Free, Legal Music Downloads?

[AZ_Dawn]

I may be getting an MP3 player soon, but I'm on a limited budget. Google brings up more site concerning free, legal music than you can shake a stick at, but it's hard to know which ones to trust. (One site had a list of links that looked legit; then I found out the site advocated taking the copyright clause out of the Constitution. :rant:)

Are there free, legal music sites you'd recommend? Do such sites exist? I have a preference for adult contempary and classical music, but any genre will do.

Thanks!

[Medievalist]

Amazon and iTunes every week put up free mp3s.

And there's a bunch of free mp3s on Amazon. All of these are legal.

Naxos has a fair amount of free streaming legal music.

[Alessandra Kelley]

Thanks, Medievalist. I wouldn't trust a Google search for "free, legal" anything, no matter how much they try to avoid scammers. Too many creepy sites.

[kuwisdelu]

Some artists make their music available for free, or for whatever price you decide to buy it. Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) is one, for example. Best bet is to go straight to the artists' websites.

[Medievalist]

Also, indie producers.

And there are some great deals on the legit services; there's a Classical music collection on iTunes that's 360 some tracks by familiar names of 24 hours of Classical Music for 9.99. It's not going to make a collector sigh, but for the casual listener it's a deal.

[Max Vaehling]

Browse your favorite artists's websites for audio samples. Some will even upload whole albums either for free or pay-as-you-will prices.

If you want to check out new, unknown stuff, there are lots of net labels and community sites. (I'd suggest a few labels but I don't know what you're into.) And, of course, the audio section of the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/audio). (Especially if you like live music. But they have lists of net labels, too.)

A good starting point is Jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/), a community where (mostly unknown) musicians upload their own (and thus legally downloadable) music - often whole albums. Very diverse, and you can search by style. Not all winners, but an amazing amount of good stuff.

[Alessandra Kelley]

If you like funny music, try tomsmithonline.com. Tom Smith does a lot of science fiction parody music, and he posts free songs. One of my family's favorites is "(When I grow up) I want to be Peter Lorre."

[Aylaa]

Mininova hosts legal free music since they lost their lawsuit as a torrent listing site. check that one out.

http://www.mininova.org/
You gotta be familiar with bittorrents though. As I see your new to get an mp3 player I'd doubt you have any clue what I'm talking about.

If by chance you purchased an iphone/itouch or some other type of small app device. You could look into using internet radio stations like pandora.com.

[Medievalist]

Also: Pandora for streaming--often they include links for free mp3s by artists.

[ejket]

If you have music on CDs, you can rip it to mp3. A famous free Windows app for this is EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/).

[Matera the Mad]

Must you have "free legal popular music", or are you interested in experiencing some variety? Because there are a lot of truly awesome musicians out there who give away their music, but they don't have best-selling CDs.

Learning to find anything on the Interwho is always both perilous and educational.

[AZ_Dawn]

Thanks, guys! Now I have more of an idea on where to look. :Thumbs:

Must you have "free legal popular music", or are you interested in experiencing some variety? Because there are a lot of truly awesome musicians out there who give away their music, but they don't have best-selling CDs.

It depends on the genre. For example, Joe Unknown Pianist has to be downright awful in order to ruin Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. With some other genres, it be nice if I knew the song/artist, but it's not utterly necessary.

[Medievalist]

Green Linnet (http://greenlinnet.com/), purveyors of fine traditional and folk music have a free MP3 every week.

Classics Online (http://greenlinnet.com/) has free tracks on registration, and no DRM.

[Matera the Mad]

No prob knowing song and artist, you get the goodies from the artist's site and keep track of the details yourself. Finding them is the trick. I've discovered quite a few over the years. I'm not usually searching for music when they turn up. It's fun to stumble over a new musical treasure.

Not every tune is going to turn your crank, either; some have chaff amid the gold. It can take a lot of downloading and taste-testing.