A list of some of the best places around for finding FREE and mostly legal music to download.
Sure you can always grab music from BitTorrent tracker sites like Waffles.fm or What.CD to your heart’s content, but sometimes it’s useful to know of places where you can find music that’s off the beaten path, that sometimes gets lost in the hustle and bustle of large music communities.
From indie rock to mashups, from the eclectic to the instrumental, the Internet is full of great places to find music for all tastes and
For DJs and those looking to hear the latest and greatest beats from hip hop to house to drum and bass. Some of the great finds here though include old school jazz instrumental albums from the 1960’s. Nice place to find tracks to listen to while chillin out on a Sunday or while entertaining company.
Beatles, Beatles, and surprise, surprise, more BEATLES!
Now it explicitly states that is contains “no official releases”, which is actually a good thing. Anybody can find that stuff on more than a hundred sites, but how about a copy of “Five Nights in a Judo Arena?” It’s 10-track live album recorded on June 30th, 1966 at the Bidokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan.
Or how about a 3 disc album of alternate takes for John Lennon’s “Imagine” album?
There’s also cover albums, galore, Beatles videos, books, you name it.
There’s even “Beatles’ Era” content like this beauty, The Doors “Live at Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (Tv), December 15 1968.” A buddy of mine downloaded it already and said the second track “Wild Child” is pretty dope.
3. Garage Band
Pretty much has it all. Is a site where up and coming artists offer for their music for free and the community offers feedback on what they think.
Hasn’t been updated in a few months, but it still has an interesting selection of eclectic and offbeat music. In fact , the last post is dedicated to Selda, who apparently is full of “Turkish Pysch-Rock funkiness.”
“Madlib’s kid brother Oh No based a lot of his album Dr. No’s Oxperiment on tracks from this record,” it continues.
5. BootlegsFR
Alright, I hate the French just as much as the next guy, but I’ll be dammed if they didn’t have some of the greatest house, trip hop, and mashup artists around. This site is dedicated strictly to mashups, culling the best from around the web (GHP, Lenlow, Team 9, etc.)
6. Indie-MP3
It’s a review site for “indie, jangle and electro pop” that offers commentary and reviews on each as well as downloads from such artist types as well. Definitely worth checking out if indie-pop is your cup of tea.
7. RockSellOut
It’s a indie-pop/rock music review/download combo which is nice if you want to read more about a band and hear about upcoming concerts and events.
Euro alternative and hip hop music music like Sigur Ros, The Streets,
etc..
Title says it all. Offers daily doses of tracks from artists who are download friendly, like the Black Crowes, Fat Daddy, Soul Stew Revival,etc..
10. Largehearted Boy
This is the cadillac of free music download sites that also just happens to be perfectly legal. It rounds up live performances from artists that don’t mind people sharing them (so long as no profits are made) and lists them for you in it’s “Daily Download” section. Even better is that .FLAC copies are available via BitTorrent making life even easier.
Examples? Radiohead: 2000-10-20, Los Angeles [flac]*
It also has a wide range of quality indie-rock and regular rock albums and tracks to choose from.
What are some of your favorites?
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soundclick.com sectionz and Jamendo to name a few.