Apple’s iTunes store continues to grow into a world-dominating resource for legal music downloads. The music-download giant now stands as the second most-popular music retailer in the US, trailing only Wal-Mart.

iiTunes has more than 50 million customers all keen to get their hands on the latest legal music downloads of fresh new tracks and reissued classics. To date, Apple claims that more than four billion legal music downloads have been sold through iTunes – that’s insane.

iTunes also boasts a huge catalogue of more than six million songs. According to NPD, almost half of all US teens did not buy a CD in 2007, instead choosing to get music downloads either through services like iTunes, or else filesharing programs like Ares or Limewire.

Legal music downloads now account for about 10% of all the music acquired in the US. The number of people buying legal music downloads increased by five million to 29 million this year compared with last, but is still dwarfed by the number of people using different free music download software

Another new website for music downloads has launched. This time, iPodDownloadsPro is looking to set the world of music downloads on fire by offering free music for your iPod. Of course, it’s not all completely free, as you have to pay a subscription to get access to the downloads.

You pay a one-time fee and get free music downloads for life. It seems like a pretty cool idea at face value — and the website looks all right, but is this service worth opting for?

As well as free music downloads, you get access to movies, games and videos. We’re only really interested in the music downloads. We’re really suspicious of this service because a lifetime membership costs just $34.95. There is the option of a 56-day money-back guarantee, but having never heard of the company and seeing that the website doesn’t look especially well-designed, we’re not going to take the plunge just yet.

The problem is that you can’t see what you will have access to before you get your membership. We’ll ask around and see what other people are saying. $34.95 is awfully cheap.

It’s not just Radiohead and indie bands who are embracing digital music — classical music artists are also keen to get involved with the trend of music downloads. Violinist Tasmin Little has released her album Naked Violin as a free download.

Little has said that she didn’t think many people would be tempted to buy the album as it was, but the response to offering free MP3 downloads of the LP has been “phenomenal” and could play a pivotal role in her career.

Little has given away thousands of free MP3 downloads and her website now receives 30 times as much traffic as before. Although she isn’t making money from sales of the MP3 downloads, she’s made a name for herself and can reap the benefits in other ways, such as concerts and endorsements, as well as future albums.

Free MP3 downloads clearly create a major buzz when marketed right.

In the US in 2007, MP3 downloads of classical albums were up almost 50% on the previous year.

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.