Rocket Science

My husband is a musician and therefore he listens to a ton of music. He’s had Napster for quite a while, but they just raised their prices. I have been hearing about a new downloadable music tool, MP3Rocket. Ever hear of it? It’s relatively new to the music marketplace. C|Net reviewed it and gave it 4 out of 5 stars. I decided to check it out!

I was wary at first. We are well aware of the recording industry’s tyrannical lawsuits against innocent victims, and have no intention of entering the fray. MP3Rocket has a page in their website devoted to the legalities of file sharing.

There are currently over 240 million users downloading and trading files legally on file-sharing networks. You can, for example, legally download music from over 850 bands, over 20,000 live concerts as well as have access to multiple software titles and games. File sharing is not illegal so long as you abide by all relevant copyright laws. Sharing copyrighted material without the permission to do so is illegal.

MP3 Rocket Inc does not condone piracy or breaking copyright laws. The MP3 sharing tools available on through our members area are powerful search tools & we recommend that you use your discretion when downloading music and movie files.

MP3Rocket encourages users to “stay legal.” It’s not a difficult task– never share any protected content (easily done by disabling the “sharing” choice in the software); only share public domain files (that’s an easy one for us, because the kids and I listen only to classical music or orchestral hymns), and never rename copyrighted music to make it appear as public domain music. It’s basically what Napster has been providing us, except that MP3Rocket is free!

MP3Rocket is most known for music sharing, but the software also enables you to access radio stations (200+!), games, and television. At almost 2 million downloads, it’s a very popular program. MP3Rocket is easy enough to download and install. It claims to have billions of music available. I did a quick search for Segovia and Beethoven, and found loads of choices. I am not terribly interested in downloading any music (I like my hard drive lean and mean), but I do like the radio station channels feature.

MP3Rocket is worth looking at if you are a heavy-duty music listener. It also has the TV channels (which I haven’t tried) and the radio stations features (which look good so far). Learn more about it here.