Music's Changing Digital Landscape: Free (and Legal!) Downloads, On-Demand Radio and Something Called a Grooveshark

When it comes to mp3 downloads that are both free and legal, you're really left with only promotional giveaways and the rare music that isn't protected by iron-clad copyright laws. Still, it's better than nothing. It's also worth noting that many independent artists allow you to download music for free from their websites, or allow you to choose your own price for downloading their album. It's a way for them to get more people to hear to their music (which is really what it's all about, right? um, right?) and also, enjoyably, to tell the greedy record labels to go fly a kite. As the big record companies make themselves increasingly irrelevant and detestable, I think we'll be seeing a lot more recording artists ditching the big labels and releasing free (or at least, reasonably-priced) music in the future.

• Amazon You may or may not be aware that Amazon.com offers thousands of free mp3 downloads spanning across all genres. New songs are added from time to time, so it's worth checking their free mp3 list every now and then to see if there's anything you like.
• Certain websites that cater to a specific genre of music, including Free Indie, also offer a limited number of free and legal music downloads. In the case of Free Indie, the blog releases three new, free, legal indie mp3s each week. I think this kind of thing is cool because, well, it's FREE, and the music is always fresh.
• Free Music Archive is a collection of songs which you can download legally and for free because they are published under creative commons licenses and other types of copyright licenses that allow limited filesharing. The many thousands of mp3 downloads offered on this site span every genre from jazz to experimental to hip hop. Although I suspect the number of songs offered by current, well-known artists would be limited, this seems like a great place to find music you've never heard before, or to find classical and other pieces that pre-date copyright laws.
• There are at least a dozen more legit sites where you can find many free, legal mp3s (some services you have to register for or you have to sign up for a free trial of a paid service to get some free songs). Some more sites are listed here.

I'll venture to say that most people who love music and have an internet connection (or a smartphone) know about online streaming radio. Even a lot of brick-and-mortar radio stations will stream their programs on their website. The most famous of these sites is surely Pandora, which creates "personalized" stations for you based on your musical tastes. Slacker also has a very similar concept. Both Pandora and Slacker have apps for Android and iPhone smartphones, which allow you to listen to free online radio while you're driving or taking a jog. Both Pandora and Slacker do offer "premium" packages that you have to pay for. With these, you can get less intrusive ads and skip more songs. My advice would be to stick with the free service as these paid upgrades don't seem particularly worth it (the ad to song ratio on Pandora is waaaay less than a regular radio station, to the point that you barely notice it).

While I do use Pandora when I'm driving as it beats listening to the regular radio, hands down, and I enjoy discovering new songs and artists that were added to my stations because they sound similar to other songs and artists I like. However, my favorite free streaming radio service is Grooveshark. Probably because it's not really like "radio" at all.

Grooveshark is probably the closest thing to being able to legally download any song you want for free. Except you don't actually "download" the songs. Not exactly. Allow me to explain. (If you already know about Grooveshark and I'm wasting your time, please tell me so. But it seems like a lot of people still haven't used it/haven't heard about it.)

With Grooveshark, another free online music service, you're able to create an account where you can save and play songs and playlists online and also search a massive database of songs that other users have uploaded. You can also upload your own music. So, if I search for a particular song I like, I can not only listen to that song in its entirety, for free, right now, but I can also save it under "My Music" and access it later, from my computer or a different one. With Grooveshark, you can also create playlists with "your" songs. The next best thing to being able to listen to just about any song, on demand, in full and as many times as you want to, is YouTube. However, the record labels have caught on to the fact that people have started using YouTube to listen to music for free, and they oftentimes have YouTube remove these offending videos soon after they're uploaded. Also, the videos and ads on YouTube are distracting if all you want to do is listen to music.

Anyway, Grooveshark is in a murky legal situation right now, as Grooveshark insists its service complies with copyright laws, but the powerful moneymakers in the digital music world (i.e. major record labels, Apple), are, well, bloody pissed. Last year, iPhone removed the Grooveshark app from is catalogue, and more recently, Android also removed its Grooveshark app. It seems that Apple's problem with Grooveshark is, if people can listen to any song they want at any time, and even carry around those songs on their smartphone, people won't need to buy iTunes (which is true!) I'm not totally sure why Android/Google got rid of the app, though, as they are not involved (at least, not directly) in the business of selling music. It may indeed just be the company wanting to distance itself from a product which may one day be ruled illegal.

Grooveshark has, so far, been sued by two record companies, including EMI, which Grooveshark settled with out of court in 2009. Grooveshark was also sued by another label, Universal, in 2010 -- and amazingly, the courts ruled in favor of the underdog, Grooveshark! (or, rather, Grooveshark's owner, Escape Media) Still, with Google and Apple now against them, it may be inevitable that Grooveshark is eventually redesigned as a paid service -- that will probably fail, like Napster. An interesting note made in the above-linked techdirt article is that it's kind of ironic that Google pulled the Grooveshark app from Android, but Google-owned YouTube relies on the same legal logic as Grooveshark -- which is, basically, it's not our fault if users use this site to share music illegally.

For now, I recommend that if you, like me, don't feel the need to "own" every song you listen to as long as you can hear it whenever you want, enjoy using Grooveshark (and YouTube) for your on-demand streaming music needs while you're still able. Regardless of any future copyright infringement rulings regarding digital music, for now, as a user, as long as you don't upload any music that you've obtained illegally (I don't mention illegal downloads because neither Grooveshark or YouTube allow you to actually download music), you are not breaking any laws.