A lot of people either don’t believe that you can download the music here legally for free or don’t fully understand the music (especially hip-hop) industry right now, so we decided to put together a little bit about why this music is okay to download no matter what (whether you are in college, at work, working for a music company, just an average joe . . . whatever).
1. The Difference Between A Mixtape And An Album – On this website you will only find links to download mixtapes and not albums, what’s the difference you may ask? Mixtapes are legally free to download because the artists release the songs together as a way to gain popularity and fans realizing that most fans don’t want to pay for music (who wants to pay when you can get it free). This is a way for upcoming artists (such as Chiddy Bang, Charles Hamilton, Bobby Ray . . ) to gain followers quickly because the fans aren’t risking wasting their money and if they like what they hear they arem ore inclined to buy an album when it comes out or see them in concert
2. Covers / Freestyles – Often times on mixtapes you will see a rapper cover (or freestyle) over another rapper’s original beat. If this rapper was to charge money for the cover he did, he would have to pay the producer of the original beat and the artist who originally covered it in order to avoid copyright infringement; however, if they don’t charge any money for it then the original producer/artist can not sue the cover because it didn’t make any profit (Lil Wayne is – I guess “was” since he’s in jail – the king of this). Basically this way if the song flops the artist didn’t waste any money by paying off the producer/artist to use the beat but if it is a hit people will remember his name and he will gain popularity. Also, often these covers are called “freestyles” but as you can tell they are not in one take or off the top of the dome so don’t get it confused with a true freestyle (like Rhymefest’s freestyle battles)
3. Sampling – This is one of the grey areas in music right now. Much like the above covers/freestyles, many current hip-hop songs will sample older songs to make a new original beat. What this means is they take an original song, take a snippet of it, change around the beat or pitch or some part about it, add some of their own beats and then rap over it. This is a grey area because it is a combination of original material and copyrighted material. Often times to avoid any type of mix up and because most artists can’t afford being sued they will release these songs for free as well. This is not always the case though with such songs as Sleepyhead by Passion Pit and much of Kanye West’s songs.
4. Because They Can – Why not release free music to keep your fans faithful and always checking in to see what you are up to.
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I know this is not a perfect reasoning, and we are still learning about the music business ourselves, but hopefully this helps you out with why you can download all of the songs and mixtapes we put up for FREE legally.
Can you explain more about the sampling of kanye’s songs and passion pit’s sleepyhead..
sure can Kate, how bout you send me an e-mail at [email protected] with exactly what you wanna know about it and I’ll tell you what I know, in the mean time if you haven’t seen the post on kanye and his sampling check this
http://goodmusicallday.com/2010/01/16/kanye-west-samples/
and here is the post on passion pit and their sampling
http://goodmusicallday.com/2010/01/26/sleepyhead-sample/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLs5joF2Qo0 Check this its crazy.
i make videos and i have trouble finding people that allow me to use their music. i cant do this if i dont have explicit permission from the record label or the artist….i was just wondering if by using music off this website, am i entitled to still ask for permission from the artist to use it in my videos?
You will still need a license (or permission) from the artist/label (whoever owns the music) regardless where you’ve obtained the copy of the song. A good documentary/film, focusing around Girl Talk, that exposes the controversial legalities behind copyrights is called “RIP: A Remix Manifesto” – I would recommend obtaining this film without paying, it was initially released for free online. All good quick lessons into copyrights without getting a degree in Music Business. A good starting point is http://www.opensourcecinema.org/book/rip-remix-manifesto-1-meet-girl-talk
Hello, hope all is well on your end, I wanted to know if I could submit music to your blog for your review and comments. My website url is right there for you to pre-view my music. Let me know if you like it enough to post up on your blog, I appreciate the time, Thank You
i like the mixtapes bette anyway thanks
I have been downloading your music for months and recently had my hard drive stolen and was wondering if you guys have an easier way to download all the songs you guys have posted from the beginning?
what does it mean when a song is tagged on your site?
the “tags” means that a DJ or some DJs shout on the song. Some of the tagged songs that have the worst” tags” on them have DJ Don Cannon or Young Money HD on the song. “Tags” can be a bit annoying and can take away from enjoying the song.
Hey man i’ve been following your site for awhile and I get all my music from your blog! its freaking awesome…. But my real question is what does it mean when a song has “tags”?? anyways keep the good work coming!!
oops I didn’t see that someone already asked that question my bad!
if i wanted to download all of the posts on your computer at once, is their an easier way to do it? would you guys ever create a giant zip file or a group of smaller zip files with all the songs previously posted. because i am tryin to download most of the songs in the history of the site because i like them so much. but as you can imagine it is a lot of work and takes up a ton of time. if you guys could do that it would be so helpful and im sure many others would appreciate it as well
how to i download the songs. I right click but do not see save as.
do you have a pc or mac?
I would absolutely love it if you guys could put together a Peter Lee Johnson mixtape with a bunch of his real good ones on it such as changes and show goes on! GMAD allll day. keep it up! btw shout out to my boy Tayyib Ali
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