Since Napster was busted for providing free downloads without paying royalties, some may wonder how it is that you can still find websites offering free music downloads for major label artists. Somebody has to be getting paid, but how? Simple; free download technology may be a marketing gadget.
What does that mean? Those free download sites don’t always give the user much information on the home page. It’s usually pretty brief and sounds too good to be true. However, the adventurous will click the “get started” button and find out that there’s a whole lot more to do besides simply browsing for favorite songs and downloading them.
Technology savvy web users are going to dig around and find those tiny little links at the bottom that give the full story. However, an excited and cash deprived teenager is just going to go for it. What the tech spy and the teenager will both quickly learn is that one must navigate a whole lot of advertising and even surveys before any free music is available. Those advertisers pay for impressions and clicks, and in turn, the licensing fees that are paid to musicians.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of technology. Everyone wants the Internet to be a free source, so those well crafted marketing gadgets that make up some of the latest free download technologies are how the savvy business people are doing it.
Can all those surveys and ads glut up the inbox on your email? Heck, yeah. Once again, the savvy technology buff will figure out how to unsubscribe. Kids may need a little help. Parents may need to be diligent with anti-virus software. It’s also a good idea to request that kids let parents go through the sign-up process with them. There’s not a parent out there who hasn’t seen a surprise charge on a bank statement that was the result of excited fingers taking the free download technology bait.