Access 1010 free music albums with Jamendo

Jamendo is a community website that lets you discover a growing collection of currently 1010 free music albums released under Creative Commons using latest p2p technology.That´s right, you are free to download everything using bittorrent. But that´s not all Jamendo is about. They have a very active community that reviews albums, rates and tags them and offers personal recommendations.

Artists are paid using donations, if you like a album you are free to donate using paypal. This is a great new concept, I´d really like to see stats how this way of distributing albums compares to portals like itunes and the like. Do the artists get a better payment for instance ?

You might know the tagged approach, right at the start page you have a list of common tags like rock, ska and metal. Clicking a tag leads to the category page that displays the albums sorted in that category. Every album offers a listen icon that you simply click and it opens in your favorite player. You find the bittorent link on the same page there, if you want to download the full album right away or after listening to the music for some time.

You can click on the album cover which leads to the albums page. You see all songs listed, can listen to every song there, write reviews, spread the album by placing links on your homepage. Some bands offer CD versions of their albums which you can purchase from their website.

What else ? Downloads are available in MP3 (~200 Kbps) and OGG format (~300 Kbps). Last but not least you find recommendations that sound similar to the album you are currently viewing / listening to.

My suggestion ? Support them, it´s a great concept and finally a portal that stands in contrast to all commercial portals.