DRM Free Music Search

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 12, 2007
Updated • Jun 2, 2013
Music and Video
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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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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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