Access free music albums with Jamendo

Martin Brinkmann
May 2, 2006
Updated • May 4, 2013
Music, Music and Video
|
5

Jamendo is on first glance a free music website. And while that is certainly true, it is much more than that. Artists can not only use it to make their music available, they can also benefit from making it available there by reaching a larger audience or selling music to that audience (for instance in CD form which some users prefer).

You can listen to or download music for free on the site. Downloads are provided via BitTorrent or direct downloads. What I personally like about the site is that you can listen to any song in full before you download it or decide to support an artist. Jamendo offers several community features that make the site attractive as well, from rating and tagging songs to personal recommendations and listening to Internet radio non-stop.

Artists are paid using donations: if you like an album or song you are free to donate using PayPal. This is a great new concept and I would like to see statistics on how well artists are doing in comparison to other portals such as iTunes. Are artists paid more on average, are they paid less or is there no difference at all?

The main page lists popular songs and radio stations that you may want to tune in right away. It offers an interesting selection of some of the most popular songs that are available on Jamendo. You can alternatively click on the discover, search, radios or my music options on top to browse the site. This can be done while you are browsing the website as the music player attaches itself automatically to the bottom of the page.

All album pages list listen and download options right at the top. You can alternatively download or play individual songs. The page lists the license as well as related albums and user reviews on the very same page. Webmasters can embed albums on their website to spread news about it, and everyone else can use the sharing options to share it on social networking sites such as Facebook or Google Plus.

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 uses a different approach to music distribution.

Update: Jamendo as of May 2013 makes available more than 370,000 songs on their website that you can in theory play or download all.

Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. Justin said on November 30, 2011 at 10:18 am
    Reply

    The warning message about AAC streams when you load streams is because you don’t have the free Orban AAC/aacPlus Player Plugin installed.

    http://codecpack.co/download/Orban-aacPlus-Player-Plugin.html

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 30, 2011 at 10:56 am
      Reply

      Justin, thanks for the information.

  2. santosh said on December 1, 2011 at 12:43 am
    Reply

    does this support AAC ? or only mp3 streaming

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on December 1, 2011 at 1:43 am
      Reply

      I’d say it supports all pls streams but I have not tried that so cannot verify it 100%.

  3. Barnabas said on August 3, 2012 at 5:15 pm
    Reply

    Thank you Martin for a most informative and viable solution (it allowed me to play streams from a Netherland internet radio station in my WMP)! Continued success to you!

    Barnabas (USA)

  4. AppleRome said on October 7, 2012 at 7:31 am
    Reply

    Your steps’ recommendation is still valid until 7th October 2012.. Thank you very much !!

  5. Laura said on December 1, 2012 at 4:41 pm
    Reply

    Thank you!

  6. sak2005 said on December 9, 2014 at 8:03 pm
    Reply

    You must convert file.pls to file.m3u
    because file.pls open with winamp and file.m3u open with wmp.

  7. Lithium said on February 10, 2017 at 11:10 am
    Reply

    Hi
    2017 still kicking on Windows 7
    Thx a ton

  8. Dennis said on April 18, 2017 at 4:05 am
    Reply

    Hey, even i can do it, i stumbled through it and it works great! The only instruction advice i will add as i had to figure this out, when the wmp box opens that says save or open the bar on right says wmp click that drop down and select “open pls in wmp” once you do that it will work . Took me quite some time to discover that as i am no computer expert by any means. Having said that, previously i had downloaded codec packages and something about aac. None did any good. This rocks, i listen to a lot of internet radio and a number of them have dropped flash player and getting wmp to work had been a nightmare. So many thanks for this great solution to another problem that Micro-Hell will not even address. Peace- Out

  9. stephen marshall said on March 19, 2019 at 2:07 am
    Reply

    openplsinwmp came in a zip file. I unpacked it, and didn’t find anything that looks like an executable, and even the files in the “doc” folder were in a format windows didn’t recognize. I’m not stupid. you said it would open effortlessly. It didn’t. This a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.