Shopfar.com - Shopping Portal Offers New Way to Get Free, Legal Music Downloads

Shopfar.com is the first shopping portal to reward its users with free, legal music downloads, thanks to US company Karma Collective Inc. and Apple’s iTunes Music Store®, the world’s largest and most popular legal music download center.

Shopfar.com users earn free iTunes® song codes as they shop on any of the portal’s hundreds of different shopping sites which include Target, Overstock.com, Orbitz and 1-800-Flowers.com.

These song codes can be redeemed for music downloads at Apple’s iTunes Music Store® from a choice of over 2 million songs from both major and independent labels. There is no limit to the number of songs that can be earned through Shopfar.com; and by taking advantage of the Shopfar Invitation Program, users can greatly increase their earnings every month by receiving one song for every two earned by an unlimited number of invited friends.

Shopfar.com could not hit the web at a better time. The spectacular rise of online consumerism has meant that Internet shopping and music downloading stories continue to sweep the headlines.

Thanks to the success of the iPod® and the user-friendliness of Apple’s iTunes Music Store®, the market for music downloads has skyrocketed. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, “Single track downloads in the US, the UK, Germany and France have risen to 180 million in the first half of 2005 compared to 157 million for the whole of 2004.”

While legal downloading is on the rise, the prevalence of illegal music file-sharing is still a major concern. Since September 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America has been actively pursuing law suits against those engaged in online piracy, but a recent study by BigChampagne shows there was a 100% increase of Americans illegally trading copyrighted songs since the law suits began, bringing the number up to 8.6 million in April 2005 .

Until now, music downloads were either free or legal. With Shopfar.com they’re both.