Usually the most popular downloads are shown on the home page of the iTunes store. As you can see from this image the film ‘The Tourist’ with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp is on display, as well as some of the top singles this week. However, these are not cheap. Obviously, one or two downloads a week isn’t going to break the bank, but for those who like to discover new music, this isn’t really an option. This is why free downloads on iTunes are great.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits that come with downloading free music from iTunes. Firstly, there is the ability to discover new music that you probably would not have been able to find otherwise. There are several artists available on iTunes with free tracks. The good thing about this is that you can continuously add new music to your iTunes library and possibly discover an artist that you love and would like to hear more of. When you are buying music from iTunes you are only going to be buying songs by artists that you have actually heard of whereas free music offers a much wider range of different styles of music that you would not otherwise listen to.

Of course, there are downsides to downloading free music on iTunes, but these negatives are far outweighed by the positives. The only real negative is that you are not going to be able to get well known songs by really popular artists for free. Occasionally, there will be popular songs available for free download such as live versions, but this is not a regular occurrence. So, you may be wondering how you can download free music from iTunes. The good news is that this really couldn’t be simpler. First, you are going to want to scroll down to the bottom of the home page, as shown below.

Here you will see a section labelled as ‘Free On iTunes’. Please note that this section may not be available in all localized iTunes stores.Once you see this section you should click on the ‘See All’ tab, and you will be presented with the page shown below.

The great thing about this section is that not only can you download free music, but you can also download TV episodes, movies, music videos, and apps all for free. As you can see from the image shown above, this is a really easy page to navigate. All you have to do is click on the song that you want to download and then it will start downloading automatically. Once the download is complete you will find it in your library on iTunes. It really is as simple as that. So, there you go, a quick guide on getting free stuff from iTunes!

The iTunes store is regularly replacing the free music, tv shows and other media with new free media. It pays to check the section regularly.

You do need an Apple iTunes account that is associated with a real person in the iTunes store’s country to download free music, tv shows and other media.

It is theoretically possible to create a fake account to download the free music and stuff from iTunes. It is not that complicated to setup but legally questionable.

Pulptunes is a iTunes music server that can stream mp3 and m4a files over the Internet. The music can then be accessed in any modern web browser including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Opera. The user can then access the music that is stored on his local computer system over the Internet.

PulpTunes is not only available for Windows operating systems but also Linux and Macintosh. The software program tries to find the location of the iTunes XML file automatically which worked fine on the test system. Linux users and those where it was not found automatically need to add the path to the program manually.

Songs can be played directly in the web browser or downloaded with a right-click. All iTunes playlists and genres are available in the interface which makes it easier to locate albums or songs. A search is also provided to search the music collection.

Advanced options are available that include a basic user management so that only authorized users have access to the web service. Other options include:

• Displays cover art if found
• Generate direct links to songs or playlists to send to your friends
• iTunes DJ integration
• Command-line mode for server environments
• Adjustable buffer level

PulpTunes needs to be running on the local computer system so that users can connect to the service over the Internet.

The only other available option is to select a playlist to be created or extended with the music that is found in the monitored directory. This is an optional step though and not required for the music import to work properly. The software will check the folder for new music periodically and add it automatically to iTunes whenever new music is discovered in that folder on the drive. It looks like the interval is set to 1 minute as music that is moved to the folder gets quickly added to iTunes all the time.

The program has to be running in the background for this to work properly. It uses quite some computer memory (34 Megabytes on a Windows XP test system) which might make it to memory hungry for some computer systems. Could be worth a try for users who regularly add music to a specific folder and its subfolders on a computer system though. The music does get added to iTunes regularly as well.

A total of 19 different scripts are available that can be executed from the interface. The scripts usually spawn a dos window that will execute the selected script. A selection of the script itunes_not_found will for example scan the iTunes music library for music that is no longer available on the local hard drive. Other cleanup scripts include the search for duplicate music in iTunes. Some scripts require user input like removing songs based on a playlist or location. The script collection will usually list the available options and wait for keyboard input to continue executing the script.

Teridon’s iTunes Scripts provide a great way of cleaning up the music collection in Apple iTunes. The script collection does contain several additional scripts that might be worth a try. One interesting script is for example the one that will create a playlist containing all songs of a connected iPod.

The scripts are also available as Perl scripts for users who do not like to download the executables. They have been tested both with iTunes 6 and 7 but most should work fine if iTunes 8 is installed on the computer system as well.