7Digital, a London-based service offering music downloads, is one of the few such services to have hung in there in a market that has become incredibly competitive. Part of the reason for the success of 7Digital has been its commitment to supporting unsigned bands and record labels.

The online store recently received £4.2m to fund its expansion into Europe and the US. Most music-download store have found themselves outdone by iTunes at every stage of the game, but not so 7Digital.

The music-download store has strong links with Radiohead, ITV, Bebo and Last.FM. As well as 3.5 million music downloads, the online store may soon offer film and game downloads.

Other good news for 7Digital comes with major record labels removing digital-rights-management restrictions from music downloads, making it easier to sell music to consumers. Competition is good and it’s positive to see more music-download stores than just iTunes and Amazon.

We’re rooting for 7Digital in 2008.

Last.FM took a major step to offering completely free music on the Internet. Last.FM is an ingenious idea that let’s users share their playlists with the world and provides bios and reviews of bands and artists. It’s social music as its best.

Last.FM has now announced that it will work in partnership with the record industry to do something remarkable — offer streaming audio of tracks from all of the major record labels. This isn’t like filesharing or typical music downloads, because users will only be able to stream a track three times before they have to pay for it.

After listening to the free music, users can then buy the music downloads from places like iTunes. Users of Last.FM will have access to countless tracks that they will be able to listen to for free. This is great news for the online community and this is the most logical way of the record industry working with a service to combine streaming audio with music downloads. It’s amazing that nobody has done this before on this scale.

Artists will get paid because advertising on Last.FM will mean that each time a track is streamed, money is made. The free-music service is set to go live in US, UK and Germany.

This is the start of something new.

It’s always fun looking at figures to do with music downloads. Although stats can vary from one source to the next, the general consensus is that music downloads and filesharing are dominating how we get out music.

According to stats from the IFPI, digital-music sales grew 40% during 2007, a bit of a slow down after doubling in 2006. Digital-music-download sales, including music downloads bought through iTunes, now account for 15% of the global music market. That figure is up from 10% in 2006.

One thing of note is that the sale of music downloads have, of course, not been enough to offset the decline in CD sales. This has been widely understood for some time now. The global music market has, apparently, declined 14% over the past year.

The most popular format of digital music is single-track downloads, of which there were 1.7 billion in 2007, up 53% from 2006.

IFPI CEO John Kennedy cited piracy and illegal filesharing as still being a problem. According to him, for every one music download bought the proper way, 20 more are downloaded illegally.

When deciding which P2P filesharing software you want to use, there are heaps of options to choose from. These options, however, vary in quality dramatically. Consistently one of the best choices for filesharing is Ares, an open-source application that is yet to be hit with the same sort of legal problems as services like Limewire.

Ares is open source and so it is constantly being improved by the people who use it. Each different version utilizes the same network and protocol, making Ares one of the top-performing filesharing programs available.

Ares is quick to install and easy to use, with fast music downloads and a huge network of music to search through. Any song you can think of, you’ll be able to find it on Ares.

There are more than 100 million tracks on the Ares network — and that number is growing every day. Filesharing also has its advantages over some services that place restrictions on the music files that people download.

If you are new to filesharing or want to find a service that is vastly superior to its competitors for music downloads, Ares should be the first place you look. Filesharing is becoming the primary way that people obtain their music. If you haven’t taken the plunge with a program like Ares, you’re behind the times.

Other filesharing programs for music downloads include Morpheus and newcomer Omemo.

Napster hit the headlines again this week with the announcement that the music-download service will begin selling music solely in MP3 format, to commence later this year.

In the past, Napster has sold music downloads in Microsoft’s restricted WMA format, although these sales will continue for some subscription-based offerings.

The move to offer user-friendly MP3s is a great step for Napster and will likely help boost the image of the service.

Napster is based in LA and the music-download giant claims to have about 750,000 subscribers. Sony, Warner and EMI are all offering their music (or at least some of it) DRM-free.

This is great news for music fans who have been bugged by music downloads that come in protected format. 7Digital recently announced that 2008 will be the year that music downloads can finally say goodbye to restrictions on MP3s — for good.

The digital music industry is having to consistently evolve to meet the needs of consumers. If only the RIAA would do the same.

Trent Reznor, frontman or Nine Inch Nails, has come out with the absurd idea that there should be an Internet tax to compensate for all the illegal music downloads that go on. It seems that everybody is trying to figure out a way to tackle filesharing and free music downloads.

Trent Reznor’s idea is that all users of the Internet be charged $5 by their ISP. This money would then somehow be redistributed to artists. This would be incredibly difficult to administer.

Also, it seems ridiculous to make the whole world pay for the small percentage of people who use filesharing services for dodgy music downloads. We thought Trent Reznor was a bastion for free music downloads, but we’re not so sure any more.

Reznor was unhappy with his experience with the Saul Williams album, which he made available for fans to pay what they thought the music download was worth. Reznor is thinking about doing the same for the next NIN album, but if he does so, he will likely offer a real CD as well as the music download.

Poor guy seems baffled by the world. Remember that this was the guy who told his fan to steal his music.