Audio Recording

Downloading songs from the Internet is always a “hot issue” particularly with respect to the copyright owners. One thing that you should take note is that music is an asset that is copyrightable (has owners). It is of the same concept like you are owning a real estate and possessing a land title. In that case, no one can use your property without paying any value or rent. The same thing would happen if you are a music copyright owner.

The good thing with music is that it is more “relax” in terms of using materials that you do not own. One thing is to determine when does music fall into the public domain. Public domain materials have no owners therefore anyone can use and download the material without registration. But again searching public domain music may not be your type…

So how can you find ways to legally download free music in the Internet without registration?

Tip#1: Indie artist would offer some of their songs for free

It is indeed hard to find quality music for free on the Internet. The public domain music is fine but highly outdated. Most websites like Amazon, iTunes, CD Baby needs users to be registered and a lot of information is needed before someone can download music. Most of them are not for free.

But thanks to the indie music industry; they are happy to share their music and would always be looking for new fans. The secret is to find them. One of reliable and easy to use website is SoundCloud:

a.) Search tracks here:
http://soundcloud.com/tracks/search

For example, leave the form blank and click “Show advance search options”. You can then select what genre you like (e.g. rock) as well as the license. You can also set if you are looking for original work instead of a cover or a demo.

Then click the following (it will turn to orange):

-free to use commercially
-free to modify
-no rights reserved
-downloadable

This is how it looks like:

Another important option you need to set is to make sure that the tracks are downloadable:

Finally click “Search” button.

b.) You can preview any of the provided songs and decide which one you like.

c.) If you decide to download the music, you can click the download button:

The concept of Sound Cloud legality is that it requires artist to entirely own the copyright of the song and the recording. If the copyright owners or creators of the work allow others to download their created work (based on the license provided), then there is no infringement involved.

There are also other free music download websites aside from SoundCloud that features downloads without user registration. If you are a musician, SoundCloud can be of big help to you, you can read the following tutorials:

How to use SoundCloud to Earn Money
Becoming a member and receiving royalties in SoundExchange

Tip#2: Visit indie music publisher and record label sites

Another tip is to visit independent music publisher website, you can download songs depending on the publisher requirements.

For example, you can download some of my produced works for personal use. Take note that this requires registration because we need to know that users are indeed humans and not bots. You can follow the following steps:

1.) Go to my license music page.

2.) On the front page, listen for any songs and click the Download button and proceed for a free registration.

3.) Follow the rest of the procedures until you will be able to download the MP3 music for free.

But do take note that; what is “free” does not mean it is not protected by law. The song is still copyrighted, and you are not allowed to make several copies of the song for sale, modify it or distribute it online. The license is only for personal listening purposes.

In addition, you should always know how to get permission to use copyrighted music. Song copyright owners and music publishers are willing to negotiate that you use their song for free.

My stand on SOPA (Stop online Piracy Act)

Even with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act in 2011/2012); users would still know that there are recording software (including the free Audacity) that can be used to capture live MP3 stream on their website without requiring them to click links or directly downloading it. Thus it won’t appear in the server logs. Unless if a website would require visitors to register first before they can play songs, this can drastically affect user experience as a lot of users would find this annoying. This would entail a lot of changes to the website.

Thus it is true that implementing SOPA can be very costly to the copyright/website owners. In addition, preventing recording of streamed audio on the Internet is also a complicated subject. If music industry would find some creative ways to share valuable music to their artists’ fans, and then piracy would be minimal. If labels or publishers are willing to give some free music to artist fans and be nice to them, then illegal websites or pirates would run-out of business.

Fans would then know that a free music exists and there are legal means of downloading songs. This is why I personally oppose to SOPA. I am a copyright owner myself but I believe in the power of sharing and open Internet. There are already laws passed against copyright infringement, it is only a matter of implementation and SOPA is not anymore needed.

As you might already know, there are lot of objections to this and big companies like Google and Wikipedia do not like this either.

Content last updated on March 20, 2012