SongBoom Get Your Music On!

I started with Legalsounds a few years ago. Regarding the exchange of money with Legalsounds, I never had any problems. Here's my take on it. I am relatively poor. If I relied on Itunes for music, I would never buy any songs. Why should I? If I want to hear a certain song, I can download it from an illegal U.S. site or even find it on Youtube, Myspace or Facebook. I use Legalsounds because I can afford to download entire albums. The download time is extremely fast and I have never gotten a virus from Legalsounds. To be honest, most of what I have downloaded is older albums that I purchased long ago in vinyl form and on cassettes, and I don't enjoy being forced to buy the same CD's over and over again every time the electronics industry finds a new method of playing albums. One might say that Legalsounds is immoral. As a former musician, I understand this opinion, but I disagree with it completely. I believe it is the recording industry and MTV that have ruined opportunities for up and coming musicians/bands. The "music industry" has spent the last 20 years pushing certain types of "music" that I cannot honestly even classify as music in my own heart. I feel that at least half of the music that has been released by record companies in the last 15 years has no chance whatsoever to become "classic" music. Most of it is forgotten in 15 minutes. Most of this "music' was shoved down the throats of an entire generation of young people who have no concept of what music truly is. I believe they were more or less brain-washed into thinking that this talentless crap was actually worth listening to. There are still some bands, i.e. Tool, that are actually great bands. I purchase all of their CD's at stores. I perceive the main problem to be the fact that unknown bands that are actually good bands, are no longer signed and/or promoted by the music industry.

The problem with the internet is the anonymity of it all; you can say all manner of horrid, extremist things, and all you get are a few nasty comments in return. But RogerRoger isn't what this topic's about, eh? :P So here's what I have to say about LegalSounds - and essentially, the age-old legal/illegal - music debate.

Support.

The.

Artists.

While we all sit here raging on at each other about what's right and what isn't, there are fantastic artists going under because people aren't buying their music. So instead of focusing the argument on the (even moral high-horse old me has to agree) ridiculously greedy record labels, let's look at it from the artist's perspective.

If you buy from legit sites, royalties - however small, however reluctantly - go to the artist. The bottom line is that LegalSounds (whether it tried and failed or simply didn't try at all; I don't think we'll ever really know) don't give royalties at all, however much you hedge it.

LegalSounds do not support their artists.

I know it sucks that the big guns like Amazon and iTunes take a lot of the cash for themselves, but a tiny royalty is better than a non-existant one, hey? :) And it doesn't hurt to find out which sites which give their artists the largest percentage.

Buying directly from an artist - from their website, during gigs, etc - is another good way of making sure they're getting what they deserve. After all, at the other end of all of this, the music we're Limewiring, Youtubing or LegalSounding is someone else's work. Hours of time, promotion, stress, and bloody hard work; all poured into one three-minute song we've taken a shine to. It's mental.

So if we have it on our iPods or CD players, I think it's... almost common sense to pay the £0.79/$0.99. Or if not common sense, common courtesy. I mean, if you loved a work of art and wanted it in your house, you'd gladly pay the painter... right? Or if you went out to eat and loved the service, you'd also gladly pay - maybe even give a tip!

Music's an awesome thing, and so I believe we should all support the artists we love. It's a very unpopular view - ripping it off YouTube is cheaper and so easy these days - but one that I think everyone should at least hear, whether they agree or not.

I know that if I was an artist, I'd sure want my music to be bought. And I'm pretty sure you would too! :)

Anyway, that's me done; thanks for reading if you got to the end. I'll stop rabbiting on now... us humans and our bloody opinions, eh? :P

- Nova, 16, UK.

P.S. And because this topic's getting kinda... cut-throat, I'd just like to clarify that the last statement I made was a joke. x

Our band Kuru's debut CD called "Jälki" was released in October 2009. We haven't got a record company and paid all the expenses ourselves. It was released two months ago and we still haven't got back the money we put in. And we don't have the money to make another CD before we pay the first one. And now I can see that you can download our album from legalsounds.com for 1,08USD. They haven't asked permission and for every download we get...well, nothing. So, what do you think? Is legalsounds.com illegal? Jussi

It's bad enough musicians rarely make any money and are literally starving, when these companies try to leech off your hard work it is absolutely absurd. I just had to get them to get our album off and can't believe how quickly these mp3s have gotten around, not just legalsounds but plenty of others. I wish someone would step in and discipline these companies, like others wrote there are loop holes so it's a hard task. It is just so lame to take advantage of people especially hard working independent musicians. Just some thoughts, Kindle to Ember

As of 4 PM EST, the legalsounds web site was down...page not found.

