Popular Music Online

Since Apple introduced their iTunes store in 2003, it was only last year that there was possibly the most important transformation in the industry of online music. Last February, Steve Jacob made an open letter to clarify Apple’s position regarding digital rights management (DRM). After that, major recording companies started to offer online music that is free of piracy protection mechanism. EMI Music took the lead in achieving this goal by teaming up with Apple last May and came out of its whole catalog in a DRM-free area within Apple music store which was called iTunes Plus. At the same time, Amazon declared that an MP3-only online music store will be launched by the end of the year and the songs that will be included will be from major labels.

Music distribution comes in two forms; the first one is through the website that gives you the chance to download MP3’s with particular prices. The other one is where you can listen to samples of the latest tracks by artists and have a chance to purchase whatever that suites your taste. The benefit of online distribution is that you don’t have to sign up in any contracts whatsoever and you don’t have to be involved in the hassles of forming deals. In taking the payment there are available services on the Internet such as Paypal which can give you transaction security that you need.

Sonific is a music website that is 100 percent legal. In this site, you are able to play your favorite music and the best part is that you can arrange them and create playlists. Another feature of Sonific is that you can forward songs through e-mail. Music can be searched by category and tags. Or for easier access to your favorite song, you may search by genre, artist or title of the song. There are more than 200,000 songs included in the database; however, many of the popular songs are still missing. It also has a customized flash-player that allows the user to set in a song or playlist on personal webpage, social networking profile, startpage or blog.

For the first time, there is now an online access to the most extensive reference work dedicated entirely to popular music. It is the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Popular Music that is already acknowledged around the globe. Aside from the fact that it is regularly updated with the latest revised articles, the Encyclopedia of Popular Music is also totally cross-searchable together with Grove Music Online within the latest Oxford Music Online gateway. The site covers popular music of all types since 1900 up to the present. The online edition will contain 27,000 entries including the full content of the 4th edition which was published in 2006.

The very popular classical music label Deutsche Grammophon has formally launched an online digital music download site of its own. Deutsche Grammophon is owned by Universal and it is where you can find thousands of greatest classical recordings admired by many classical music fanatics. The site provides more than 600 albums that are completely out of production at the moment. However, you can still find many of the albums among online vendors. To make the quality of its music better than those available with online music vendors, Deutsche Grammophon decided to upgrade with 320kbps bitrate. Regular iTunes downloads use only 128kbps bitrate.

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1. American Boy by Estelle featuring Kanye West

2.  Black and Gold by Sam Sparro

3. Low by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain

4. 4 Minutes by Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake

5. Touch my Body by Mariah Carey

6.  Mercy by Duffy

7. Always where I need to be by Kooks

8.  Better in Time/Footprints in the Sand by Leona Lewis

9.  Cry for You by September

10. With You by Chris Brown

(Source:BBC)

Downloading digital music is becoming more popular. The risk is that there is a tendency that fans will be downloading music from illegal sources. If we download the music from illegal sources, we will not be helping our favorite artists. This is where the importance of downloading free music online from legal or authorized sites comes in. Every time you download music for free from legal download sites, it will not cost you anything but the artist still gets a small amount to be paid by the site.

If the site is free, where does it get the money to pay the artist? The answer comes in the form of online advertisements. Remember that popular music is a business oriented style. It is bank rolled by producers for the sole purpose of making a profit. The people making money are the advertisers because with a fraction of the cost for buying air time, they are spending considerably less amount placing ads in Internet sites.

Source: we7.com

Popular music is a product of modern business enterprise. The main goal is to earn a profit. The primary concern of companies is to select and cultivate the music that has the most appeal with the public which therefore will translate to larger profits for the firm. In this aspect, popular music is different from folk and classical music. Folk music emanated from the desire of ordinary people to have their own enjoyment, while classical music was meant to serve the purpose of the Church or to entertain nobles.

Business enterprises are the controlling forces of popular music. However, young people who are aspiring to be popular artists are not always looking to make a profit. Their primary concern is to have an outlet for their creativity and expression or just to have some fun. The conflicting motives of stakeholders in the popular music industry have been a constant source of tension.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

There have been a lot of issues in recent years about copyright and intellectual property rights with regard to sharing of music online. Looking at the problem from another perspective, sharing music online may not be putting your favorite singer or band out of work but rather, you may be able to discover some fresh new talents who will be the next big superstars of the music industry. Being able to listen or sample first the music will give you a better insight on the artist and help you to decide which albums you would actually like to purchase.

A note of reminder though, just because a piece of music or an album is shared online does not necessarily mean it is automatically legal. Check if the music you are downloading is legally offered by the record company holding the rights to the music or if the artist has consented for his music to be downloaded for free from the Internet.

Source: mahalo.com

Many of us sing a particular song without knowing the artist or even the title of it. Song titles are sometimes forgotten more often than the lyrics. Here are some helpful tips inn gathering information about a particular song:
• Whenever you hear a good song you must jot down the lyrics that you have remembered.
• Open your favorite Internet browser.
• Look for it by going to the search engine such as Google.
• Type the lyrics that you know and other information regarding the song.
• Click “Search” and wait for the result.
• Write down the information that appeared.
Having hard time in determining the title and other information about a certain song will be lessened when you follow these steps.