Recently I had some trouble finding some songs I wanted on iTunes. Most people know the iTunes database is notoriously bereft of older tunes, or worse yet, foreign tunes or anything not released on a major label. I was lamenting my lot on Facebook when a friend of mine suggested www.legalsounds.com to find the songs I wanted. When I went to the site, not only did I find many of the songs I was looking for, I saw the prices are AMAZINGLY low, as in 9 CENTS A SONG in most cases! That was all it took for me to be sold on the site. To get full songs (and even the uncut or explicit versions, thankfully) for less than most people pay for a ringtone is truly a thing of beauty!

If you want to know what kind of music this site features, I will say it has pretty much every genre and most artists I have ever known. For example, I searched iTunes and amazon.com for the song “My Secret Lover” by the group Private. The video was featured on PerezHilton.com and I fell in love with the song. But when I searched the traditional sites, NO DICE! What I did not know when I saw the group online was that they are not American, so therefore it was impossible to find them on the traditional sites because they weren’t on a mainstream label. Not only did www.legalsounds.com have that song, they had lots of others by the same artist, which was awesome for me! Also, iTunes may have certain artists, like Nine Inch Nails, but often they don’t have all of their releases. I lost my original “Pretty Hate Machine” cd so I went to iTunes to download another copy. Once again I was foiled by their limited database. Not only did www.legalsounds.com have it, the whole album was less then $1! WOOT WOOT!

From what I can tell the site is European, which is why you get access to more than the average database. I have a friend that uses another music download site and even though he can see the foreign remixes and releases, his system won’t let him download them because he is limited to the US database. I don’t know if this is an issue with the currency exchange rates or what, but for people like us who really like dance music, the European market really has more choices so it is important for us to have access to that.

The site takes Visa and MasterCard and basically you prepay for your music. The Visa payments process immediately, but if you pay with MasterCard you have to wait a couple of days for the payment to process. In the meantime, you can still take advantage of the 50 free downloads off the Top 40 charts you get for signing up on the service. When you prepay $39 or more, you get additional free downloads, which is awesome considering you just got a few free downloads when you joined. You can also refer friends and get additional free download credits, so it behooves you to hook up your friends as well. I will say I am VERY thankful to my friend that referred me, so I was quick to return the favor with my family and friends!