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Comprehensive List of Free Music Sites


DudeAsInCool

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Search Tools

If you want to search out your favorite artists or songs on the web, Beatking has devoted an entire thread to Music & Video Search Applications - if you after a specific track or video, those tools should help.

Overview

The web is an enormous resource when it comes to free music. Here are a couple introductions on where to look:

You might want to start by reading Digital Alchemy's Complete Guide to Free Music Online andQ4Music's Top 100 Sources For Free Music Online (Links Courtesy of LargeHeartedBoy)

1 - iTunes

2 - Pure Volume

3 - Soundclick

4 - Dilate Choonz

5 - Arjan Writes

6 - AOLs Spinner

7 - MySpace.com

8 - Limewire

9 - Download.com

10 - MP3.com

Live Music

11 - The Perfumed Garden

12 - Xponential Music On Demand

13 - iLounge

14 - Napster

15 - Yahoo Music

16 - Nugs

17 - Wolfgang's Vault

18 - Furthurnet

19 - Tiscali Music

20 - BBC Music

21 - Gorillaz

22 - Depeche Mode

23 - The Roots

24 - Babyshambles

25 - REM

26 - Sway

Artists

27 - Richard Hawley

28 - The Beautiful South

29 - Hard-Fi

30 - Bright Eyes

31 - Billy Bragg

32 - Sonic Youth

33 - Beck

34 - Kraftwerk

35 - Nine Inch Nails

36 - Basement Jaxx

37 - My Chemical Romance

38 - Pet Shop Boys

39 - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

40 - George Michael

Labels

41 - Bella Union

42 - Stones Throw

43 - Asthmatic Kitty

44 - Kill Rock Stars

45 - Big Dada

46 - Warp

47 - Mute

48 - Matador

49 - Domino

50 - b-unique

MP3 Blogs

51 - Hype Machine

52 - An Aquarium Drunkard

53 - Bumrocks

54 - Cocaine Blunts

55 - Copy Comma Right

56 - Dimeadozen

57 - Fluxblog

58 - Gabba

59 - Gorilla vs Bear

60 - Idolator

61 - Largehearted Boy

62 - Lost in the 80's

63 - Music Like Dirt

64 - Nothing But Green Lights

65 - My Old Kentucky Blog

66 - You Ain't No Picasso

67 - The Runout Groove

68 - Some Velvet Blog

69 - Soul Sides

70 - 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Radio Stations

71 - Hub Sessions

72 - KEXP

73 - KCRW

74 - KROQ

75 - National Public Radio

76 - Pulse Rated

77 - Pandora/Last.fm

78 - Virgin Radio

79 - WOXY

80 - Xfm

Video

81 - YouTube

82 - MTV

83 - Video-C

84 - Yahoo

85 - Ifilm

86 - Go Fish

87 - Q

88 - AOL Alternative

89 - Daily Motion/1960s

90 - Urge

Podcasts

91 - Mixtape Show

92 - Pete Townshend

93 - Jarvis Cocker

94 - Ixtra

95 - David Byrne

96 - