Bottom Line:
Legalsounds easily sets itself apart from other music shops, giving the term ‘cheap music’ a whole new meaning. Offering albums at a delicious price of $0.09 per track its hard not resist to sign up, even if their catalogue is in MP3 format only.
Background Info
Legalsounds music shop is based in Russia. Its a fairly new kid on the block offering an extensive range of music and a price that is yet to be beaten by anyone. Its main visitors are in fact the Americans, 11.7%. Since it is based in Russia, it sells music under the ROMS license agreement.
User Interface
Legalsounds has set a new trend with its unique and unusual interface. It devotes less than 55% of the space to the sites content. Some might see that as wasted space, but it works surprisingly well with everything neatly organised into sections. It maybe be a bit overwhelming at first, but after a couple of hours of ‘getting used to’ you’ll find yourself liking it more and more. I have to admit the chosen colours for the site arn’t that user friendly and does need getting used to, but its not something that majorly affects the service in any way.
When browsing the catalogue, you’ll soon find their boxed design very useful.
When viewing an album, you’ll find everything you need there. Album cover, genre, bit-rate, cost etc.. It wasn’t as detailed as
musicmp3, but some may not need any additional information other than the basics, which is fair enough. Tracks are presented neatly, with corresponding prices, track lengths and bitrates, there is also a preview button aligned against each one. Above the tracks is the linear tree navigation, showing where you are, for example ‘International Music | Maroon5 | It Won't Be Soon Before Long’, which allows you to smoothly navigate to another area. Small note, the main genre doesn’t take you to all the music in that genre, but rather the homepage. Small error, which can be easily be fixed.
Everything to do with your account, can easily be accessed on the top right hand corner.
Catalogue
Legalsounds catalogue is very impressive. I was able to test it browsing the catalogue for old and new music. And my search was always returned with results.
Legalsounds have told me that they add 1000 new albums a week, which is pretty impressive. I found via fellow members, that they listen closely to user requests and usually have fulfilled within a week, which is a great quality to have as a music shop.
I was actually surprised to find a popular album group fan made album for an artist they liked. It was circulated widely underground and i was surprised to find it on
Legalsounds.com
Pricing
The pricing of the music is the best part of
Legalsounds. Being the cheapest music store on the internet, offering music at $0.09 per track, which averages around $1 per album (!!) [insert ‘middle-finger insult’ gesture to RIAA infested shops here]. You can check other shops pricing compared to
Legalsounds here. Albums range from $1 to $1.50 depending on how many tracks there are.
Audio Formats / Bit rate.
As the same with all current east western music shops, only MP3’s are on offer. Which is great for MP3 users, but not so for OGG, FLAC or any other format lovers. Again as mentioned in the other reviews, this possibly only affects a small minority. So in other words, if your music collection is in MP3 format, then this shop is definitely one to check out.
While its not clear on the website, it seems as if only CBR MP3’s are on offer. Some albums have tracks at different CBR, for example some tracks might be 192 and some might be 320. Its hard to tell the difference between the two, so majority of users won’t have a problem with this.
As usual none of the music comes with DRM or copy protection crap, this means you can copy your downloaded songs to any number of devices and play it as many times you want.
Downloading
Legalsounds downloading is made very easy thanks to their music download app, which is only available for windows os. You can easily use your own download manager to download your tracks (guide here) , but if you only use
legalsounds as your music provider and don’t use a download manager, then you might be better of using the
Legalsounds app.
Its not as good looking as alltunes, but it gets the job done. It allows you to do a number of operations; top-up your balance, browse music, buy music, see your account details etc.. Can be handy if your too lazy to do it through your internet browser
I found the speeds when downloading tracks very acceptable. Was able to reach around 85-90% of connection speed per track.
Payment Options.
Legalsounds supports all major credit cards via their processor assist.ru. Credit card is only the form of refilling your account, and my payments were conducted successfully without any problems. I have not got much technical knowledge with credit card processors, but I have been using assist.ru with
legalsounds for sometime and havn’t had any problems to date. Again no time wasted as account was refilled instantly after payment was made.
Some might find credit cards offered by
legalsounds limited, compared to
musicmp3 which offers six different ways of refilling your account. As i am credit card user myself, I didn’t find this limit my options too much.
Legalsounds has a very generous bonus program. Starting at just $25, you can get 25 free songs (which is around 11% bonus). And to add to that, you can get a bonus after you reach certain amount of total replenishments. Considering that one track is only $0.09, you’ll be surprised at just how much music you can get just from using bonus money. They also just started 'Free Download Of The Day' offering a free track everyday.
Conclusion
Using
legalsounds was a bliss experience. Quite dramatic i know, but considering that the amount of trouble a Russian music shop can get,
legalsounds has made it specifically easy for its users. Being the cheapest music store on the net and offering its users a decent payment option as well as an optional downloader app, its hard to find any faults with
legalsounds. Great stuff overall and I recommend it to all MP3 lovers who are sick of paying lots of money for DRM infected songs.
Price – 98%
Payment Options – 89%
User Interface – 91%
Audio Formats – 90%
92% - Editors Choice
Click Here To Sign Up With LegalSounds.com
Official Legalsounds Review -
06-03-2007, 12:12 AM
A long "teaser-period" -
06-03-2007, 09:30 AM
Linear Mode
