A series of studies have shown that music fans that download music illegally are more likely to buy more music through the legal channels then the average person! The reason for this is infact very simple – true music enthusiasts want to simply consume, sample and discover more music and file sharing is the easiest way to do that. People who are not interested in music have no need to download or buy it. The study also shows that artists sell more music thanks to music fans downloading and sampling it first.

After Pirate Bay’s 4 creators were handed prison sentences for breaching copyright law the independent record stores hit back with World record store day. The traditional record shops are encouraging music fans to abandon their computers and head down to their nearest record shop to buy music in formof a CD or vinyl. Many big names in music such as Sir Paul McCartney and Bruce Springstein are backing the initiative claiming: “there is nothing more glamourous then a record store”.

The founders of Pirate Bay Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law today and sentenced to a year in prison and to pay a fine of 2.4 million in damages. The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies including: Warner Bros, Sony music entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.The fine falls short of the 9million the entertainment companies were hoping for but the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy  insisted that the trial was to send out the message that piracy is not ok. The pirate bayers remain confident that they were within the law and are sure that nothing will happen to The Pirate Bay site because they plan to appeal as soon as possible.

Spotify the music site that allows their users to create their own free personalised radio station from a list of 6million songs has come to an agreement with 7digital. The site that works on ad pop ups now allows their users to listen to the track for free and then click on a link that will take them through to the 7digital site to buy the track if they wish. Initially this service will only allow Spotify users to buy singles or albums from the company but they will eventually to able to but entire playlists and mixes thay have created themselves on the Spotify site. This service will be launched first in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. This move will put Spotify in dircet competition with iTunes – not great for iTunes as Amazon are already selling cheaper downloads then they are.

Amazon has kicked off a pricing war yesterday by pricing their mp3’s at 29p 50p less then their rival Apple iTunes . The move ignites hope that mp3 prices will plunge in the near future. The Amazon site who started their service in December last year have made over 100 songs available for 29p including: rock, classics and jazz. iTunes dominates over 70% of the download market but Amazon have vowed to offer the lowest prices possible and of course all their mp3 downloads work on the Apple ipod.

Free download sites are the latest victim of the recession as companies increasingly pull out of advertisment to save money. Newspapers and television channels have been in trouble for a while due to the advertising slump but download sites are being hit harder then ever. Spiralfrog has been the latest free music download site to be shut down . Sources close to the site claim that Spiralfrog was unable to pay back $9million (£6.2million) in loans.

After the recent Pirate Bay court case I wondered what kind of download sites are legal on the net? After some research I found that the difference between these sites is quite simple. The argument put forward for Pirate Bay’s defence was that you can not download directly from Pirate Bay the site simply directs the user to their downloads using torrents. Spotify also works in a similar way. The sites that find themselves on the wrong side of the law are sites that either let you stream directly from their site such as TV-links did before they were shut down or sites that let information be shared peer to peer through their site. Napster was the original site to start the peer to peer sharing of music that was completely free, the site made it’s creator Shaun Fanning a millionaire at the tender age of 19 when he first founded Napster in 1999. After a series of court actions against Mr Fanning the youngster legitimised his site and now allows record labels to ban special editions tracks of their artists. Although his site is now completely legal Mr Fanning has been quoted as saying track listings on legitmate sites such as the new look Napster and iTunes are limited and he still hasn’t found a more effective way of sharing files then the illegal peer to peer file sharing.

It has come to my attention recently that Pirate Bay is funded by Right-winger Carl Lundström . It seem’s that Mr Lundström who was thrown out of the New Democracy polital party for being too right wing and was part of a violent skinhead group in the mid-1980’s originally funded the Pirate Bay’s servers to get the site going. Perhaps more shockingly it is rumored that Mr Lundström owns 40% of Pirate Bay, I wonder why this has not been covered in the press?

The Piarte Bay case has come to an end with the founders Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström facing a possible 2 years in prison and a damages claim of $12.7 (£9m) if convicted. The defence have claimed that the pirate Bay is not set up to facilitate piracy. They also denied that the site was making £706,000 in advertising ever year and put forward that the site was actually running at a loss and any money made through advertising is put straight back into running the site. What do you think? are the founders of pirate Bay guilty or innocent?