Pazar 25 Eyl 2011, 13:57
There seems to be some confusion, as to which webcast radio, music hosting and on demand radio services are actually legal on the web. Many listeners may not realize, these services must ascribe to specific broadcast and performance licenses. Much of these licenses require individual aquisitions of said licenses for each and every country on Earth. Some music licenses are very relaxed, while others are bogged down in multiple restrictions and costly aquisition fees. After much research, this is what I have discovered to be the facts, concerning ten of our presently available music services, thrice in the USA, Canada and in Europe.
Grooveshark: Legal or illegal? 90% illegal and currently dealing with lawsuits from EMI records and many others. Grooveshark is in complete violation in all European countries, as well as Canada. They have some legal permissions in the USA, but this is very little and only covers two major record labels, out of the dozens that are somehow available on Grooveshark. Grooveshark calls itself a radio streaming service, of course, it's not. It's an on-demand service, which makes it more like Spotify than Pandora.
Spotify: Legal or illegal? Spotify are 100% legal and have been so, since their very beginnings. Spotify carry an "On Demand" streaming license. This is a costly venture and is the main reason for so much advertising support on Spotify - they must have it, or otherwise would go bankrupt. Although Spotify kept costs down, by limiting legal service to the United Kingdom, they have recently became available legally, in the USA.
Pandora: Legal or illegal? Again 100% legal, but only available in the USA, as this is the cheapest licensing and royalty percentage on Earth, for random streaming radio services like Pandora. Pandora allows us to create up to 100 unique radio stations, that will randomly play our selected favorite tunes. Pandora is not an On Demand service and also put limits on track skipping monthly, to keep licensing costs down. Pandora has been forced to limit users’ free streaming capabilities to 40 hours per month, after which users have to pay $0.99 monthly for unlimited access to song streaming.
Jango: Legal or illegal? 100% legal random radio streaming service. Jango is completely advertising supported and have a global blanket license. This means anyone on Earth should be able to use Jango Radio, barring dictatorial government intrusions in some countries. We can skip tracks as much as we like with Jango, while every so many skips will cause some advertising to interupt your listening experience. Jango recently stated in an e-mail to me, they have no plans for offering an ad free streaming service at the present time.
Playofday: Legal or illegal? Hosting our playlists, this site is new and may be legal, as they are only part responsible for users hosting content. They are protected in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Not only can the site itself be sued or taken down indefinitely, if they do not comply with the DMCA and police their own site regularly, performance rights groups and the RIAA can come after them, as well as the sites users in kind.
Jampri: Legal or illegal? Jampri is exactly the same as Playofday site(immediately above), so be careful with using these type hosting sites.
Jamendo: Legal or illegal? Jamendo is 100% legal. We can build playlists of the sites avialable music artist and tracks. You won't find mainstream or major artists on Jamendo, as this site hosts tracks/albums from mostly DIY and independant artists who choose to offer their material for free streaming and even free downloading on Jamendo. Jamendo is a great site for discovering new and obscure music artists from around the world.
Lastfm: Legal or illegal? 100% legal and one of the cheapest subscription radio streaming services in the world. Lastfm is an excellent music discovery engine, offering a wide variety of free downloads, full stream sampling, direct from the artists, major music acts and unsigned artists alike, plus so much more. Lastfm is the largest music catalog on Earth for free or for a very small monthly subscription, of only $3.00 USD. They are licensed globally in all countries. Lastfm are also a music data collection service and music wikipedia, where listeners can help build the site, adding artists images, videos, biographies and their own personal listening statistics. Lastfm is also open source, so members can develop their own aps and offer those to other members of Lastfm. The various ways to stream personal radios on Lastfm, are quite vast and more varacious than any other music site on the web.
Reverb Nation: Legal or illegal? 100% legal, Reverb Nation hosts content, biographies and track streams, that are uploaded strictly by the music artists themselves. RN also offers helpful tools for the musicians to publicize themselves in the music market and to help find new fans, such as press kits, fan club and street team registrations.
Fizy: Legal or illegal? 50% illegal. Similar to the now defunct Seeqpod, Fizy is an extremely bare bones approach to streaming music with a simple search bar. Like Seeqpod, the site offers speedy music video results and audio results, and unfortunately, legally questionable content, so beware!
Top Five Legal Music Download Sites:
#1 - SuperPass
#2 - eMusic
#3 - Napster
#4 - Amazon MP3
#5 - iTunes