Throughout the ages, people have shared the love of making and listening to music. Music has the ability to enhance our emotions and add interest to our lives, so it is little wonder that we are willing to pay to listen to our favourite songs and that the music industry is one of the largest entertainment industries. In contrast, the Internet is a developing tool and resource we have only been familiar with for the past two decades, but now affects the lives of billions. Even though music has been on the Internet for five or so years, it is already recognised as one of the primary reasons for people to get online.
The distribution of music on the Internet has become extremely simple, and with the advances in audio formats together with increasing Internet speed, it is now possible to download not only songs but entire albums. However the combination of music and the Internet has caused a great controversy. Simplistically, the issue of Internet music distribution concerns three groups of people the Internet users who download music, the organizations and individuals who distribute music through Internet sites, and lastly the artists and their record companies, record manufactures and music stores.
As the Internet users generally argue, Internet music distribution has numerous advantages. Even novice Internet users can now access the virtually any songs ever written in a matter of seconds. This can all be done from the personal computer and is far more practical for people than the previous means. The Internet features virtually every types of music that exists and every artist providing the means for people to broaden their musical horizons. It provides people who live in remote places a change to actually purchase music from a virtual music community and also the opportunity for all people to listen to a song before the decision to purchase it. The Internet is especially good news for the less famous artists who most likely can afford any other means to expose their music to the public.