Although the industry would have you believe something different, downloading music is not the same as stealing. One has to concede that although there are similarities it is fundementally different from stealing. If I steal your car you no longer have your car. If I download music, I have the music and so does the original bearer.

It is perfectly easy to understand that if someone downloads music it does not mean that if they didn’t have the means to download it for free they definitely would have bought it instead.

Record companies and musicians are very violent. They lobby our government to take people from their homes, kidnap them in state prisons, and saction stealing your property or money in compensation for their alleged loss. This is unacceptable.

The ability to upload and download music accross the Internet has radically changed the music reproduction industry. Change is change. It can can be bad for some but history is clear that change is good overall. Change does not neccessarily mean that something should be reversed. The music industry as it stands will likely be damaged but that is no justification to continue as we are. Things change. A lot of people would have jobs digging our roads but no longer do it because we have mechanical diggers.

Let’s be clear about exactly what we mean by music. Only in the last few decades has music also meant something entirely different than its meaning through all of history. Music is the sound of people singing or playing instruments. This has always been true and is still true. Today it also covers the results of audio reproduction.

Governments shouldn’t play such a key role in creating so many millionaires. Protecting the music industry is probably the single most blatant action the government does to create huge inequality. Inequality exists elsewhere in society but is not so reliant on government.

Changing copyright law does not in anyway affect the ability of a musician to make an excellent living given they can charge money for live concerts. It’s up to you how you get into a secured music venue but buying a ticket is the easiest. I’ve already covered that musicians can already make a lot more money charging for concerts if they charge the optimum price using an online auction in this post on ticket touts and gig ticket prices.

Music celebrities are rarely good role models. We don’t need to make immoral people so powerful.

Intellectual property is a difficult subject. It’s a lot easier to justify allowing inventors to reap the rewards of their creations through patents considering what they have given society. It’s not so easy to justify it for music.

There are other ways for musicians to make money. Let’s not pretend music is some sacred art and consider placing sponsored adverts into the lyrics. It’s how others earn a living.

The vast majority of music is simply a rehash of other music that went before anyway. The lines of who really deserves the rewards for a lot of music is extremely blurred. It’s a strange concept to create enforcable rights simply for the reason that it is a creation of a human. New words, sometimes slang, are creations of people yet we do not create enforcable rights based on these.

What’s really ridiculous is that a lot of these millionaire musicians are still not happy even with the existing laws! They want an extension to the 50-year royalties period to make even more money! Unbelievable.

Music fans are dedicated people and they know they can get the music for free if they want it yet seem to be happy to give the muscians on a voluntary basis as Radiohead showed.

Record companies use unfair practices to distort the free market by lobbying government to ban parallel imports. My post on parallel importing of CDs goes into more detail on this travesty.

Copyright rules can still be enforced between complicit parties without laws. Musicians and other parties can still agree contracts regulated by 3rd parties to manage disputes and infringments. For example, rival broadcasters could agree to enforce copyright between themselves.

All this keeps the money in the pockets of the people who can spend it to create more justifiable parts of an economy. There is no danger of music itself being harmed by the end of music copyright. Some people’s careers will be ended by this but that’s starts the story in the middle because these laws should never have been created or enforced in the first place.

Free Music MP3 Downloads

Now, downloading online music can be free but you need to know where to go to. Here are just a few places you can go to on the internet to find free music MP3 downloads.

Indy.tv – Indy makes it possible for you to find new independent music. Go ahead and download Indy. It allows you to rate the songs you listen to. What I love about Indy is the artificial intelligence is quick to pick up what kind of music you love and would keep sending you music that you would find enjoyable.

Epitonic – Epitonic gives you a chance to listen and download music online of independent and underground artists in US. They are normally in MP3 or WMA format and generally playable on our computer.

Paid Music MP3 Downloads

Downloading paid music online should not be unfamiliar to you. These are several established places to download music for a fee.

iTunes – iTunes is synonymous with iPod music. You can find a whole range of music genres there. Each music MP3 download costs 99 cents. Downloading is fast and easy and the search function is sophisticated.

Connect – Connect is Sony’s pay-per-track service. It serves many different brands of music from a large network. But the problem is it is not so user-friendly. The music files are in ATRAC3 format, a proprietary audio format which can be recognized and played only on Sony MP3 players.

There are also other online music stores that offer similar downloading services. Each site can vary in the number of music MP3 downloads they have, the music genre, the customer service and so on. These sites allow downloading music online for a membership subscription fee. Most nowadays charge you a one-time fee for unlimited access. For more details on how downloading music online can be done cheaply, check out my music download blog.

With Lycos music download service that is totally legal, all music lovers are now able to enjoy high music quality downloads from Lycos, which already has to its credit the popular Lycos Radio Network. For music lovers, the Lycos music download service offers more and advanced features than its competitors. For easier searching and downloads, Lycos has incorporated its own MP3 database offering a huge collection of music, mostly in MP3 formats.

Lycos online music service is called Lycos Rhapsody. To avail of the service, users need a subscription which grants its subscribers access to its huge database containing more than 10,000 albums in CD quality. To cover all types of contemporary music in its music download services, Lycos has included music from all major record labels including BMG, EMI, Sony Music and Warner Music.