Interesting discussion here. I came across this subject today as I was looking for a particular song to download, not the whole album, and without wanting to be in shareware sites. Legalsounds seems one of the possible providers and does so at a very low price (with the snatch that you have to pay US$ 25 minimum, but OK, I want to buy every now and then anyway). The low price ,ade ,e a bit suspicious and so I ended up reading this discussion. I agree that if it's legal in Russia, then it's every buyer's own responsibility to make sure they can buy legally as a citizen of their own country. Many countries allow you to do so, however for personal use only. Then if you can buy legally from them in your country, the second question would be the moral one, for example do you think that for US$ 0.09 per track there would be room for a reasonable compensation to the artist. That is a personal decision for everyone, not a legal issue. But I just wonder how much or rather how little, in the old-fashioned way (i.e. CD, vynil) the average artist may get per each song, out of the consumer sales price to the public. The reality might surprise and shock you.... And still, the performing artists have survived being "squeezed out" by the labels over decades. So what's new? I think this is how the global village and the internet age play out, and it's our reality, like it or not. If the labels don't like it, I am sure they will try to set their legal departments with lawyers in the other country (like Russia) at work to fight it. If they are not successful in that effort, too bad for them. This can happen with every business that exports its product. If you don't like it to be accessible in your country, go to your congressman or your delegate in government and ask for stricter legislation to address this (which will not work, but that's a detail). The politicians will not like it because most of them have no clue what this is about, but you can be sure the big record companies will love you forever. As to the artists, I am sure that not the artists individually, but the labels and/or the representing organizations have refused to collect the royalties from the Russian organizations that collect them. If you want the artist to benefit fairly, then first have a look on the artist's own website to see if you can download what you want there. If artists don't offer that option, well I am sorry to say, but then they apparently don't want to accept today's reality. That was exactly what I found out when looking for the song that I wanted to download. She did not offer it, their French label did... but only if you have a bank account in France!!! Although many other artists (themselves or their labels) offer that option, they sometimes charge prices almost similar to the CD's. They also have lost contact with reality because their costs are just a fraction of the price of a physical CD sold through the conventional distribution channels. That, also, would prompt me to look for other options. As to our American friends: the world is a complex place. Your rules apply there, and other countries have other rules. Any exporting company knows that. Any performing artist should by now know that, by definition, their product will be exposed internationally (face it: the medium is called INTERnet, not AMERICAnet). That has its advantages (more sales opportunities) and its disadvantages (foreign law and regulation to deal with). I am sure that if artists would offer their own products on this same internet for download at a reasonable price and with enough flexibility (i.e. purchase by foreign clients, not only whole album but also single tracks etc.), there will be enough people wanting to buy their downloads that way. Some extra's (i.e. cover print etc.) might increase their competetiveness. As long as they don't, for me sites like Legalsounds would be an alternative that I will use. The comment about having to buy the same product on all different carriers (vynil, CD, MP3 etc) also makes sense to me. Why pay several times to the record companies for the artists' products that you already purchased and paid for? Finally to Rob. If you are indeed the guy or one of the guys behind Legalsound.com, and if you are American indeed, then I leave it to others to say whather it is morally, ethically or politically correct, but then I have to give you the credit that as an American you sure have been able to look beyond what may be the mindframe of some of your compatriates. JTinNL

I try and make a partial living by selling opera accompaniments to Opera Singers to help them learn their roles. I work very hard making the accompaniments artistically viable in order for them to be of the utmost benefit. I type in my business name in Google and up comes Legal Sounds. Not only using my business name but selling my accompaniments (for any price) has to be stealing no matter how you spin it. They could put me out of business destroying everything I am doing which includes making any further additions to the library. I don't see them selling Sony Products for dirt cheap. The problem here is MP3 downloads. They are pirate friendly.

It's interesting and disappointing to me how in these discussions of the legalities of purchasing music online, how relatively little consideration is given to the people who actually conceive, create and produce the music. On this legalsounds thread the only suggestion for getting fair compensation to the artists was to mail them a dollar in an envelope. It seems like so many people seriously love music but seem to forget that there are other human beings who have created this thing for them that they love so much. Very little appreciation is expressed to those people. It's all about getting this fruit of other people's labors for as close to nothing as possible. Of course there are good reasons that artists may desire to put out free or nearly free material for promotional purposes or record companies may want to try and finally make some money off of some old product that may be good but has not done well in the marketplace. But all the really cheap music may not fall in those or similar categories. It's a complex issue and I'm not accusing anybody of being a bad person. It's just something I noticed and thought worthy of mentioning. In general, maybe we all need to, in this capitalistic society, consider more the work of others and respect it's value and the effort and sincerity behind it.

Putting all the legality discussion aside, the key issue is still how this impacts on artists? Particularly small / start-up artists. Agreed that the music industry/record companies are the biggest rip-off artists in this game, but for the musicians themselves every dollar that they get does count. Obviously Legalsounds pocket all the money, without anyone else profiting. What effort have they made to pay something towards the artists themselves? My good guess is none... So why would I use them to buy 'legal' music instead of doing 'illegal' downloads? To make me sleep better? Yeah, right. I'd sleep worse for worrying what they can do with my credit card details. I will continue to do 'illegal' downloads so that I can try before buy. And I will buy the CD if I will play the music enough, or to support local NZ artists. I will not support Legalsounds... Ron, Wellington, New Zealand

In my one-year-experience I found that legalsounds offers a quite wide range of songs, prices are kind of unbeatable, transfer speed varies from very slow to average and sound quality is nice (check the songs with Audition to find that they lack in quality compared to iTunes). The point is that they don't give you a chance to carry out secure online payment. There was a time you could add funds via AlertPay, now legalsounds.com ceased to provide payments via AlertPay. Maybe AlertPay dropped them due to legality issues, or legalsounds dropped them to force you to use their Russian payment machine WebToPay. Who wants to submit credit card details to Russia? Obviously the idea behind selling songs too cheap to be true is to collect credit card details. To be fair, until today I haven't heard of any credit card frauds carried out by legalsounds, but how will you prove?