Saturday, March 30, 2013
In recent years, after following the trend of users coming on to the internet to download movies, many resources started to come out offering the latest music downloads. At the beginning this was great for most users, then the enjoyment certainly took a turn for the worst.
After a while, website owners started to take advantage of this with some extremely unethical choices. They started adding pop ups, illegal spy software, among many other things to their sites. You had downloaded an mp3 and got the file, but with it, you had a shiny new browser window that told you to buy Viagra every time you surfed the web. Certainly not appealing to anyone.
If you're going to download music online outside of a major retailer such as iTunes, you'll want to keep your eye out and be conscious for a few things, as well as get the highest quality music file you can. Keep these things in mind, even if they're obvious or not.
1) The quality of the Mp3. File quality can range anywhere from 20 kbps which is blurry quality to 320 kbps which is basically CD quality. You should aim for downloading music files that are above 128 kbps. Anything below that will have a trashy background that will not sound good when you burn it onto a CD.
2) This may be kind of obvious because of most all of us having high speed internet, but just make sure your internet speed is fast. Try restarting you computer to get it back to the optimum speed. Before downloading any audio file, you'll want a speed of over 3 kb/s to get the song fast.
3) Check to make sure your disk has enough space for what your downloading. There is almost nothing more annoying than when your files are almost finished downloading and you get en error, discovering that your C drive didn't have enough space on it. These days, with high capacity drives being standard this is less common, but do yourself a favor and still make sure before you start downloading.
4) When downloading music, make sure you aren't making illegal copies. To prevent this, try making the music you download a sort of "sample", where after listening to it, you buy the album or actual file from a retailer. If you don't like the music, move on on something else where you will buy it. If you do this, you will indirectly keep the music industry rolling and musicians happy.
All and all, downloading music is a great experience and you can even learn about new bands that you'll want to go to the concert or buy the album later. Just make sure you do it from a legal source and keep the copies to yourself.
