Free Music Downloads - Trend Of The Future

Free music downloads could be legal or illegal but it has certainly come to stay. Growing popularity of online MP3 downloads is a clear indication that it could well be the trend of the future.

Ordinarily free music downloads would refer to downloading music online. It could be legal download paying the price and being authorized. It could also be illegal downloads of copyright materials from the web. Such illegal downloads are normally made without payments. In addition there are multiple online music stores selling out digital solos or albums. Some of the leading companies in the field are iTunes, Amazon MP3, Zune Marketplace, and eMusic.

When the user resorts to free downloads, it could come with restrictions imposed like he or she may be prohibited from making extra copies of such music. Prohibitions could also come in form of restriction on playing the music on certain digital audio players. The industry is huge both in structure and revenue it generates. More than 500 online services are available in 40 odd countries and the revenue generated is over $2 billion per annum. In fact the world of music downloads comprise nearly 10% of the entire music market. An estimation in the year 2006 revealed that there are no less than five billion songs that equates to nearly forty thousand musical years are available online for downloading. More than seven billion songs are now purchased online annually.

Several forms of popular music downloads are available. Some are offered by the artists while others are offered by the commercial houses all around the web. Artists often try to promote their songs and music by offering them to be downloaded from their dedicated websites. When such downloads are free they are normally a short preview or very often low quality sampling of the songs they offer. Others would depend on some website that provides the musical albums of songs through their sites for downloading. Sometimes the artists release the songs or music free of cost like it was done in case of the band "Bomb the Music Industry".

Popular musicians and singers often find floating their products on the web highly beneficial commercially as well as for enhancing their popularity on the web. An example is the solo artist Tom Fox who racked up more than one million mp3 downloads after floating them on the Internet. Others who followed suit include the Nine Inch Nails who released their album "With Teeth" on their own My Space page. Such release was made even before the official release of the music in the market. Later they played the same trick with their album Year Zero.

Popularity of online music downloads is evident from a couple of examples such as the 2005 best seller "Hollaback Girl" released by Gwen Stefani that sold more than one million web downloads. It was the first song that achieved platinum download status. Its record was however broken in 2008 by Flo Rida with "Low" that sold a massive 467,000, till date the highest among the digital singles world over. If one goes by the weekly basis, the best sales were "Gold Digger" by Kanye West and "Right Round" by Flo Rida.

Online music download has come to stay and it could very well be the dominant trend of the future.