How to Downloading illegal MP3’s and music

Working so long with computers, I’ve seen how things have changed over time when it comes to illegal music and MP3 downloads, from a carefree free-for-all type to a fairly risky activity. If you’ve been using Kaaza, Bearshare, or Azureus to download tons of illegal MP3s onto your computer, you run a pretty high risk of being slapped with a lawsuit from the RIAA. And judging by the news reports I have read, you REALLY want to avoid that.

So I’m writing this guide on how you can avoid being caught downloading MP3’s illegally. Note this is not some kind of hacking guide on how to get free music by bypassing security measures, etc, it’s simply a clean and legal way to listen to your favorite music without running the risk of having legal action brought against you.


There are a couple of ways to avoid illegal MP3s and some of them will be obvious, but any route is better than having to worry about the RIAA.

Stop using file sharing services – First thing you want to do is get yourself off of those peer-to-peer networks altogether! Even if you download a few songs every once in a while, you can still get in trouble by accident! There have been many lawsuits filed against the completely wrong people, but because they had an account in Kazza, etc, they got picked accidentally instead of the real distributor.

Download MP3s for cheap prices – Obviously, if you’re using file sharing networks, you’re looking for free MP3 downloads. However, the prices on single songs and full albums has gone down dramatically in the last few years and it’s well worth the small price for owning your own songs. Also, there are so many choices for downloading legal music, such as iTunes, Amazon, MP3Fiesta, eMusic, MP3.com, and tons more. Everything except iTunes is DRM-free, which means you can listen to it on any device and copy it as many times as you like as long as you don’t try to make money off of it.
Find free songs online on the Internet – One myth that most people think is that there are lots more songs on the peer to peer networks than just on the Internet itself. People think that way because if you try to perform a Google search for a song, you’re not going to find an MP3 (unless you use some advanced filters, etc). However, that’s a pain and no one will do that all the time. That’s where services like SeeqPod and Songza are absolutely fabulous. They index all the songs on the Internet (whether they or legal or not) and you can simply perform a search and listen to them, absolutely nothing illegal about it. Songza has found just about every song I have thrown at it.
Listen to other people’s songs – Finally, you can go to sites like Anywhere.FM or Streampad and listen to music uploaded by other people. They can upload illegal MP3s and you can listen to them like a radio station. You won’t be able to download them to your computer.
However, if you’re hell bent on getting the MP3s onto your local hard drive, you can actually record streaming audio to your computer and save it as an MP3 file. That way, if you just want to get a few songs as MP3s onto your computer instead of having to listen to them online, you can play it on Songza or Anywhere.FM and record the audio output. I wrote up an article previously on how to record streaming audio here.

Hopefully, that helps shed some light on how you can avoid getting caught for downloading illegal MP3s. There really is no way to truly hide yourself, unless you download the music from a completely different computer not in your house or office. Legal is always better though! Enjoy!

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