Legal Music Downloads

As has already been mentioned on this blog I have an iPod and use iTunes, so I was pleased to read this report this afternoon. That is not to say I have not got any tracks that were not paid for, but generally I find that pirate tracks are of a poor quality, and at least half the time are blank or not the full version. That is assuming the track that you downloaded was the one you wanted. Thus, more and more, I have been downloading from iTunes some albums, singles and odd little tracks that I have discovered that I would not get anywhere else. These include Snow Patrol singing Crazy in Love and Scissor Sisters' version of Take Me Out which was on the Mary CD single I believe.

This increase in legal downloads (although I suspect most of it is in the US where they are shit-hot on illegal downloading) is a good thing for music fans as it will make the price of legal downloading come down and widen the selection of tracks available. One bugbear I have is that the different formats are not necessarily compatible, thus tracks downloaded from iTunes cannot be played on any non-Apple mp3 players. Tracks downloaded off of HMV may not be compatible with my iPod etc. Sony's music catalogue can only be played on their players also. Let's hope that one day, all machines can be compatible which will really make legal downloads cheaper as the competition is wider. Thankfully Apple provide theirs at the cheapest price currently.