DRM Free Music Search

I discovered an interesting article on DRM Alternatives and would like to share it. DRM Free Music Search is a service that searches 19 music sites that offer - only - DRM free music. Some sites sell the music while others provide it for free to their visitors.

The search uses Ajax to display the search results instantly on the screen. Just enter a search term and watch how the results appear below the search box. Every result displays the title, the artist, the name of the album, the music site that hosts the file and if not free, the price of the song or album.

The only problem that I see is that you can't search for music genres which would have been a great addition. It is not super practicable if you just want to browse and do not have a particular artist, band or title in mind as you cannot really use the service for that.

I suggest you search for specific genres nevertheless as the service will return lots of links regardless. It is of course more practicable to enter the name of an artist or song and use the search engine this way instead.

I have been using the DRM Free Music Search mainly to visit the music sites that are in its index. The about page lists them all and provides links to their websites directly. Some do require registration before you can listen to songs, some offer only samples of each tune and cut the music after some seconds.

I think that this is the coming way of music distribution. Musicians do not need record labels anymore to spread their music. All they need is to record the music and upload it to a DRM free portal to make it available to a worldwide audience. Concerts and promotions in (small) clubs is their promotion, not TV advertisement.

Update: The search engine is no longer available. I suggest you head over to Jamendo for a large collection of free music that you can download to your computer.

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