Top Tips To Help You Download Music And Game Effectively

December 6, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Alex Miller asked:


It is common knowledge that if you are connected to the Internet, you are able to download music and game.

However, finding sites that are actually legit and also deliver what they claim to offer is not an easy task. I have personally spent quite a lot of money on these sites and it took me about 6 or 7 attempts to find a site that delivers quality.

The most popular places to download music and game are the peer-to-peer networks. Some peer-to-peer networks are free, like limewire, and they are generally quite good especially as they are free, but they do lack overall quality. Furthermore, they are laden with viruses and Trojan horses that are designed to completely wreck your computer.

It is not a surprise that there are many negatives of such sites because they are not charging you anything for it.

If you are looking for added quality and a more extensive range I would personally recommend the paid peer-to-peer networks that are on offer. They usually charge a one-time fee, and from there you can download as much music and game as you like. No extras fees will be demanded from you in the future.

The quality is far higher than on the free sites, especially when it comes to downloading games. When trying to download games on the free sites, it is common to actually download something completely different to what the file name says. This is extremely frustrating when you have waited hours for the download to complete.

Furthermore, the download speeds of the paid sites are much quicker, and if you have a decent broadband connection you will be flying!

However, even though the paid sites are far better than the free ones to download music and game, you must still be very careful which ones you select.

As I stated earlier, I have done quite a lot of research into this field. I would like to offer you some tips on spotting those sites which are more likely to be dishonest ones:

1. Paid sites should only charge you a one time fee. If they are demanding regular payments from you then this is a very good sign to steer clear of them.

2. A web site called alexa.com checks traffic rankings of all sites on the Internet. When I am looking at a new site that I might wish to pay a service for, I always check its rankings.

If the site is in the top 100,000 most popular sites, then this is a good sign to me. This is because it shows me that the site is receiving regular traffic, and so people will be uploading and downloading files regularly.

If you find that the site is ranked at 750,000 for instance, I can tell you that they are only receiving a few visitors a day. Consequently, what are the chances that they own a popular download site that you can download a wide range of music and game from with such few visitors?

Not many people know about this trick, and I have found it extremely useful in the past to judge a sites value.

3. My final tip is to actually type the sites name into Google followed by the word review. Google will display a bunch of results, mostly from forums, giving peoples views and opinions on the site based on their experiences.

Clearly, if words like scam are being posted on these forums in relation to the site, then again this is a good reason to steer clear of them. On the other hand, the site might have received praise and this would encourage you to invest.

These are my main tips that I offer when looking to download music and game



Where Should I Download Music From?

August 10, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Alice Trundle asked:


Today there is a huge raft of places available to download music from. Some of these are legal sites, some are definitely not and some appear to lay somewhere in the middle. In addition to this, some artists allow tracks to be downloaded from their own websites, however, these tend to be short previews at a low quality sampling rate, appetizers to entice you to buying their music at full price.

Most music downloads are protected with “Digital Right Management” (DRM) which restricts the ability to transfer the downloaded track onto more than one device. Many users feel this to be unfair as they may want to put the music on one device that they own.

It is estimated that the online music business now makes up over 10% of the global music market; in 2008 an estimated 10 billion songs equalling 76,000 years of continuous playtime were downloaded! The vast majority of these were offered through peer to peer websites with an estimated 1 billion downloaded legally. How long these sites can keep operating for is unsure as so many legal cases are being brought against them. We have also seen legal cases being brought against individuals who are sharing files on these peer to peer sites. In short, our advise to you is to avoid them.

Yet even legal music downloads are facing challenges from artists, labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). This came to a head in 2007 when Universal Music Group decided not to renew their long term contract with iTunes. This was due to Universal wanting more control over the pricing that iTunes dictated, they favored a move from the traditional 99¢ a song that iTunes charges to a more variable rate based on artist.

As mentioned above, the majority of music is downloaded illegally. This is a highly dangerous practice that could potentially carry a significant threat of infecting your pc with a virus. Numerous peer to peer sites such as Limewire and Bearshare have sprung up offering a way to download music, but beware, music is not all you might get! Make sure you have a good antivirus program, these are freely available and one such as AVG should fit the purpose perfectly. Also ensure you have a good spyware program place, just in case your machine does become infected.

Most importantly, use a reliable service such as Legalsoundz – guaranteed free of viruses and safe to use. It has an excellent software download manager (free to download) and songs are much cheaper than iTunes at only 9¢ a song, definitely the choice of myself. I have been using this service for 5 years now and never had a problem. Every download is of high quality and with a reasonable connection a whole album can be downloaded in under five minutes due to their powerful servers.

Another must to remember is to back up your music often, if possible to a removable hard drive. This will ensure you can recover your music should the worst happen! There would be nothing worse than losing your entire collection of music