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Free music downloads without the guilt | NEWS.com.au
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Free music downloads without the guilt
By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson
The Courier-Mail
February 04, 2008 12:04pm
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Guilt-free listening ... find tracks by The Police, Christina Aguilera and Thom Yorke online / Lyndon Mechielsen, AP, Reuters
PERHAPS you found a gift-wrapped mp3 player under the Christmas tree this year, or maybe you invested hard-earned dollars on the very best iPod you could afford.
However you received your digital jukebox, it will be no good to you unless you pack it with digital tunes.
This need not be an expensive exercise though, as there's a veritable smorgasbord of free songs available on the internet to download and hold. Plus, downloading these songs won't turn you into a musical pirate or set American prosecutors on you — they're legal and free for the listening.
Below, we look at 20 of the best free music sites from Australia and abroad.
Best rising stars
www.apple.com/au/itunes
The world's biggest online music store might have sold 4 billion songs and counting, but iTunes also gives away some ditties.
Each week the folks at Apple release a Single of the Week as a free download and promote it on the front of their site. Given that the iTunes Music Store has an 80 per cent share of the digital music market, it's little wonder that top acts line up to become part of the scheme.
Past free singles have included hits such as Lily Allen's Smile, The Fray's Over My Head and Lollipop by Mika.
Apple even promises not to be swayed by a musician's popularity and picks the free single on merit. The only downsides are that you must install the iTunes software on your computer and have an account to access it.
Download: To the Light by Newton Faulkner
Best radio hits
www.abc.net.au/triplej/listen/mp3s.htm
If you've heard it on Triple J recently there's a chance you will be able to download for free at this site.
The free songs here are not just one-listen wonders either. You can save the mp3 file to your computer for future use, bypassing music stores entirely.
Most of the featured acts are Australian, including the likes of Smallgoods and Brisbane's John Steel Singers, but others hail from farther afield such as Seattle's post-grunge electronica band U.S.E. and Kiwi crew Cut Off Your Hands who offer up their melodic Oh Girl track for free.
Download: Driving Song by Smallgoods
Best independent songs
www.mp3.com.au
Independent artists aren't like Metallica. They don't threaten to sue you if you download their music without payment — they are just happy to build a fanbase.
So goes the idea behind this website that has been open for seven years and now hosts more than 100,000 free mp3 downloads.
You can find artists and bands through the site's search engine, by genre listings or the site's top 100 rankings. A Brisbane band named St Lucia currently ranks 10th on the list, and features members from local bands including Antiskeptic and New School Hero.
Download: Wait for Me in Tokyo by Girl Vs Ghost
Best soul songs
www.soul-sides.com
A mix of classic soul tracks and recent takes on the genre, Soul Sides should keep a music fan busy for days.
Journalist Oliver Wang founded the website in 2000, though it began as a music review site. He transformed it into a blog in 2003, and in 2004 he started adding mp3 songs to his posts.
His passion for the music is clearly still going strong, as he adds new songs to the site almost daily. They range from classic drum-driven tracks by Specks Williams to soulful revisions on Jay Z's work.
Download: Do You Feel Me by Anthony Hamilton
Best cover songs
www.coverfreak.com
American blogger Steve McIntyre is devoted to cover songs and, like the Blues Brothers, is on a mission.
"My mission here is to spread good covers in the hope that they will overtake the bland and boring ones," he writes on his blog.
As such, every Sunday morning he uploads five high-quality cover songs to his blog, all linked by a theme. Recent themes include Christmas, Prince and "Leading Economic Indicators", which naturally included a cover of Money Money Money.
McIntyre's cover songs all sound very different from the originals, even taking them into a new genre entirely.
Download: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend by T-Bone Burnett
Best children's music
Freekidsmusic.com
Ever tire of hearing The Wiggles sing about hot potatoes and cold spaghetti? The web holds a solution.
Freekidsmusic.com features songs from a host of independent artists who produce music for young audiences.
All are guaranteed to feature child-friendly lyrics, be of a professional quality and most are tunes that parents will be happy to bop along to, for a while at least.
