Is it safe to download music?

Question

I have Norton Antivirus and Spysweeper both installed on my computer. I would like to download music but I am terrified that I will get a virus. It it okay if I have both virus things downloaded? If so, which program is the best to download off of? I need one that is free also.

Answer 1

Limewire is the program you should use its free and 100% legal Limewire.com

Answer 2

There are quiet a few ways to get music off the Internet. I won't go into the legalities of all of them. Obviously, if you are getting someones copyrighted material without paying, then that's probably not legal.



There are services that you can use to get music that WILL pay the artists who created the songs. The most popular are probably...



Apple iTunes -> http://www.itunes.com

Napster -> http://www.napster.com

and even WalMart -> http://www.walmart.com/swap/SwapEntry.do?dslURL=/swap/LoadMain.do%3FmainCategoryId%3D2500



All of these services will sell you songs between .85 and $1.00 per song or so.



There are quite a few services advertised on Clickbank that make the promise that for a one time membership fee, you can download an unlimited number of songs. Here are those services. I cannot attest to how well they work, so research them by visiting them...



Unlimited Download Center -> http://watersaffl.udc01.hop.clickbank.net?tid=YAHOOANS

Movie Downloads.com -> http://watersaffl.movies01.hop.clickbank.net?tid=YAHOOANS

Unlimited MP3 Music -> http://watersaffl.gamecity.hop.clickbank.net?tid=YAHOOANS

Hot MP3 Downloads -> http://watersaffl.mp3hot.hop.clickbank.net?tid=YAHOOANS



I have had good luck finding music on BitTorrent sites. BitTorrent is an Internet protocol for moving very large files. It's not the same as P2P (limewire and such), but it relies on other users in the BitTorrent community leaving their music files available. I have often been frustrated by downloading a song or album only to find that after it downloads 95%, it stops because not enough BitTorrent seeders have kept the files available. The upside to BitTorrents are that they download extremely fast!



You'll need a BitTorrent client to download torrents. I use Azureus. It's a free and very nice client application that you can get here...

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/





You'll also need a few BitTorrent tracker sites. Here are a few to get you started...

TorrentSpy -> http://www.torrentspy.com/

The Pirates Bay -> http://thepiratebay.org/

ISO Hunt -> http://isohunt.com/

MiniNova -> http://www.mininova.org



Finally, I have had great luck finding unknown artists by using an NNTP News Server. NNTP is an old Bulletin Board type of protocol. NNTP means Network News Transport Protocol. But the NNTP community has evolved into about 50,000 different 'channels' that cover every imaginable subject and there is a way to 'encode' binary files to place them on these NNTP groups. For music, music is grouped into different 'genres'. For example, I download Jazz and Reggae from two different channels. It is not easy to find any particular song or artist, so I just download everything in a group and often find songs and artists that I've never heard of before.



To download music from NNTP groups, you'll need a News Reader. There are some free ones out there. I use this one...

http://www.newsbinpro.com/



Well, that ought to keep you busy for a while! Good luck!

Answer 3

Limewire is not safe. It gave my computer a virus and I had Norton Anti-virus. Now I have both Norton Anti-virus and Spy-sweeper and I use itunes. It cost $.99 per song, but it is safe. Most of the safe site for downloading cost.

Answer 4

If your main concern is virus protection I would stick with services that charge for downloads. I like Real Player but their format is not compatible with most other sites; i.e. Musicmatch, Windows Media Player, etc. You can download from almost any store that sells CDs. Target, Wal-mart, etc. Most charge $.99 per song but Wal-Mart charges $.88

I don't care for Limewire because it could contain a virus since you are actually downloading from another individuals computer.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

My advice is don't download limewire kids in here haven't a clue that its full of virues hidden in files. Once on your system it hard to get rid of. I spend most of my time in Yahoo Q&A computer problems and the same question the whole time how do I get rid of viruses from limewire. I tell them till i'm fed up don't download from limewire.

Answer 6

yes if you pay for it