10 Legal Ways to Find Cheap Music

You don't have to risk a lawsuit to get your music for cheap -- or free.

More than four years after the Recording Industry Association of America began suing individuals for downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks like Grokster, cheap music can be found in a variety of places. Some recording artists are even giving it away.

In July, Prince made his new album, "Planet Earth," available as an insert in the Daily Mail newspaper in Britain. Ray Davies, formally of the Kinks, has a similar promotion, where he will offer 1.5 million copies of his latest album, "Working Man's Café," for free on Oct. 21 with the Sunday Times newspaper in the U.K. Alternative rockers Radiohead also are making available their new album "In Rainbows" for whatever each person thinks it's worth -- which means you can choose free -- on their Web site.

These free music offers are still somewhat rare and the digital music landscape is still taking shape. But that doesn't mean it has to cost a fortune to build your music collection.

Here's 10 ways to build your collection on the cheap:

1. Music downloads: When talking about cheap music, nothing beats free. While the news makes it sound like anything you download for free from the Internet is illegal, the truth is that there are hundreds of thousands of songs that can be legally downloaded in all music genres. These songs may not be the latest hits from the top artists, but there should be plenty of variety to suit any musical taste. You can find a large list of free places to download music at Digital Alchemy.

2. Wikipedia: This probably isn't your first thought when it comes to free music, but if your tastes flow toward classical, the user-generated encyclopedia has a huge list of free classical downloads. Another place to find plenty of free digital classical music is ClassicCat.