Offerings include punk-influenced songs from bands called Boogers and Jam Toast, shoo-wop ditties about pancakes, and singalongs about monkeys, spiders and dancing teddy bears.
Download: I Don't Need to Be Worried by Boogers
Best fan bootlegs
live-bootleg.blogspot.com
Bootlegs, for those unfamiliar with the term, are amateur recordings of live concerts.
Typically recorded with a furtive cassette recorder amidst the crowd, they used to be sold and traded discreetly between music fans. The internet is clearly making the process easier. This blog from a London-based night-duty manager is overflowing with bootlegs of all genres and from all eras.
Every concert from Black Sabbath to Jack Johnson and Bjork to Dizzy Gillespie has been archived at this frequently updated site. Links to these bootlegs also tend to stay live for long periods, so the only major limitation is your monthly internet download limit, as these full concert files can be in excess of 120MB each.
Download: The Police, Nimes, France, 23 September 1983
Best '80s tunes
lostinthe80s.blogspot.com
Perhaps it began with his name. Whatever the cause, Californian blogger John C. Hughes seems stuck in the '80s.
From an obscure Ringo Starr song about his frustration with record companies to a song by the Boomtown Rats that reminds listeners that Bob Geldof was once about more than saving the world, Hughes has tracked them down and explained their background.
All are available in mp3 format, with some YouTube videos linked for good measure, to remind you what these '80s fashion victims looked like in their prime.
Hughes has been digging up these entertaining disasters since 2005, and doesn't seem to be running out of content yet. As he describes them, these "disposable songs from a disposable decade" are well worth a listen if you were there, or are just in need of cheering up with cheesy lyrics and synthesised rhythms.
Download: Tired of Being Blonde by Carly Simon
Best live music library
www.archive.org/details/etree
Designed as an internet time capsule, preserving live performances in lossless audio formats, the Live Music Archive is an online library of music.
What's more, the folks at archive.org ensure each song is royalty-free and each artist agrees to its distribution online. Some of those who did not agree include Jewel, Metallica, Counting Crows and even Weird Al Yankovic.
Thankfully, the list of those participating in the library project is vast, at more than 2600 artists and bands. They include Xavier Rudd, Jack Johnson, Ryan Adams, Death Cab for Cutie and Michael Franti.
The library also gives you a choice of formats (eg. mp3 or Ogg) and whether you'd prefer to download the entire concert, or just one song.
Download: Dude, I Totally Miss You by Tenacious D
Best vinyl rarities
vinylorphanage.com
Overflowing with cheesy, daggy and occasionally hilarious musical rarities, this blog is a rare internet gem.
Author Francis McPurvis founded the foundation behind the site — Our Lady of Perpetual Obsolescence Vinyl Rescue Mission and Orphanage — in 1993 after happening across many unloved vinyl records in flea markets, thrift stores and garage sales.
Upset that these musical offerings were being neglected and destined to become "a footnote in the encyclopedia of life", McPurvis began uploading them to his online orphanage for future audiences.
The result is a site packed with music from cruise ships and school bands, and a fair share of self-produced recordings that just weren't popular enough to make the leap to CD.
Notable additions include the Cabbage Patch Christmas album, and a laugh-out-loud album from calypso band The Citations.
Download: Shame and Scandal by The Citations
Best jazz
www.allaboutjazz.com
With almost 1000 free jazz tracks available for download, you cannot accuse the owners of this Philadelphia-based jazz website of laziness.
All About Jazz also features CD reviews and news stories, though the Free Daily MP3 section is clearly a huge drawcard, having delivered 2.23 million songs to visitors since 2005.
The free mp3 section lists the top 10 recent additions by artists and their record labels, but those who need guidance to get started can look to the site's top 200 list or lists of the most popular tracks from the past 10 to 180 days. If you know what you're looking for, the site's search function can haul it out of the catalogue.
You do need to register to download the free mp3 files, though All About Jazz doesn't reject Australians or ask for intimate details — just your email address and a password.
