Nowadays, Digital downloading of the music has steadily gained the speed as a preferred method of purchasing music in the developed countries. The Copyright laws protecting an artist's music are in a digital format and users can carefully follow them to avoid the heavy fines, lawsuits from the recorded companies. Thus the downloading rules for the digital copyrighted music is different and they are,
Music is Copyrighted:
Generally, all types of music are protected by the U.S. copyright law, where owning the music without the creator's permission is a kind of theft. So the creator gives his permission for his music, when you purchase that music in a hard copy such as a CD or record, by paying the permission to download the music digitally. You are only given permission to own the music when you go for the paid download option. Thus Paying to download one song does not give the permission for obtaining the rest of the artist's musical catalog. According to the website the copyrights for a music lasts for about 70 years after creation.
Legal Ways of Downloading:
Thus Downloading music without paying or without an artist's permission is a violation of copyright law. The only means to legally obtain the music digitally is through an approved downloading site such as iTunes and have to pay the appropriate fee.
Fair Use Doctrine:
The fair use doctrine is a provision of copyright law which allows you to reproduce the music or other products like video for your personal use. If You are infringing on copyright protection laws if you legally download music and make that music available for others to download free of charge or by charging a fee from which only you benefit.
Thus by following the downloading rules, you can be in the safer side.