MP3 - Where is it now?

MP3 copyrights have been the hottest topic on the Net today. With the most recognizable is Napster who has been ordered to stop their free service. While Napster test it’s new pay service – where users will have to pay per download, Other similar sites have taken over from Napster.

Today, file sharing (MP3 mainly) has become a popular form of file transferring on the Internet. Many of these sites have managed to remain within the current legal boundaries. There are sites, which still have the copyright issues and users, have to be aware until the Internet, the music industry and law comes to some kind of understanding. Some of the more popular file-sharing sites are http://www.audiofind.com, http://www.bearshare.com , and http://www.aimster.com .

There are a number of sites which provide either none copy righted or has permission to be distributed. Some of these sites include http://www.mp3.com , and http://www.launch.com . How about the many other sites, which offer free MP3s or other Napster, clone sites? Are the courts going to order these sites to shut down? There are 10 and thousands of free MP3 sites on the Web and these are the sites picked up by the search engines. What about the sites that are not picked by the search engine? This comes down to the fact that the World Wide Web is too large to be governed.

It is understandable the recording industry is concerned by free distribution of music and the fact that the industry is loosing millions on dollars. Also many artist too are concerned by the fact they are loosing money from free MP3 downloads, but there is a small amount of artist who support this as samples of their music.

The demand for free MP3s are becoming increasingly evident. As the popularity of MP3 become increasingly widen the Web tries to keep up. Many of the bigger, well known sites are trying to offer their own music service. AOL launched its new music service, Amazon also launches it own free music downloads and exiting sites are improving their services to offer users better quality downloads.

We can’t ignore the Web users, 98% of web users I surveyed wants free MP3s and will not pay for MP3s. They also did not want to mention the web sites or program used to download their free MP3s. As they fear if too many people know of these sites, the sites will be ordered to shut down. There are 2% of web users who will be willing to pay for MP3s, but prefer free MP3s. Generally when there is a demand there is a supply.

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