Official Ares Free Download

Limewire looks set to continue with its dominance in the filesharing market with the news that Limewire will soon begin connecting artists and bands with their fans.

At the moment, the filesharing giant is putting the finishing touches to the Limewire store, where Limewire users will be able to download MP3s DRM free.

Next up will come Limespot, an online community in which music fans will be able to interact with their favorite artists and bands. Musicians will be able to promote their songs and live shows with Limespot.

Users of Limewire will see a number of changes to the filesharing service in the coming months. Soon, as well as the usual search results, Limewire users will see links to content on Limespot, items in the Limewire store and various other websites.

Limewire will still offer the same filesharing service that has made it so popular, but with added tweaks.

Soon with Limewire, users will be able to search for an artist and find links to photos, tour dates, music videos, lyrics and much more. Stay tuned for updates.

If you’ve ever been to Sweden or met anyone from Sweden, you will have noticed how happy everybody there is. Perhaps that has something to do with why seven Swedish MPs recently wrote an article objecting to a crack down on filesharing.

Swedish MPs are pro-filesharing! The MPs are concerned about plans for a government-appointed body to ban users of P2P filesharing services from the Internet.

The MPs are concerned that a ban on filesharing would impose on people’s freedom.

From the article: “If you can use a service to send a message you can most likely use the same service to send an mp3-song, Those who want to prevent people from exchanging of copyrighted material must control all electronic communication between citizens.”

This is fascinating, because usually, as in the case of the UK and France, MPs are dead set against filesharing and all forms of music downloads that don’t please the RIAA.

The MPs go on to suggest that Sweden should be a hub for the exchange of information that is censored in other parts of the world! Amazing.

Also in Sweden, a court case involving a man who allegedly uploaded 23,000 songs for filesharing has gone to retrial. The retrial has come about because of concerns raised about “questionable investigative technique” used by Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Agency’s.

This meant that the music charges were dropped, but the man was sent back to trial for uploading 30 movies for filesharing.

This case will be crucial to determine for the future if Swedish police can raid the homes of people suspected of filesharing.

It seems that it’s all going down in Sweden. No wonder Swedish people are so happy if they have MPs supporting their rights to download music.

Fans of drum ‘n’ bass music sometimes have a hard time picking up the latest tunes. For DJs in particular, waiting for tracks to come out on vinyl can take forever, with release dates pushed back and copies of hot new tracks snapped up within minutes of being put on shelves. Drum ‘n’ Bass Arena, the world’s largest drum ‘n’ bass website, now offers drum n bass music downloads through its digital-music store.

This is an invaluable resource for DJs and clubbers because it means that drum ‘n’ bass fans can pick up the latest tracks that are being played in the clubs and download them straight to their computers, something that has been incredibly hard to do in the past.

The music downloads offered include not only the latest releases, but also classic drum’n’ bass tracks that have never before been available for download. With increasingly more people wanting to download music rather than buy CDs or records, the Drum ‘n’ Bass Arena store is indispensable.

There are also a range of free music downloads from artists such as Commix. Other music downloads, both paid and free, include a large selection of DJ mixes.

Professional and amateur DJs are starting to use CDs rather than vinyl because CDs are convenient, easy to carry and can be burned in seconds. A store that has as wide a selection of drum ‘n’ bass tunes as Drum ‘n’ Bass Arena is the ideal place for DJs to shop for high-quality MP3s that can then be burned to CD and played out in clubs.

Individual tracks start at £0.99 (about $2). If you want to download inexpensive drum ‘n’ bass music that you would struggle to find on even the best filesharing networks, use Drum ‘n’ Bass Arena. Filesharing has a come a long way in in hosting and putting content out their.

• 7digital posted up some interesting results from its sales of music downloads in 2007. Astonishingly, five Radiohead albums were in the top 20 sellers of downloads last year, after the band’s back catalogue was released in digital format.

Old-timer Phil Collins snuck into the singles chart for music downloads with his song “In the Air Tonight”, which was featured on a TV commercial in the US. If Phil Collins can score with music downloads, anybody can.

The top three music downloads of 2007 for 7digital were Dave Gahan’s “Kingdom’, Kylie’s “2 Heart” and the Pet Shop Boys’ “Integral”. Those songs are definitely better than the overall top music downloads of 2007.

Sales for 7Digital were up an amazing 188%, thanks to DRM-free music downloads and high-quality MP3s. 2008 will apparently see the death of DRM, according to 7Digital. This could be true, as both Sony and EMI will release their catalogues DRM-free.

70% of the 7Digital catalogue is now available for fans to download. If you want to download music from 7Digital, you can then use the files you have bought with iTunes, an iPod or any other type of MP3 player.

Hurray for progress.

The cost to download music in the UK just got a teeny bit cheaper with the news that Apple is set to cut its prices in line with the rest of Europe.

Complaints from the consumer group Which? led to an investigation into why music downloads in the UK cost 79p, compared with 74p across Europe. There’s no telling what the new price of music downloads in the UK will be, but Apple has announced that the new ruling will be implemented within six months.

Wait a minute. Six months? That’s a long time. The wait is over with music downloads for iphone from shoutcast is now available.

The problem with iTunes is that customers who use UK credit cards are automatically charged 6% more than their European compatriots, no matter where in the world they use iTunes to download music from.

When it does eventually happen, this move will be a major step towards standard rates for buying music in Europe. To give you an idea of how long this has been going on, Which? first brought up the issue of expensive music downloads in the UK in 2004. Finally, music fans in the UK have something else to cheer about after the record year for music downloads in 2007. The next step will be for other companies, not just in the music industry, to follow suit.

Music downloads are all the rage these days. No matter how many copies of In Rainbows Radiohead go on to sell this week, the increase in singles downloads shows a distinct shift in how consumers get their music. CD sales aren’t dead, but music downloads are very much alive.

In the UK in 2007, almost 78 million singles were purchased for music downloads, equating to a 50% rise in downloads from 2006. While this is great news for the online music industry, music fans are still reluctant to purchase entire albums. When it comes to album sales, 95% of people chose to buy a physical CD, rather than download their music in 2007.

Also, CD sales slumped a further 10% in 2007. The week after Christmas was particularly good for music downloads in the UK, however, with nearly three million tracks downloaded and paid for as music fans tried to fill up their MP3 players received as Christmas gifts.

With any luck, 2008 will be even better for music downloads and record labels will have less to complain about. Hopefully, there will also be less dodgy music-download sites stealing money from punters. Happy New Year everyone.

Radiohead’s great album experiment appears to be over. When the band made its album In Rainbows available for download at a price to be decided by the buyer, many were quick to say that it was a revolution in the music industry. Music downloads were said to be the future. But even Radiohead are human after all, as their seventh studio album appeared on iTunes for a more conventional form of music download this week.

For £7.99, fans can now buy the album that last year they could get for free — legally. Radiohead are one of the few bands who have never let their music be available on iTunes. It looks like the whole world has gone mad for music downloads.

Radiohead have still not revealed any figures for their own music-download experiment, although Thom Yorke did say that 15 fans paid the maximum £99.99 for the album. Thom Yorke himself, however, admitted downloading In Rainbows for free — for his mum.

Perhaps even more controversial, this week saw the release of In Rainbows on plain old CD. The album is set to top the UK album charts with about 50,000 copies of the LP sold so far. The whole situation is bizarre and goes some way to proving that people still want CDs and not just music downloads – no matter how popular free music downloads become.

True music fans still buy CDs. Could it be — shock horror — that music downloads and CD sales can co-exist after all? Someone call the RIAA!