sleepy127

There are many places on the Internet to obtain legal, free music. Most free music is from obscure bands that few people know about. That is the whole point of them giving away their music though, to raise awareness for their band. There are also a few popular bands and artist out there who give away songs. I will list a few sites and the format they use.

1. i Tunes
You need to have a copy of their free player to receive the music and play it (as far as I know). It usually is labeled as the free single of the week; there is usually the discovery song of the week and also a mix tape that is about 20 minutes long. They download as aiff format (usually). To be able to play that on your non ipod mp3 player, you need to use the option burn to CD, then take the wave file on the CD and encode it to your favorite format. Remember though some music quality will be lost that way. Go to i tunes.com

2. Amazon.com free music
They have numerous songs, numerous genres, so dig in and search. All of the files that I have downloaded so far have been MP3 so there shouldn't be a problem there. I am a big fan of the blues and they have a ton of it there. So take a look, you may find something you like.

3. Audio archive.
Some people know about the archive because of movies (night of the living dead), but you can also score free music. It is mostly live recordings, so the sound quality varies from recording to recording, but if you are a music fan(atic) like me you will enjoy being able to listen to concerts (for free). There are a lot of obscure bands at this site also but you should be able to find people you have heard of. I have been downloading music from The Derek Trucks Band (anyone an Alman Bros. fan?). Most music from that site comes in the shn format. It is a lossless format that you can play on winamp with the right plug in. you can also download a tool to convert it to wave and then to mp3 (or any format you wish) The program is called mkw audio compression tool. It can be found here


Notes: most of this music is some form of open source or public domain. Read all information listed for the music you are downloading. Some you may be able to share and some is just for you. Remember to always scan for viruses. I have never had any trouble from these sites but there is always a first for every thing.

If any one else knows of places to score free (legal) music respond and I will add your source. You can email me

wowza

Hey, nice faq.... also i go to www.music.lycos.com/downloads to get my free music :D

casso

http://www.purevolume.com/ they also have bands that showcase their work with free downloads and previews.

tygur

here's a great one with very new upcoming artists of all genres, all of "local" variety

kingsofar.com

Pauli

download.com/music

TheInformationator

www.videocodes4u.com

So many good music videos on there. Coldplay = t3h pwn.

paintballproam

is limewire legal?lol

Zipnogg

@paintball: having that kind of p2p file sharing program is legal, but if you d/l copyrighted stuff from there, it's illega.

www.download.com also has a music archive, but not that big, imo.

Syst3m

well, i'm pretty sure any form of p2ping copyrighted stuff in the USA is illegal, but i'm certain that in Canada, its legal to download, just not to upload

bryman31

by subscribing to newsgroups you can get tons of music as well..........my brother subscribes to news groups, and has like 6 different hard drives in his server, all of them full of music, and movies he got off newsgroups, ive seen him do it, he just starts clicking then in like 20 mins, he has like 20 different albums