File sharing

[jamesb]

While you probably won't find the latest pop tracks on it, I always use www.jamendo.com for music these days. Free and legal, and some very good stuff as well.

[john]

Last.fm is also a good site for allowing you to listen before purchasing music tracks and if you had Audacity open

[fafster]

Does Amazon now let you listen to the entire track? (I'll take a look). What I'd like is somewhere that you can listen to the entire album once before you buy e.g you could download some DRM (i'm not much of a DRM fan though) tracks that expired after a short time.

You can do exaclty this with Amazon. They have a flash interface on the website that plays a low-quality version of the song.

[cookie_monster]

Unfortunatly it only lets you play about 20 seconds. The Amazon MP3 downloader looks interesting I might take a look at that.

[SC-UK]

What about last.fm?

Brilliant site that lets you listen to full tracks and it's all legal (I Hope!)

Tom

[K.C.Leblanc]

Does Amazon now let you listen to the entire track? (I'll take a look). What I'd like is somewhere that you can listen to the entire album once before you buy e.g you could download some DRM (i'm not much of a DRM fan though) tracks that expired after a short time.

Find a good specialist music shop.

[cookie_monster]

Unfortunately the local music shop has closed despite my support and the closest actual music shop is now quite a distance away

[StewartKnight]

Most of the people here are spouting the lies that the MPAA etc want you to think is true, but isn't. Allow me to explain.

Downloading is NOT illegal.
'Cracking' the drm on a music track or film, or whatever is Copyright Infringement. This again is not "illegal" in the sense that most people understand the concept.
Uploading something you do not own the rights too is also covered under the Copyright Infringement.

Downloading files is NOT illegal, despite the pressure groups disseminating the lie that it is.
However, illegal it may not be, you have to make a personal decision on the morallity of it.

I like to download TV series from America that are not available in the UK yet. Such as House and Chuck. Is that immoral? Is anyone losing money from my downloading it?

I'd say no, others may disagree. However downloading music is depriving people (very rich people non-the-less) of money.