I wrote an article about living without the music industry a month ago. In this article I added some good sites that offered free music downloads. Lots of people replied to this article and added more sites that they used to get free music. Free, meaning free of charges and free to download without breaking the law.
I think that this is a good way to listen to great music for free, support the artists that contribute their music and show the music industry that there are other methods to distribute than forcing the customer to buy copy protected, rootkit infested overpriced music cds.
Update: I published a new updated list that can is named Free Music List July 2007.
Today I decided to compile a big list of free music sites on the internet, I hope you enjoy this selection.
I encourage everyone to add his site to the list and give a rough intro to it. The list does not contain internet radio stations or streaming services, only sites that allow downloads in mp3 format (its fine if they offer additional streaming services) . I made an exception to sites that offer a huge list of streaming titles, those have been added as well.
| Name | registration | remark |
| 3 Hive | no | review site with downloads and streams |
| Altsounds | no | great assortment, not all songs downloadable |
| Amazon Music Downloads | yes | |
| Ampcast | no | only streaming |
| Archive.org Netlabels | no | |
| Artistopia | no | downloading and streaming |
| Audiostreet | no | Streaming and Downloading |
| Audiri | no | great assortment, not all songs downloadable |
| Bluebeat | yes | only streaming |
| CC Mixter | no | only mixes |
| Cd Baby | no | only streaming |
| Feels like Christmas | no | christmas music |
| Classic Cat | no | provides links to download sites |
| Dance Industries | no | |
| Digitalsounds | no | downloads and streams, german language |
| Dmusic | no | downloads and streams |
| Download.com | no | |
| Epitonic | no | Streaming and Downloading |
| Etree Live Concerts | no | bittorrent downloads |
| Etree Live Music | no | only live music |
| Foem | no | |
| Free Kids Songs | no | songs for children |
| Free Sound Project | no | free sound samples |
| Garageband | no | good selection, hard to navigate |
| Gigatracks | no | downloads and streams |
| Into Music | no | downloads and streams |
| Iuma | no | |
| Jamendo | no | bittorent or emule downloads |
| Kahvi | no | |
| Karadar | no | classic music only |
| Legal Torrents | no | bittorent downloads |
| Magnatune | no | downloads and streaming |
| Mixposure | no | |
| Mp3.com.au | no | downloads and streams |
| Mp3 Jackpot | no | downloads |
| Muzie | no | japanese site |
| Overclocked Remix | no | computer and video game remixes |
| Oddio Overplay | no | links to artists homepages |
| Oggle | no | google like search engine |
| One Netlabel | no | |
| Op Sound | no | |
| Purevolume | no | |
| Remixwars | yes | electronic music |
| Singfish | no | only streaming, lots of known bands |
| Soundclick | no | few downloads, mostly streaming |
| Soundlift | no | streaming and downloading |
| Starfrosch | no | german site |
| Superhits | no | german, mostly german songs |
| Tonspion | no | german site |
| United Bands | no | |
| Vitaminic | no | only streaming |
| Weed Files | no | only wma |
Related Articles:
Free Music List July 2007Free file host list december 2005
Huge List of Free Legal MP3 Sites
Download free music from Last.fm
Free Legal Music Downloads: In China
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don’t forget about MP3 4U and mp3jackpot, providing only the best free and legal mp3′s on the internet for over 5 years now.
My favorite site for free music is:
www.tractorgrease.com
Its a collection of independent musicians from Vancouver, BC, Canada, that offer many free downloads of mp3s as well as videos.
Magnatunes offers both downloads and streaming
http://www.pandora.com/ for music exploration.
I write music and offer free MP3 downloads. Some of it ain’t half
bad. :-)
http://music.tparker.net
My favorite site for music is http://www.slackermag.com/
It is relatively new, but is coming up fast.
Singingfish isn’t streaming only. A little trick I like to call “right-clicking” the link, then combo with “Save (whatever) as.” Don’t tell them I told you ;)
This site also got the free music: http://foem.info/index.php
the witness exchange
I miss www.artistserver.com in this list :)
Concrete and Clay: a “netlabel” filtering creative commons licenced mp3s for your ears. Experimental, alternative, iconoclastic.
www.concreteandclay.com/mp3/
Try here http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm
You will find:
2063music netlabel MP3 Archives – Volume 1 – 735MB MP3
8 Bit Peoples netlabel MP3 Archives – Volume 1 – 584MB MP3
Best Of Webbed Hand Records Vol.1 – 671MB MP3
etc.
Scroll down a page or two to get to the music section.
My site, Largehearted Boy, lists ten free and legal music downloads (live shows, selections from bands, singles), as well as ten live shows/demos available via bittorrent:
http://blog.largeheartedboy.com
Some more:
http://amigaremix.com/
http://scenemusic.net/
what about http://last.fm
MPFree.com is probably the best site for getting free music that’s legal. They have more than 750,000 free tracks from every major lables and many indie labels.
Another point to note, there are websites that offer
lawfully free mp3 downloads whose primary purpose is not necessarily
to offer music for free. For example, stinsonstudios.com is a music studio whose purpose is to get musicians to buy studio time with them. They offer mp3 demos of what they can do, and, for obvious reasons, the demos are particularly good. This phenomenon is what an economist would refer to as ‘positive externalities’ and there are many other examples just like it.
http://www.lawrence.com/mp3/top/
This site represents the music scene for a University Town in America that has a thriving music scene. The best thing about it is that the 1000 or so MP3s are sorted by popularity.
22. I agree with you. Nothings for free in live. I think the main purpose for sites like the ones in the list is to give the bands a certain degree of promotion and maybe also to gain money by selling music. Money for the sites and the bands of course.
Check out my piano solos for free here: http://www.ThirdEyeNow.com/music/
Click on ‘New Doors’, ‘Beyond the Apex’ or ‘Sound Bucket’.
A handful of major label act mp3s can be found on AOL Music at http://music.aol.com/songs/downloads/mp3_main?icid=songs:mp3
http://muziek.o-c-g.nl : 6 complete CD’s of the OCG avriable for download in MP3 and OGG Vorbis!
Site is in Dutch but its easy to understand huw to click. Music itself is in German.
I translate your informations in italian, on http://www.liveweb24.net , I wrote the source of information linking the post with your site, I hope you agree with it.
Regards, and compliments for the site.
logu
http://www.logu.it
http://www.liveweb24.net
Vitaminic (http://vitaminic.com) does, contrary to your comment, offer mp3 downloads, besides the Real streaming. Only, you have to dig deeper into the site, and go to the artists’ own pages, first. The streams are far easier to reach, directly from the charts.
Aurgasm: http://aurgasm.us/
Eclectic
www.thepowerless.com
this band offers all their tracks for free and they have high production quality.
this french wiki has tons of links to sites with excellent free mp3s: http://rezal404.org/wikini/wakka.php?wiki=Mp3Legal
need music for an ipod – subscription sites like MP3Musiq are they
good quality and the subscription a really good deal. Mom in need of advice
i’m a little saddened no one mentioned my site as their favorite… so i will:
Molly O’Poverty’s Guide to (Mostly) Free Music is just that, terrific music i’ve found that’s offered freely and legally (either by the artist(s) or the labels themselves). the Guide got a big write up on Lifehacker back in June when it was launched, too
http://www.mollyopoverty.com
www.pandora.com has streaming services, but they offer a ton of music options, so I thought I’d mention it.