legalsounds.com: What Is The Catch? (Updated August 9th, 2013)

Hello,

As of Friday, August 9th, 2013 it seems the website legalsounds.com is no longer. When I try to go to that site, my browser takes me to a place that says network error. Although I'm surprised the site lasted this long, it just seemed to good to be true. There was no legal way their low prices were profitable.

Although this blog is almost a year old, it keeps on getting views. Due to that I decided to update it, I updated it on May 18th, 2013. I may edit some of the things that I've written previously.

Over the weekend I discovered the supposedly inexpensive and legal music website, legalsounds.com. A friend of mine on Facebook asked for some help filling up her iPod. Two of her friends commented on how cool the website legalsounds.com is. Spurred by these people on Facebook I decided to check out legalsounds.com.

I don't know if legalsounds.com is truly legal or not, I honestly have no idea. This blog I'm writing isn't an investigation whether it's legal or not. Based on my interaction with them they appear legit so far. They aren't like Limewire, where it was quite well known they were skirting the law. But still I wonder if legalsounds.com is truly legal? I mean how can it be? In order to make a profit, they have to be buying the music from the record companies for extremely cheaply. Their pricing structure seems to be too good to be true. I learned a long time ago that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Many very popular songs are free and the most one will ever pay for a song is 9c. Do you understand my skepticism now? One can buy complete MP3 CD's for only 99c. And to top it off now they giving you 20% off their already low prices. I thought that 20% off was a temporary thing, but in May, 2013 it's still available. That 99c CD becomes 79c. Do you see what I mean when I wonder what's the catch?

If nothing else you should take advantage of the free songs available at legalsounds.com. I check their website every two or three months and download the new free songs that are available. Many times I don't just have $30 that I can add more credit to my account. If I do from time to time I'll add credit to my account. Also with the $30 one time charge, there's also about a 20c transmission charge.

From wikipedia.org, this is what I found out about legal sounds.com:

"All the materials in the LegalSounds.com music service are available for distribution via Internet according to license ЛС-3М-05-09 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license agreement, Legalsounds.com pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights."[5]"

I learned the hard way if you own a Mac and want to download music from legalsounds.com then get the downloader called Folx. There's a link for it from the legalsounds.com website.

Update May 18th, 2013: Folx is easy to download and once on your computer it's very easy to use. In fact, I used it this morning to download 16 free songs, including new songs by Rihanna, Fall Out Boy, Justin Timberlake,  Tim McGraw and Florida Georgia Line.

So far from what I've seen of legalsounds.com I really like it. I bought many MP3 CDs from them so far. For instance, I bought Roger Waters "In The Flesh" and Whitesnake's "Live: In The Shadow of The Blues". (By the way before you start mocking me for liking Whitesnake's CD, check it out. It's a great and bluesy take on their mid to late 80's music. Although recorded just a few years ago, David Coverdale's voice still sounds very strong.) Those are 2 CDs I've wanted for a long time, but never had bought them as they were too expensive. However I downloaded both CDs for less than $2 each. It's hard to beat that price, especially if it's legal. Although I did sort of wake up today wondering if my hard drive might be wiped out- going back to the to good to be true thought. But no that didn't happen.

Updated May 18th, 2013: It's been almost a year since I first used legalsounds.com and nothing has happened to make me think their site is not completely legal.

Although I continue looking for this website's catch, I still haven't found it yet. How is the audio quality you ask? It's nearly identical to music downloaded from iTunes and amazon.com. Sometimes some of their songs don't have quite the same sound quality as iTunes et. al. However that doesn't happen very often. The next question, do they have all the hottest and current new music? No they don't and if that's the catch, then big deal.  They only had 10 of the Top 20 CDs available according to Billboard's Top 100 list from May 26th, 2012. That's only a small complaint. As you can see I've mostly bought older songs. Every older CD or song I've looked for, legal sounds.com has had. These are songs that should be in my music collection, but for some reason aren't.

I originally had planned to write a blog yesterday, planning on writing about all the amazing singers that have died this year already. For instance, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston, MCA of The Beastie Boys, Davy Jones of the Monkees and Levon Helm of The Band. Also dying this year was Dick Clark. Not a musician, but someone who had a tremendous amount of influence on music for several years. Although his influence had waned over the last several years.

Already this year we lost one of the biggest 70's stars in Donna Summer and one of the biggest 80's stars in Whitney Houston. Both the Beastie Boys and the Monkees certainly had huge influences in their day. The Beastie Boys were one of the first rap acts that really broke into the mainstream. They opened for Madonna on one of their first tours.

I was going to write about other famous and amazing musicians that might die this year. Those people included Robin Gibb, who died yesterday. That leaves only Barry Gibb as a surviving member of the Bee Gees. Even the Gibb's younger brother, Andy, died several years ago. Other singers that might die this year and doesn't seem to be out of the realm of possibility include Aretha Franklin (70). She seems to have been sick for a long time. Glen Campbell (76) is fighting alzheimer's disease. There are also still two remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney (69) and Ringo Starr (71) won't be around forever. Those ages seem to be even older in what can be a very destructive entertainment industry. Remember both Gibb and Summer were only in their early 60's when they died.

Other classic bands members are getting older too, including members of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones (although surprisingly Keith Richards is still alive) and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Also Eric Clapton (67), David Bowie (65), Chuck Berry (85), B.B. King (86) and Sly Stone (69) are still alive.

There are deaths that may come from accident, suicide or some other unexpected cause. Remember last year when 27 year old Amy Winehouse suddenly died? That was sort of a surprise, but looking back now was it really that much of a surprise? Younger people that seem to have a higher rate of death than they should are Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Both have had a troubled couple of years, but are still alive. However you never know when they might go off the tracks.

Songs today are great songs I've downloaded from legal sounds.com over the last couple of days. Do you remember this John Stewart song?:



Everlast's "The Warning":



This is one of those boy band songs that logically I shouldn't like, however it snuck it's way into my head. So yes I like this One Direction song:



Whitesnake's "In The Still Of The Night" (Live):



Roger Waters "Happiest Days of Our Lives/ Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2" I love watching this and would love to "The Wall" tour before Roger quits touring. I love the killer guitar solo starting at 3:46. Both this and Whitesnake videos are the kind I play over and over again because the music is so good.



"Trolley Wood" comes from the CD "Room Noises", which is from one of my all-time favorite bands that no one has heard of. The band's name is Eisley.



Robert John's "Sad Eyes":



My favorite band growing up was Blondie. Thanks to legalsounds.com cheap prices I was able to buy a couple of their classic catalog albums. "Little Girl Lies" is a song I had never heard before, it's from the CD "Blondie":



I don't know if I'd want to see the full version of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in concert. However there's something very magical about this song. This is the Floyd version:



I truly love youtube.com for all the cool videos one can find on there. Where else would most of us see some of these cool videos? For some reason I thought this video would be a bit cooler. David Bowie's "Space Oddity":



themusicaddict