Users who want to download music from Lycos are lucky that before buying music from their service, they can obtain the latest information and ratings about Lycos music from Lycos own music communities. Lycos also takes care in providing and updating news and reviews relating to the music contents offered for download. One of the unique features provided in the Lycos music website is the Listening Room which is dedicated for all new music releases. The service is unique in that it enables musicians to upload their songs online for the common public to download. Musicians are also able to track the number of times the music has been downloaded.

Apart from audio mp3s, Lycos music download service also includes high quality music videos. Most videos featured are available for download and can also be viewed online. To ensure that the music video downloads are faster, it is recommended to have a broadband internet connection.

With Lycos providing free and paid music in audio and video categories, music lovers worldwide can now find the latest music, all in one single destination. As Lycos is always updating all its services, music lovers are assured of getting more and more features for secure audio and video downloads.

Music has long been known to have an emotional effect on humans. Find out how the music you listen to might be affecting you and how you can use music to manage your stress.

There are so many kinds of music – country western, classical, eastern, rap, pop, hip hop, rock and roll, soul…what kind of music are you listening to, and how is it affecting your level of stress?

Music moves us – listening to a sad song can make us feel melancholy, soft jazz piano can calm and soothe us, and rock can make us feel strong, excited, even free. Music has been proven to speed healing, is used in malls to put us in the mood to buy, in churches for inspiration and much more. So can you use music to influence your mood and lower your stress in your daily life? Absolutely.

First, consider your general mood. Are you normally stressed, happy, positive, sad, angry, fearful, even shy? Are there consistent times in your life that you would like to change your mood – maybe the drive home from work, or getting up in the morning, or maybe you stress at night, laying in bed, tossing and turning?

For me…it’s that low energy time around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. I’ve usually been working since six in the morning or so, and I need a little pick up. For me, it could be a little Van Halen or White Snake, or maybe a little Santana. Other people may prefer some upbeat jazz, or pop music. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it makes you feel good.

How does music influence our mood like this?

There are many ways music influences our mood. Music is energy – vibrations that have a certain frequency. As we listen to the music, our brainwaves may adjust to match the vibrations of the music. This is why music can be very effective for meditation and hypnosis, it can actually “entrain” the brain to enter a deeper, or more relaxed, aware state.

Your memories may also be part of the influence of music. Many times, the brain stores emotion alongside memories – if a song makes you blue, you might remember a time when you were really sad, and that song came on the radio, virtually anchoring itself to that sad feeling. Your brain would create a direct link between the song and the emotion, so every time you hear the song, that emotion is accessed as well.

Words can also have a large effect on us…there may be words in the music that really resonate with you, like in some inspirational songs. You may relate to the story of a song because of a similar experience. These things can strike a chord (pun intended) with you and alter your mood.

Many people listen to music in the background while they work, drive or do other things. They are not focused on the music, but their inner mind does take it in. If you listen to music with negative or harsh words or themes, you might want to consider that many times when listening to music, people have a tendency to enter into an altered state of awareness. The conscious mind is distracted with work, but the subconscious, or inner mind, is recording and storing it. This can actually cause you to feel more stress. If you listen to a lot of negative music or other media, consider that it can have a negative effect on your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and actions. Of course, listening to positive music can have a positive effect on your beliefs, thoughts feelings and actions.

You can use music as a tool to help you achieve the feelings that you want. If you want to have a more relaxed environment at work, play music that calms you and helps you to focus. There is music that is specifically designed to help you meditate, coaxing your brainwaves into a specific pattern. You can play upbeat music when cleaning the house or exercising. If you’re feeling down you can listen to inspirational music.

Music can have a big influence on your mood, increasing your ability to relax, making you feel good, increasing your focus and much more. When you choose music for yourself and the people around you, consider how you want to feel, then choose music that can help produce that feeling.

This is one reason why Music Biz is an interesting site from which independent artists can visit. It is full of articles that relate to particular subject in the music industry. If an independent artist wants to gain ground and get updates in the music world, he can read various articles in Music Biz and know about what the music business is facing. The articles in Music Biz are not news though but are commentaries, opinions and point of views of music insiders. Music Biz, however, make sure that the articles added to their site are reasonable, related to specific incident, relevant and informative. The experiences and discussions in the articles may be subjective but one who wants to know the world of music can gain something from these articles.

Music Biz is a unique community site intended to cater independent artists, music enthusiasts, disc jockeys, music marketers, and other players in the music business. Unlike other community sites that feature an individual profile, Music Biz features articles based on certain issues concerning the music industry. These articles come from different sources or contributors who air out personal opinions and analyses on whatever subject they have related to the music world. Although this is so, contributors are encouraged to practice responsible journalism so as not to be too disrespectful to certain issues. Articles in Music Biz are not necessarily facts but more on critiques and scrutiny.

However, this is not the only composition of Music Biz site. One of their menus shows real news about different music events, artists, and the business as a whole. The news in Music Biz links to the original source of the news. Independent artists can get real updates and real news in the music industry in Music Biz. The news is up to date and new events and issues are added every now and then.

Aside from editorials and news, visitors in Music Biz can also read feature articles in the music industry. Feature articles present interesting and factual events and subjects. Independent artists can get their updates from these features as well. The feature article, just like editorials, can be contributed by anybody as long as it is credible and reliable. Proper editing is also done to ensure that it meets the Music Biz standard to categorize it as feature articles. Members who log in to Music Biz can also contribute reviews regarding existing articles and other issues.

There are more than just articles, editorials, news, or features that Music Biz can offer. There is forum for music enthusiasts, marketplace where visitors or members can buy CD or DVD copies, and reviews.