by Martine Pauwels

Created on: April 17, 2010   Last Updated: April 18, 2010

There are two ways you can download music for free: the legal and the illegal way. The legal way is that you download music an artist shares with you for this purpose and that you download and share to promote him or her with it as well.

Illegal download is just downloading music that is normally not available for free download and this is stealing. Only download for free what an artist gives for free and if you want more, pay for it.

If you are not willing to pay for music, do not bother the artist about it. Do not lie about your intentions, since otherwise you might risk the reputation of real promoters that like to get free music for promotional use only.

Yes, those who want it all for free and are willing to steal, will most likely not even be interested in the artist.

There are artists that actually share a lot of music on-line free to download. If you get a lot of free samples and cannot even make up your mind whether you like it enough to buy it or not, you might actually not be a real music fan.

No, do not call yourself a fan if you are only in for the free stuff. Real fans should also care enough to understand the artist might also like his or her investment of recording and producing this music to pay off.

Today, the Internet offers artists a lot of possibilities to self-produce music, but this does cost money. When you buy a CD, please keep in mind that the artists has invested in this.

Many indie artists do not even make a full time job of their music, but also have day jobs to pay the bills.

So illegal downloading music is stealing, even if the artist is not so known or unheard. You may put it this way: it are mainly the big record companies that invest in musicians to be heard, that will make sure that their music is harder to obtain illegally.

They get played on the radio and people will have to buy the song, if they want it. But smaller artists that produce their own music, do not have the budgets to launch big promo campaigns.

For them, giving away some of their music, is the best alternative. Or to be heard in podcasts, which is a new trend.

Podcasts are often free down loadable recorded radio shows. You also get a lot of free music that way as well.

But keep in mind that there is a two way traffic: fans should respect the artists, but also the opposite way around. Also remain honest with them and do not rip them off when they order a CD from you, or kick them out of your social networks when they might have a less than positive review on one of your songs.

Yes, if artists become too arrogant to listen to honest feedback of those who do buy their music, do help them to promote them and do come to their shows, they might also end up distributing only free stuff in the end.

If you give away free downloads to be heard, keep in mind that you should respect those who use them to let you be heard elsewhere too. Not all your fans might be so rich they might buy all your music at once, but keep in mind they might promote you instead and be grateful to them as well.

Those who only like fans with money, but give away free samples to make sure they will be heard, will not get far.

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