Traditionally, when people were searching for “iPhone downloads”, they were looking for free (or a better/wider range of) music, movies, videos, TV shows, iPhone games – and to a lesser extent, ring-tones, wallpaper, and software than was available from iTunes.
But with so many free games and apps (and wallpapers, to some extent) in iTunes, people are now mostly looking for music, movies and TV shows – which are rarely free or cheap from iTunes – and soon become a big expense if purchased there!
Fortunately, the “buy/rent every single media file” model that iTunes uses is just way of delivering music and movies – and the most expensive!
Others include:
1) One-fee “membership sites” – now largely outlawed as they encourage illegal downloading (and claim they have thousands of free music, movie etc files for us to download.) Some are still around but are mostly run “offshore”. Which means they are out of the laws reach – but we are not!
2) Legal membership sites – that require monthly membership fees for us to have access to all their music (and sometimes movies and TV shows). Check this example from our many archives.
3) Free music/media sites. These include sites that provide a platform for new artists to upload their music and/or videos and make them available to us for free. These also include “Creative Commons License” (free license) But because music is so profitable -there are big players who spend BIG bucks trying to shut down any and all sites that offer free music to us! Check out what happened to one of our favorites – Seeqpod. Also check out this example ( click Jamendo) from our many archives.
4) Another model is illustrated by those sites that make media free but we must watch adds before we can view the video/movie or listen to the music. Check this example from our many archives.
5) Then there is the whole array of sites that provide some free iPhone downloads (like ring-tones, wallpapers etc) – and survive (just! in these tough economic times) by placing ads in the near vicinity of these free downloads, or by collecting our email addresses and then marketing to us by sending us emails. Check this example from our many archives.
If you browse through our categories you will find a rich selection of sites from which you can get iPhone downloads – from freebies through to memberships sites through to the ad-supported delivery model.
We currently favor the “free trial” method of getting free iPone downloads. But more on that in our next post.