To legally download music, you have three basic paths: buy DRM-free files from stores like iTunes, Amazon, or Bandcamp; save offline copies through a paid streaming subscription such as Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music Unlimited; or pull free tracks from public domain archives, Creative Commons libraries, and the YouTube Audio Library. What ties every legitimate option together is a license from the copyright holder.
Buying Files You Keep
If you want music that lives on your own hard drive and plays without an internet connection or an active subscription, buy the file outright. Three stores sell downloads without Digital Rights Management (DRM), meaning the tracks copy freely to a phone, a USB drive, or any player.
- iTunes Store sells songs as DRM-free AAC files at 256 kbps, a format Apple calls “iTunes Plus.” You buy and download through the Music app on Mac or the iTunes app on Windows.1Apple Support. Intro to the iTunes Store in Music on Mac
- Amazon Music sells individual tracks and albums as DRM-free MP3 files, downloadable through a browser (typically as a ZIP) or the Amazon Music app.
- Bandcamp offers the widest format choice after purchase: MP3, FLAC, WAV, ALAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, or AIFF. FLAC and WAV are lossless, so no audio quality is lost in compression. Many Bandcamp artists set a name-your-price option that accepts $0, which makes it a common source of free, legal downloads too.2Bandcamp Help Center. Which Audio Format Should I Download?
The advantage of a purchased, DRM-free file is durability. If the store shuts down or changes its terms, the file on your drive still plays. This is the closest digital equivalent to owning a CD.
Offline Downloads From Streaming Services
Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music Unlimited all let you save tracks for offline listening, but these downloads are not purchases. The files are encrypted, tied to your account, and disappear when the subscription ends.
On Spotify, open an album, playlist, or podcast and tap the download arrow. A green arrow confirms the save. Spotify allows up to 10,000 songs across as many as five devices, and you need to connect to the internet at least once every 30 days so Spotify can verify the subscription. Miss that window and offline tracks are removed automatically.
On Apple Music, add the song or album to your library first, then tap the cloud-with-arrow icon. Turning on “Sync Library” in settings keeps downloads consistent across your Apple devices. The library ceiling is 100,000 songs.
On Amazon Music Unlimited, tap the three-dot menu next to a track or album and choose “Download.” The option works in the app on phones, tablets, and desktop.
Family plans add their own rules. Spotify’s Premium Family plan, for example, requires all members to live at the same address, and Spotify periodically re-verifies that; accounts that fail verification can be suspended.3Spotify. Spotify Premium Family Terms and Conditions And across every major service, canceling the subscription revokes access to everything you downloaded. If long-term access to a specific album matters to you, buy the DRM-free version as a backup even if you mostly listen through a streaming app.
Free Legal Downloads
Plenty of music is free to download without any licensing worry, though each category has its own rules.
Public Domain Recordings and Compositions
Once a copyright expires, a work enters the public domain and anyone can copy, share, or build on it. As of January 1, 2026, all published works from 1930 and earlier are in the U.S. public domain, covering a large catalog of early twentieth-century compositions.4Duke University School of Law. Public Domain Day 2026
Sound recordings run on a separate timeline under the Music Modernization Act. Recordings first published between 1923 and 1946 enter the public domain on a rolling schedule, and on January 1, 2026, recordings from 1925 become free to use.4Duke University School of Law. Public Domain Day 2026 The Internet Archive hosts tens of thousands of digitized 78rpm records from this era, all free to stream and download.
Creative Commons Music
Creative Commons (CC) licenses let artists share their work while keeping copyright. Instead of “all rights reserved,” the artist spells out what you can do: some licenses require only that you credit the artist, others restrict commercial use or remixing.5Creative Commons. About CC Licenses Once applied, a CC license cannot be revoked, so the terms you download under are the terms you can rely on going forward.
The Free Music Archive, currently operated by Tribe of Noise, offers a large catalog of CC-licensed tracks sorted by genre.6Free Music Archive. Free Music Archive Check the specific license on each track before you use it. Some allow commercial use; others don’t.
YouTube Audio Library
YouTube Studio includes an Audio Library of royalty-free music and sound effects cleared for use in YouTube videos. Some tracks require attribution in your video description (marked with a Creative Commons license); others carry a standard YouTube license that needs no credit.7YouTube Help. Use Music and Sound Effects from the Audio Library These tracks also don’t trigger Content ID claims, which matters for creators who monetize their channels.
Listening to Music vs. Putting It in a Video
This is where many people get caught out. Buying a song on iTunes or downloading it through a Spotify subscription gives you the right to listen. It does not give you permission to put the song in a YouTube video, a podcast, a TikTok, or a presentation, whether or not you’re making money.
Using copyrighted music in a video or multimedia project requires a synchronization license from the publisher who controls the composition and a master use license from the label that owns the specific recording. Two separate permissions from two separate rights holders. That requirement applies regardless of platform, audience size, or whether the content is monetized. Upload a video with unlicensed music to YouTube and the best outcome is a Content ID claim that mutes or demonetizes it. The worst is a takedown or a lawsuit.
For content creation, the safe options are CC-licensed tracks where the license clearly covers your intended use, the YouTube Audio Library, or royalty-free libraries that sell an appropriate sync license up front.
What to Avoid
Stream ripping, using a third-party tool or site to pull audio from YouTube, Spotify, or another service and save it as a file, is illegal on two grounds. Capturing and saving a copyrighted stream creates an unauthorized copy, which is copyright infringement under federal law because the copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce the work.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 106 – Exclusive Rights in Copyrighted Works Most streaming services also use technological measures to prevent downloading, and bypassing them violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention rules.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 1201 – Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems Sites advertising “YouTube to MP3” converters are operating in this space.
Beyond stream rippers, a few signals separate legitimate download sources from piracy sites. Any site offering entire catalogs of major-label music for free, with no subscription and no Creative Commons license, is almost certainly unauthorized. Suspiciously low prices for current popular music are another tell. HTTPS and a padlock icon are baseline expectations, not proof of legitimacy, since piracy sites use HTTPS too. When in doubt, stick with platforms that have public licensing relationships: Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, Bandcamp, and the Free Music Archive are all verifiable.
The penalties for getting this wrong are worth knowing even if enforcement against individual downloaders has slowed since the early 2000s. A copyright holder can sue for statutory damages between $750 and $30,000 per work infringed, rising to $150,000 per work if the court finds the infringement willful.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits Those amounts apply per song, so even a modest illegal collection carries large potential liability.