Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Thing 70: Free (and legal!) MP3 downloads

As the holiday season wraps up, many of our patrons are bringing in shiny new MP3 players and looking to us to magically fill their MP3 players with music. Not just any music - current and popular music. Oh, and it should be free, of course. Since there is no hope of Santa returning in the near future, we are finding ourselves explaining over and over again that, yes there is free music available, but it may not be the top 40 hits and it may not be legally uploaded to the internet.

To help these patrons filter through all of the music download websites on the internet and find free and legal MP3 downloads, we have compiled a list of free and "almost free" websites. Thanks to the detective work of our staff and one really informative web page ("Keep Rocking: 30+ Sites for Free and Legal Music"), we are able to provide our patrons with a large variety of websites and musical genres to choose from.

Websites that offer inexpensive MP3 downloads:

Rhapsody.com-Must have a credit card. The Rhapsody To Go Plan is $14.99 a month.
Emusic.com-Must have credit card OR paypal account. The cheapest plan on there is $11.99 per month plus a bonus of 50 downloads for free.
Napster.com-The Napster to GO plan is $14.95 a month, must have credit card. The plan includes unlimited transfers to compatible mp3 players.

Websites that offer free MP3s:

Amazon MP3 Store - The vast majority of the music at Amazon is for sale, but they do have a rotation of free tracks available for download.
AmieStreet.com
- Focused on promoting new and independent music, their downloads range from free to $0.98 as they grow in popularity.
Archive.org
- An enormous collection of public domain music, expired copyright tracks, as well as some free contemporary music.
ArtistServer.com
- It started off as a resource for independent electronic musicians, but is now open to all. All tracks can be downloaded for free.
BeSonic.com
- Offers over 13,000 free tracks from mostly European acts.
BetterPropaganda.com
- A music webzine covering hundreds of music labels, and offering thousands of free & legal songs for you to download.
CCMixter.org
- a site dedicated to music that you can download to remix and post your results, all under the Creative Commons license.
Cooltoad.com
Download.com
- Most people think CNet’s Download.com is just about software, but they also have tens of thousands of free MP3s you can download from new as well as up and coming bands.
Epitonic.com
- A large selection of free tracks from smaller record companies that are free to download with larger releases available for purchase
EZ-Tracks.com
- Offers over 30,000 legal downloads that are managed through a partnership with the labels. Starts you off with credit for 101 free upon registering.
FreeAlbums.blogsome.com
- A blog that posts reviews of complete albums that are available for free downloads from numerous sources.
GarageBand.com
- Independent bands can upload their music, then have it rated by users, as well as downloaded for free.
Imeem.com
- Features streaming music from all of the major labels as well as numerous smaller companies, with numerous free downloadable tracks.
ItsFreeDownloads.com
- Finding the free downloads on iTunes can be a chore, this site does the work for you and lets you know what’s free each week.
Jamendo.com
- Artists upload their albums under Creative Commons, allowing new listeners to discover their work. Although free, there is the opportunity to donate to the performers of your choice.
Last.fm
- While most people know Last.fm for its streaming and social aspects, they offer a weekly chart of downloadable free mp3s.
Live Music Archive
- Part of Archive.org, features thousands of live performances by smaller bands as well as the likes of the Grateful Dead and Jason Mraz.
MetalHordes.com
- A band promotion site focusing on various forms of heavy metal, and allowing bands to upload mp3s users can download for free.
MP3.com
- Besides their paid section, MP3.com does offer a large selection of free tracks from acts small and large alike.
MP3.com.au
- Focusing on Australian bands, mp3.com.au offers a repository for bands to upload their music for people to download and try for free.
MP34U - Works in conjunction with Muzic.com, this site finds sources of free music & legal music from all over the Web.
MP3Raid.com
- Searches multiple sources to bring you approximately a million free song downloads.
Muzic.com
- A sister site to MP34U, wherein the artists upload their tracks themselves, and muzic.com helps them promote their work.
Music.download.com—click on “111,000 Free MP3s” at the top of the page
Purevolume.com
- Allows independent musicians to set up profiles for themselves, stream their music and gives them the option of enabling their work for free downloads.
Ruckus.com
- Ruckus provides free music to people with .edu email addresses, and requires you to renew your licenses for DRM once a year.
SoundClick.com
- Offering a mixture of signed and unsigned artists the opportunity to set up profile pages and either stream their music or offer it up for free downloads.
SpiralFrog.com
- Major release albums and tracks available for the price of just watching some advertisements.
Stereogum.com
- Daily free mp3s from various artists, as well as rotating free albums.
TuneShout.com
- A site for independent artists to promote themselves. Artists can upload tracks either for free or at a user cost of $0.89.
We7.com
- We7 offers mp3 downloads for free, but they do have advertisements attached to them. If you want them without the ads, they do offer a paid alternative.

Discovery Exercise:
1. Go to one of the websites posted above.
2. Choose a song to download.
3. If you have an MP3 player, transfer that song from the computer to your MP3 player.

32 comments:

Steve Purdham We7 CEO said...

