Well, I was just about to take the plunge, and download my first legal music file.
But that all went kaput into thin air.

You see, the great new George Michael single, Amazing, has been deliberately corrupted all over Kazaa by Sony (or contractors of Sony, GM’s record label) so you cannot get a good download.
They do this by downloading the song you are downloading, then modifying it slightly so that it plays a few seconds, then just spits out 5 minutes of garbage through your speakers.
They then release this file back into the wilds of the Kazaa (or FastTrack) network by loading that modified file onto many computers, and then sharing the file.

More and more people download this dead file, and share it. So what we end up with, it hundreds of people sharing a file that is corrupted and un-listenable. Nice One.

Well, this obviously prompted to me to give in.
I really want this song. But don’t want to buy the entire album just yet.

Everyone has heard the hype of “MyCokeMusic.com” I’m sure, run by Coca-Cola, managed by a company called OD2 (owned by Pete Waterman).
OD2 provide music sites for a lot of different internet companies.
All have the same songs, just the layout (and prices) are changed by the particular company (Freeserve, Tiscali, MSN UK, Virgin, HMV all have an OD2 online download site).

I was at the checkout, all ready to hand over the vast sum of 99p for my first ever legal download when…..

OD2 seem to have overlooked one particular thing.
Not everyone has a Visa or Mastercard.
MyCokeMusic, being marketed to the young, 16-22 I’d say.
What do you think is the majority of people, ages 16-22, that own a credit card?
Not a very high one.
Most have Switch/Solo or other debit cards, which cannot be used on this site, or any of the other OD2 sites. Great.

And just to make it worse, Sony struck a deal exclusively with OD2, so you can’t get it from any other legal download site. Nice one.

And this, children, is why legal downloading of music, will never work.