Are there any Legal P2P networks?

[Monica]

Ok, I'm not really sure if this discussion is allowed or not, but I can't figure it out, and I thought you guys might know.

I want to know if those P2P sites where you have to pay is legal or not. I want to get legal MP3s, and not steal if at all possible. It would be to complicated to buy each song seperately, so I wondered if there is a 100% Legal thing that you can pay for and get unlimited music or at least a number of songs that isn't only 1. 247Downloads says it is 100% Legal but it has Movie downloads which I know is not legal at all so that's weird. I don't even know any good places to buy 1 song at a time.

I used WinMX and recently Limewire but it is stealing when you don't pay anything. A subscription would be a lot easier. You don't have to give any links, but could someone explain how the MP3 stuff works with being legal and illegal?

Thanks. :)

[Cloral]

I highly doubt there are any subscription services where you can download MP3s for just the monthly fee - as you could sign up for 1 month, download an assload of MP3s, and let your subscription expire. Anywhere that is a subscription service uses other file formats that contain DRM, so that when your subscription expires the files become useless. Otherwise, you can always go to an online store and buy songs individually, which would probably be the solution you would want. I personally don't have experience with them, so I don't want to recommend any. But you should be able to find some easily bo Googleing, or perhaps someone else can suggest some?

So to answer your question: legal services are either:
1) Subscription service that uses file formats that contain DRM
2) Pay per download service

Anything else would be considered illegal. Although in the end it is all about whether the site has a contract with the creaters of the content. You just wouldn't see anything other than the above 2 forms with such a contract.

[SixTen]

The iTunes Music Store charges 99 cents per song. That's the only legal thing I've seen, but you have to have iTunes to use it.

[Sylvan_Wizard]

P2P networks are legal. In the US P2P networks can be deemed illegal if one can show intent to induce copyright infringement, but otherwise there is nothing wrong with, or inherently illegal about P2P. It is actually the sharing of copyrighted files that is illegal in most places.
All that aside, you can try iRate (http://irate.sourceforge.net/). It's a program that downloads free legal music, which you rate. It then tries to get music it thinks you'll like based on your ratings.

[Monica]

Thanks guys, I have never heard of DRM, and I have an MP3 player so I'd like to be able to put them on there.