Download: Something Like Now by Moutin Reunion Quartet
Best hip-hop
cocaineblunts.com
While garage bands and technology-friendly pop tarts gain attention quicker than you can say "I knew them when they first joined MySpace", hip-hop artists and MCs have a harder time getting good press.
To help out fledgling hip-hop stars, and to keep fans up to date on established artists, Washington DC-based blogger Noz created Cocaine Blunts.
With an encyclopedic knowledge of all things hip-hop, Noz's site features posts back to 2003, encompassing news, videos, photos, and exclusive interviews with rappers including Witchdoctor from the Dungeon Family, and the late Pimp C from UGK.
These postings often feature free mp3 downloads as well, including old-school classics, new offerings and popular singles that might not have made their way to Australia yet.
Download: Strong Island (Blue Mix) by JVC Force
Best original studio recordings
www.daytrotter.com
Just off the American highway between Chicago and Omaha lies Rock Island, Illinois, a town where some enterprising web folks regularly take over a music studio and entice travelling bands and artists to take two hours out of their day and record four songs.
It sounds zany, and perhaps destined to fail, but Day Trotter has offered new "exclusive, reworked and alternate versions" of songs you know and some you don't since March 2006.
In fact, the website now features a back catalogue of 250 sessions and continues to offer music from three new artists every week.
Some of the visiting bands have included Frank Smith, Mobius Band, The Magic Numbers and even the Australian export Architecture in Helsinki, and all the recordings feature an original sound that makes them even more precious.
Download: Heart It Races by Architecture in Helsinki
Best world music
fatplanet.com.au/blog/category/mp3s
With such a multicultural mix, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Australia hosts one of the world's best world music websites.
Stuart Buchanan started the blog as an accompaniment to his Fat Planet world music radio program on Sydney community radio station FBi. That was back in 2003, and the blog is now even more popular than the broadcast.
Buchanan is kicking off 2008 with a tour of the world in music, starting in Cuba with a band called Telmary who deliver Havana-based hip-hop. But the site also features a huge catalogue of free music dating back to July 2005, hailing from such diverse locations as Argentina and Algeria and such odd genres as Balkan Hot Step and home-grown "Didjetronica".
Download: Sukuleker by Shantal
Best Swedish music
www.swedesplease.net
It's the first internet blog dedicated to Swedish music and, though it actually comes out of America, it's surprisingly comprehensive.
If you're expecting Abba with an Abba chaser, you'll be disappointed. Author Craig Bonnell instead tracks down the best "indie pop, electronica and twee" hits from Swedish upstarts he finds, and some that find him, and then makes the songs available for free.
While you might question just how much music Sweden produces, you won't after one visit. Bonnell posts new music to the site almost every day and has broken acts the Shout Out Louds and Hello Saferide. Many of the songs are also refreshingly upbeat.
Download: Endless Summer by They Live By Night
Best electronica
ill-ec-tro-nic.blogspot.com
To say electronica is popular on the internet is like saying country music is popular in ukulele shops. Computers are where much of this music is born, so it has a natural audience on the web.
Thankfully one of the first electronica blogs is still around and still leading the pack. Founder James Langer uses the ill-ec-tro-nic blog to highlight some of the best new releases and classic re-releases of the genre.
He and his two fellow contributors also explain the songs' backgrounds in a way that shouldn't scare off new fans.
Recent posts offer new music from The Setting Sun and Liaisons Dangereuses, and mp3s remain available for download for two weeks and sometimes even much longer.
Download: Harrowdown Hill (Ripperton Dub) by Thom Yorke
Best record label site
asthmatickitty.com
Asthmatic Kitty Records is not your average music label.
Starting in a small town in Michigan, US, and named after a rescued cat, this label was originally designed to give voice to community music projects.
Now based in four US cities, it gives away some of its acts' songs on the web in the hope that you'll like what you hear and buy some in future.
The independent record label hosts 10 acts of its own, but also posts free songs from many other like-minded artists featured on its compilations, and refreshes its offerings often.
Songs on the site range from the acoustic folk tunes of Welcome Wagon to the electronic sounds of Rafter.
