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Reuters Internet Report
Livewire: Online Music Downloads, Without the Guilt
Saturday September 28, 9:04 am ET

By Adam Pasick


NEW YORK (Reuters) - If using online music swapping services like Napster makes you feel like an outlaw or a rip-off, you can still download songs -- free and legal.
You won't find every album by every artist, but if you're lucky you might discover something new.

Since the rise of the now-defunct Napster, music fans have flocked online to download songs in the popular MP3 format, mostly via Web sites and services that don't pay musicians or their record labels a dime. Some, like Napster, have been shut down by lawsuits; others, like KaZaA, are still up and running despite pending legal action.

The labels themselves have launched several subscription download services like Pressplay and Rhapsody, to decidedly mixed results. No single offering has a comprehensive catalog, and some have cumbersome restrictions on CD burning and on how long a song lasts before it expires.

For the Web-savvy music lover there are alternatives to imperfect subscription services and piracy.

Slowly, record labels that have realized the Internet is not only a threat, but an opportunity, and have selectively released MP3s of up-and-coming artists to help the bands find a following.

By far the best place to browse is the off-beat Epitonic.com (http://www.epitonic.com), which boasts it is "a site for sore ears." Epitonic carries about 4,000 songs from 2,000 artists -- ranging from mainstream genres like hip-hop and rock to obscure niches like "dronology" and "neo-dada" -- each exhaustively cross-referenced so that fans of the eclectic musician Beck, for example, can listen to the like-minded stylings of The Folk Implosion, Cornelius and Cibo Matto.

"Every town has the hole in the wall record shop with a guy behind the counter who knows everything about music," said Epitonic founder Aaron Newton. "That's the kind of relationship we want with our users."

NO BRITNEY

You won't find big pop stars like Britney Spears or 'NSYNC at Epitonic, nor can you download an entire album to avoid paying $15 at the record store. The site contains mostly alternative and underground bands and offers at most one to two songs per album.

Still, established acts like The Strokes, The White Stripes, and Talib Kweli are featured, along with up-and-comers like Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Ladytron. Old school bands like The Mekons and MC5 are also present.

All of the musicians are on Epitonic by permission of their respective record labels, despite the industry's often steely determination to protect their content.

The five major record labels -- AOL Time Warner (NYSE:AOL - News), Sony Music (Tokyo:6758.T - News), EMI Group (London:EMI.L - News), Bertelsmann AG's (Dusseldorf:BTGGga.D - News) BMG and Vivendi Universal (Paris:EAUG.PA - News) -- have blamed a year-long slump in music sales on mass online privacy.

Proponents of online music counter that downloading music can actually boost sales, as fans discover new bands and choose to purchase the physical product.

"Hopefully, Epitonic can inspire music consumption," said Newton. "I'm not that hard on Napster -- I think anything that breaks the hold on media distribution that the large corporations hold is a good thing. But ultimately consumers have to recognize that music has a financial value that has to be transferred to the artist."

MORE FREE, LEGAL SITES

Other sites with free and legal downloads include MTV.com (http://www.mtv.com/music/downloads/), which offers music in Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) WMA format after requiring users to provide their e-mail address and zip code; RollingStone.com (http://rollingstone.com/dds/default.asp), which offers WMAs and MP3s from artists such as Aimee Mann and Black Sabbath, and Launch.com (http://launch.yahoo.com/downloads/), a site affiliated with Yahoo! (NasdaqNM:YHOO - News).

None of these sites have the breadth or depth of Napster in its heyday, where you could find virtually any music, no matter how obscure, if you looked hard enough. But hey -- at least you can download with a clean conscience.