Music downloads refer to the transferring of a music file from an Internet interfacing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and also the downloads of copyright material without permission or payment if required.
Popular examples of online music stores that sell digital singles and albums include the iTunes Store, Amazon MP3, and eMusic. Paid downloads are sometimes encoded with Digital Rights Management that restricts making extra copies of the music or playing purchased songs on certain digital audio players.
Digital music sales now generate approx. $2 billion in revenue, with tracks available through 500 online services located in 40 countries, representing around 10 percent of the total global music market. Around the world in 2006, an estimated five billion songs, equating to 38,000 years in music were swapped on peer-to-peer websites, while 509 million were purchased online.
Music downloads offered by artists
Some artists allow their songs to be downloaded from their websites, often as a short preview or a low quality sampling. Others have embedded services in their sites that allow purchases of their singles or albums, as demonstrated by Metallica's official website.
The band Bomb The Music Industry!, who are known for their DIY punk ethic, released all five of their albums as free downloads on their website.
Solo artist Tom Fox has racked up over one million mp3 downloads since deciding to give away his music on the internet.
Other music artists, most notably Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, have offered their music to listeners for free, sometimes in defiance of their record labels. In 2005, Nine Inch Nails released the full-length album With Teeth on their MySpace page prior to its official in-store release date. More recently, the band leaked various tracks off their album Year Zero.
Stephen Caudel has also given away a superb progressive rock music track on the aptly named website: free-mp3-music-download.com
Chart inclusion in the United States
Legal music downloads were originally compiled by Billboard in 2003, however they did not gain mainstream acceptance in theUSA until around February 2005, when digital sales for singles started to be included in the Billboard Hot 100 and other Billboard charts. In the year before, the Hot 100 chart was similar to the Hot 100 Airplay chart, because only minor CD-single sales affected the chart. The inclusion of digital singles has immensely helped many songs chart and peak higher, in some cases in the absence of a radio release.
Single certifications were introduced in February 2005. Songs that sell a certain number of copies are often certified by the RIAA with the permission of the artist and the record company.
Chart inclusion in the United Kingdom
The UK Official Download Chart was launched on 1 Sept. 2004, and included any Permanent Digital Download track, under 10 minutes long, being sold for a minimum price of 40p (0.4 GBP). In January 2005, downloaded tracks outsold physical singles for the first time in UK music history, prompting The Official UK Charts Company to begin to incorporate downloads for the first time into the UK Singles Chart on 17 April 2005, at which time Radio 1 stopped broadcasting the separate download chart, although the chart is still compiled. Initially this was on condition that the song must have a physical media release at the same time; this rule was fully lifted on 1 January 2007 meaning all download sales are now eligible in the chart.
You can find out much more about downloadable music by searching Google
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