Download: Born To Be a Motorcycle by Bunky
Best garage rock
www.garagehangover.com
Popular for just a short time in the 1960s, garage rock lives on in this American website. Blogger and garage rock aficionado Chris Bishop has been piecing together the Garage Hangover internet time capsule for the past four years, though he still refers to it as a "work in progress".
The site features music from more than 400 bands, some of whom contacted Bishop and others he discovered at flea markets and online.
Most of the bands are from the US but some Australian acts also made the cut, including The Sundowners, The Marksmen and Gerry Humphreys & The Loved Ones.
Even if you weren't there to appreciate it firsthand, this slice of the `60s is worth a listen, if only to cheer you up during dull moments.
Download: Baby Jane by The Sundowners
Best streaming music
www.mp3.com
Most songs cannot be downloaded for later use, but MP3.com does feature a vast catalogue of free music from all genres that you can enjoy at your computer. As well as individual songs, many artists have uploaded their most recent album to the website, so you can decide whether it is worth paying money for later.
Songs are grouped by genre, including Pop, Hip-Hop, Alternative, International, Metal, Jazz and more, and the site features disparate artists such as Christina Aguilera, Eminem, Bullet for My Valentine, AC/DC, The Pussycat Dolls and Willie Nelson.
The slick site is easy to use, with a pop-up box streaming the music, and a search function for wading through the site's thousands of listings. News and comments also feature.
Download: Motown Remixed: Volume 2 compilation
Best heavy metal
www.misantrof.net
Misantrof Anti-Records is a not-for-profit, independent record company who set up shop on the internet in response to the Recording Industry Association of America issuing music downloaders with lawsuits.
As such, music on this website is free for download and free of copyright. All they ask is that you don't sell it yourself and that you donate money to a band through PayPal if you like their music.
The site features heavy metal creations ranging from industrial to thrash. Most songs are not suitable for impressionable listeners, featuring adult concepts and language, but fans of the genre should appreciate what's on offer.
Download: Atomic by A Waste of Talent
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Your Say
Easy -
Step 1: Find an anonomyous proxy(google it, remember find a fast 1)
Step 2: Apply the proxy settings in limewire
Step 3: Download Files anonomyously using limewire.
P...
(Read More)
Tommy of Surry Hills
Comments on this story
Tommy of Surry Hills Posted at 3:53pm March 05, 2008 Easy - Step 1: Find an anonomyous proxy(google it, remember find a fast 1) Step 2: Apply the proxy settings in limewire Step 3: Download Files anonomyously using limewire. Proxies route your connection via another server(usually in a different country) and use that connection to download the data, so instead of getting a connection from(You) , you get a connection from the server. Any attempts to trace the priracy will go back to the proxy. Why pay when you can get it for free? G. of Brisbane Posted at 7:49am February 11, 2008 Thanks to those who talk about warez while on sites like news.com.au. It is thanks to you that sites like that gain exposure and then get shut down. KEEP IT UP, CAN'T WAIT TO KEEP CHANGING SITE. Drew of Adelaide Posted at 3:52pm February 05, 2008 The best damn website is www.guitars101.com - demos, outtakes, rarities, soundboard, live - if you want it, it's there. Plus why not try www.u2start.com for not just U2 but heaps of other great bands and videos as well. Over 80 000 members and counting - plus etree.org and archive.org - heaps and heaps of great stuff there too. jason of hawthorn Posted at 12:58pm February 05, 2008 i find www.spinner.com is good with their mp3 of the day. sometimes they aren't my style but sometimes they are absolute gems, plus they don't get removed for a few months so there is quite an archive also, to the people advertising that they usequestionable methods to get their downloads, that is not what this article is about, its about legit stuff Tristan of syd/melb Posted at 8:44am February 05, 2008 given the obvious collaboration at hand, god only knows why so many people seem to think that the people behind macintosh are such saints! iTunes is robbing you! as for illegal downloading, are there actually people who don't do it? where's your head at?! btw, forget limewire; spyware infestation! try the frostwire alternative..
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