Tips on Free (and Legal) Music Downloads
There are tons of free but illegal P2P file sharing networks out there. And there are also plenty of legal downloading services that offer music for a per-download or subscription fee. But legal sites for free are a rarer find, since if it’s free that’s usually the best red flag that it’s illegal. But they are out there -- you just gotta know where to look:
1. Adam Pash’s ‘Top 8 Free Legal Music Downloads’ – gives you 8 great places to download free MP3s online. Some of the links are defunct, but the sites are still good, so link out from here: Amazon.com Free Music Downloads; Epitonic.com, which has an extensive database of searchable music; CommonTunes.org, a “community directory” of freely available, and DRM-free music; Garageband.com, which has independent music downloads; Matador Records, another site with indie music; Beethoven’s 9 Symphonies Free, performed by the BBC Philharmonic; Creative Commons Music, which has tons of free content available for listening, sampling, and sharing; and Salon.com Audiofile, which features selected artists for download, coupled with reviews.
2. Red Ferret - Links out to 1 million free and legal music tracks, from mega portals to review sites to band sites and streaming sites.
3. Goingware – Links out to tens of thousands of legal music downloads and reviews.
And note that if you just want to stream music while at your computer, Pandora and Last.fm are two great options. For a supercool music discovery site that also streams, check out Musicovery.
Comments
MYSPACE!!!
you can also get great free songs (and even entire albums like "The Secrets" by BULLETTE - bullette.net) from artist's websites.
Another great site is ETree Archive. The live audio section is enormous. It lists a variety of categories, but it has an alphabetical list of bands that allow live concert recordings. For example, I have download entire concerts that I actually attended, very cool. If you're looking for Britney Spears or Ludacris, don't waste your time, but anything from Grateful Dead concerts to the Gin Blossoms to underground musicians are included. Certainly worth a look...
Also, and a preferable option for many, is a new site, called lala.com
It is a CD trading service, which allows users to legally trade their old CDs for new ones. The price is only $1, or $1.75 including shipping for every CD you receive. lala already has hundreds of thousands of members, and hundreds of thousands of trades monthly.
There are some additional benefits. 20% of all trade revenues go to the Z Foundation, which was set up to give financial assistance to musicians. The original intent was to give this money direct to musicians as a royalty fund, but that has been modified to health care and benefits to musicians who apply for it. (Not enough musicians claimed their money!)
Lala allows you to even become a "DJ" by setting up your own radio station for others to listen to!
Most people have purchased many CDs which they are tired of. Imagine trading htem for somehting fresh, new or old. Explore music, converse with others over music preferences, etc. Its a great way to re-invigorate ones musical appreciation by sampling from the millions of songs in the lala database.
Your first CD received is free also, just sign up at lala.com