet radio station & pay royalties on all tracks I play, so the greedy industry still make their money.

No matter if I buy the track online or as a hard based album. I have a copy of the song on my PC & MP3 Player. I don't give a rats if I have only paid for the track once as it goes on as many of my devices that I choose to

What, the russian sites are legal in the UK then? Which ones? Just that I heard they were illegal hence why some were closed down.

The Reason why most of the russian sites are CHEAP is because they dont pay royalties, hence some of them have been closed down like Allofmp3.com which was the biggest .

If its cheap there is normally a reason why and illegal comes to mind.......

g

Really? No one seems to know lol
It's also bad because no where does it look illegal for people like me who are unsure.

sorry edited my post after your quote....

I agree it is very hard for a person of the street to know where to download stuff from.

My recomendation is to research it using the web and mostly use common sense, if they are offering the uk top 40 in mp3 format for £2.99 ( like Allofmp3.com did ) then its dodgy with a capital D.

g

So it's not legal to use them then? Even though you are paying for the tracks and it all looks above board?

well you are paying for them but they are illegal downloads because they are not paying royalties.

g

All of my legal downloads are from itunes, it may get a slagging but I find it easy to download single tracks and albums ......

Thats terrible. They should be closed down immediatly then because I wouldn't have known. How can they get away with that?!

I do't use ipods, I buy CD's for albums, and tracks from play/7digital for singles - all played back on my PS3.

This blog entry might be of some help; 35 Places To Download Free, Legal MP3s

Thanks, i'm more intrigued by mp3fiesta.com now lol is it legal to use in the UK? They give you $10 free just for signing up, and $10 free a week, and $50 for everyone you bring to them!

I just want to do the right thing and be all legal. So any help would be appreciated.

Someone here posted a link to a Russian site the other day and in the small print it said something along the lines of "you should only use this site if it is legal in your country". So they put the onus on the user to decide whether using the site is legal or not.

Well MP3 sites are legal to use in the UK (play.com, 7digital) - no where online/in the media does it clearly state you can't.

It's filesharing music thats apparently the bad thing to do.

Again looking via google, theres nothing that clearly says "you must not use mp3fiesta in the UK" - theres plenty of "do not download music illegally from p2p filesharing sites" and "pay for music, don't download it for free".

With MP3fiesta, I am paying for it!

The mp3fiesta site legal info says:

The copyright observation requires you to use the music files presented on MP3fiesta.com for private listening only. The Site Administration cannot control the use of materials, presented on MP3fiesta.com. Downloading music files from our Site, Customer takes liability for it’s further use. This responsibility depends on national legislation of the country where the Customer resides.

So they are doing exactly what I said in my earlier post, putting the onus on you as the customer to find out whether downloading from them is legal or not.

Also, you say you are paying for downloading. That's fair enough, but are you paying someone who owns the rights to material you're downloading? If not, you're paying them and they're getting paid - but that doesn't make it legal.

As far as I'm aware no-one knows for sure whether downloading from Russian sites is legal or not since it's never been tested in a UK court. However, the chances are that it isn't legal.

Personally, I use napster for streaming although not for downloading.

I very rarely need to download music as I buy CD's wherever possible, but when I do it's iTunes. It's usually for single tracks where I know for certain that the rest of the album would not interest me. Oh and I have a few EPs that have only been released digitally (damn you Modwheelmood!! release a physical CD already!).

I might switch to Amazon if they start selling mp3s here (or do they already? I haven't checked in a while)

I use iTunes for singles and have only bought 1 album from there but ripped it to CD anyways. Any up-coming albums I'm looking forward to (e.g Britney Spears' 'Circus' I will go out and buy on CD....).

I use iTunes all the time.

I use iTunes, it's just so easy!

I don't have an ipod, and hate the fact that if my ipod breaks, I lose all the tracks i bought cos you can't transfer them to a diff ipod.

I want mp3's for PC playback and also playback on my PS3.

What does everyone advise regarding mp3fiesta.com?

Erm, no. I'm on my 4th iPod (well, now an iPhone) and have had my purchased songs on them all (3 at once). I believe the restriction with iTunes is copying to 5 iPods. I tend to use iTunes for downloads, though still buy albums on CD.