There is a lot of new interest in finding legal music downloads. You may heard the stories about people who download music illegally and then get caught. Many these people end up being sued, or even sent to jail!

This is not a myth, many people are living in fear because they know that any moment now they could be caught. Every time they log on to their peer-to-peer file sharing program, there is a chance that they could be traced by a record company employee, which could lead to serious trouble. This is why legal music downloads are a much safer choice.

The field of legal music downloads as a turbulent one, and the recent history has been full of ups and downs. Just a few years ago, everybody assumed that downloading music and other copyright material from the Internet was completely legal, even large companies like Napster for it was fine. The record companies did not share this view, and when their profits started crashing because of all the free downloads that people were doing they took immediate action to stop the loss.

This has resulted in many large lawsuits being brought against companies such as Napster, and the entire networks of P2P being shut down. At this point in time, legal music downloads look like something that would never happen.

But over time, the music industry and Internet ventures have joined forces to produce new sites such as iTunes and the new reinvented Napster. These new legal music download sites have come about no doubt because of the rise of interest in MP3 players such as iPods and zunes players.

Until fairly short while ago the only way that you could download music legally was to use a service such as iTunes where you had to pay for each and every tune that you downloaded. This is quite limiting to the customer, so it's good that there are now more options.

But in the midst of this, there are still risks in the shape of so-called free music download sites. These sites have been around for quite long time now, but there are more than now than before. They claim that the legal music downloads on their sites are free, but in actual fact they are anything but free or legal. They're all so packed full of viruses, adware and spyware. This is how the companies that run these free websites are able to make money, either by selling unblockable advertising on your computer or by stealing your personal information and using that to fraudulently make money.

I'm sure you'll agree that these free music websites are far too risky to use. this is why most consumers nowadays are looking for legal music downloads.

So what legal music download options are there?

There are three things you need to look for from any website which you are considering using for legal music downloads. These are:

Firstly, these sites should expect some kind of payment. Any side is giving away music completely for free should be a warning sign to you. How are they making money? How are they able to continue operating?

Payment options usually follow one of three methods. They are either paid per song, pay per month, or paid by the year. Some sites offer you a lifetime membership for a fee and unlimited downloads.

The next thing to look for its size limits.music files are quite small, almost always being less than 100 MB in size. On the other hand some websites will boast files of several gigabytes in size being available on their network.

These are usually pirated video games or other applications. This is another warning sign; it indicates that the owners of the site are engaged in computer software piracy. It's a short step from there to actually creating viruses and distributing them.

Also, if the software on the website pirated, there's a good chance of the music will be which again exposes you to risk.

The next thing you need to watch for in a legal music download website is that there is no adware or spyware or viruses or anything that would damage your computer distributed along with files that you download.

There should be no hidden fees, all requirements to use special hardware or expensive software to access the network.

The owners of the website should not be continuously trying to scam or trick you. This is a really good indication that this service is no good.

There is a service which meets all these requirements, and offers a huge selection of music in addition to this. Not only is it the biggest section I've seen is also house the the most affordable membership fee for any comparable service.

Click here to visit the site.