I'm thinking of opening site like http://songforever.com But I wonder do I have to pay for mp3 that I'll place on website and also is it legal ?
you won't have to pay per song you should have to buy the copyrights from studios for them , like if you want to do it like spotify that is legit, the one above is hosted on offshore server and pretty much game for hunted down if wanted. go through their TOS. going legit would cost millions or do it their way which in certain parts of the world is not legal and in some parts they don't give a damm.
Does it cost a lot of money to pay for copyrights ? What is better to pay or belive in my luck and don't pay for it
A place to start is with companies like BMI: http://www.bmi.com/ They work with a number of artists to pay royalties for the songs you use. There may be other services like BMI, but that is just the first one that came up on search results and a name that I have heard of. Jamie Dolan
it could cost some good 100 k to half a mil to set up with a decent playlist form lables , it depends on your location and if you want to take the plunge and have enuff guts to bin dmca notices if in U.S.A then just forget abt it. btw lables really don't pay artists anyways din't your hear lady gaga got paid 167 usd for a some million times her songs were played on Spotify for this year artists want be heard it is the labels and studios which keep the money both ways.
You would be looking to license the recordings and unless your an established company they aren't going to touch you as it would require you having access to there entire catalogue. a lot of recordings are actually managed / owned by music publishing company’s on behalf of labels rather than labels themselves. pick up any cd you own and see who it is "published" by, they are the best people to talk to. you might also want to talk to services that offer digital distribution for record labels. these company’s take labels content and put it on a number of sites for them (basically a form of outsourcing for labels), this gives labels access to sites like itunes who won't take just anyone. if you align yourself with these company’s you can get them to automatically put content on your site for every customer they have and will have in the future. this is how i would approach it, i've worked within music for about 8 years (mainly underground dance genre, retail, manufacturing and physical sales) but i have worked with digital and will be in the future.
So will it be okay if I put the mp3's on website but also I'll post button with hyperlink to shop where users can buy Original cd's ?
legally, no. you might get away with it if the mp3 was a preview i.e only the first 2mins of the song. that site songforever doesn't host any of the audio, looks like it scrapes other audio websites for music. take a look at there copyright notice: songforever.com/copyright.html