There's a number of great free music download sites out there and Jamendo is no exception. Jamendo bills itself as a "...new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music." Now when they say "be paid for," they mean that hopefully by downloading and listening to an artist's music, users will decide to purchase more albums or tracks or simply make donations to help support the band. They also see it as opportunity for users to spread the word about the band amongst their friend so that they may also make similar contributions to the bands efforts. Artists distribute their music under a Creative Commons license which allows you to freely download, share and even remix the music that's made available on the site. Jamendo is both BitTorrent and eMule compatible, making for more P2P network options that users can choose from. For artists, the site allows an interesting and advanced new method for music distribution that weeds out exclusive intermediaries and critics that may otherwise prevent an artists from reaching the public ears.
As an artist, you will have a personal webspace hosted at jamendo. This includes: links to your creations and your official web site, forum, photo webgallery, announcements of your concerts, reviews written by listeners, ...jamendo also features many opt-in programs for artists : print your flyers, accept donations from listeners on your paypal account, subscribe to press partnerships,In a nutshell, jamendo is :
Here's also a few recent statistics about Jamendo below.
So what kind of artists and genres are available to download? Jamendo has everything from rock to electronic jazz, dubstyle to funk. I've listened to several dozen of the artists already and many of them are pretty decent, if not great. As we all know, sometime stuff is free for reason, and usually free music is terrible to listen to but, some of the stuff on Jamendo is pretty darn good I must admit. One of the good artists is Revolution Void, which bills itself as "electronic breakbeat jazz" To help you find new artists worth listening to there's a "Reviews" section that allows users to both rate and comment on available artists and albums. Here's one of the reviews for Revolution Void.
When you decide to play an artists tracks it streams them via the sites's "jamplayer."
If you decide to download a particular album it's just as easy.
After selecting the "Download' link, choose what file-sharing network, BitTorrent or eMule, that you wish to use.
Another awesome download to listen to is "The Wired CD." It has tracks from The Beastie Boys, Spoon, Dan The Automator and more.
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From the site:
Beastie Boys - Now Get Busy