Hi Jennifer
Thanks for the We7 namecheck, we are building great things in pushing legal free music forward. Just wanted to say that we have also extended full album and track streaming so worth another look

Cheers

Steve
CEO We7
www.we7.com Great Free Music from We7

Jamie said...

I stumbled over http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Download_Free_Music today; it may have some more resources, especially if the patron is already pretty confident using the internet.

Unknown said...

it's already an awesomely long list, but here's another: magnatune.com

Unknown said...

芦荟蜂胶蜂王浆杭州装修公司杭州店面装修杭州办公室装修杭州装饰公司双电源切换开关双电源转换开关双电源开关双电源双电源开关柜双电源切换开关双电源转换开关双电源开关乐清网站推广.
玉环网站推广.

玉环网站建设乐清网站建设ball valve球阀gate valve闸阀angle valve角阀bibcock水嘴tapCheck valvehot-water heatingfittings苏州led上海led北京led苏州电磁铁苏州装修公司苏州装饰公司ats双电源切换开关双电源转换开关双电源开关双电源切换开关双电源转换开关双电源开关乐清网站推广.

乐清网站建设.

Anonymous said...

Nice Blog. I liked it..

Hetal

[http://www.gold-shop-test.de]

XoMash said...

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along and I thought of leaving a comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Free Downloads

Unknown said...

Hello, there's another social networking site where you could find and meet new friends..

Punkai.com Music Social Network

James L. Boucher said...

not listed free mp3 search - pepperonimp3.com search engine/

martin said...

Pocasters, especially people how are writing first time novels and podcasting them on Podiobooks.com use these sites all the time for bumper music. It's amazing what's out there.

Unknown said...

Too cool! I will definately be making use of this. Thank you so much for the post!

Andy Moore said...

Hi there,

Any chance of getting a link to http://www.officialmp3s.com please, it's a legal mp3 download site with over four million songs, all DRM free so you can play them on any device you wish!

Thanks

FM-96 Sunrise Pakistan... said...

nice post for free music downloads but you had not added this site for free music downloads http://www.enjoymp3.co.cc
WWW.Enjoymp3.co.cc is website (Search Engine ) in which you can search any song.You can listen it online or download to your hard disk.so remember
the site is www.enjoymp3.co.cc also tell your friends about it

FM-96 Sunrise Pakistan... said...

nice post.. iam digging it for free music downloads i use
free music download

Muggie said...

Another almost free mp3 site is:
www.freealmusic.com. At present it is stil beta and you must register to be sent an invite (mine took a month). They have agreements will several major recording companies so popular artists are available. No software is needed either. The drawback is that you must watch an ad, you can pick from the offerings, before you get the link to download.

Unknown said...

nice post its really great to read your post. i enjoyed reading this article thanks for sharing.

Acai Berry

Unknown said...

All over the world universities


I really appreciate to blog posting

dolly said...

Hello friends,this is dolly smith......
=============
SEO services

Anonymous said...

If you're still on the fence: grab your favorite earphones, head down to a Best Buy and ask to plug them into a Zune then an iPod and see which one sounds better to you, and which interface makes you smile more. Then you'll know which is right for you. Teen Sex Clips Teen Sex Galleries Teen Sex Mpegs Teen Sex Mpgs Teen Sex Pictures Teen Sex Pix Teen Sex Video Clips

catey03 said...

It is a Nice post i had searched in many of the blogs but not found like this one anyway cheers to all..
Tax Attorneys

Unknown said...

Wow, this is awesome list, thanks man!

jasmine green tea

daftdomain said...

please add my site for mp3 downloads

it's

http://www.daftdomain.com

Unknown said...

At present it is steel beta and you must register to be sent an invite (mine took a month). They have agreements will several major recording companies so popular artists are available.

Unknown said...

They have agreements will several major recording companies so popular artists are available.


P90X

Anonymous said...

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along and I thought of leaving a comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading.


Radialabs
Radialabs Reviews

Ronald said...

It is nice to find a site about my interest. My first visit to your site is been a big help. Thank you for the efforts you been putting on making your site such an interesting and informative place to browse through. I'll be visiting your site again to gather some more valuable information. You truly did a good job. paycheck loan

Unknown said...

Great list of sites. Some of them are not even familiar to me, I just know it through here.

Edwin@SEO Help

Kyle Grando said...

Amazing Article, These sort of post are constantly inspiring and I prefer to read quality content so I happy to find many effective point here in the post please share me more.

Anaheim disneyland hotels

Unknown said...

Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success.
business voip systems

Unknown said...

Thank You for the post, I was looking for the post for a long time. And now find it very concretely.
voip providers

abd said...

Your work is deserved to be appreciated hard working efforts done in your blog.Download GTA San Andreas For PC | Download Age of Empires 3 For PC | Download Angry Birds Space For PC | Download Far Cry For PC

Unknown said...


I Like your blog,will sharing this with my friends, excellent work.
small business voip

Bùi Minh Trading said...

Viglacera
thanks the great post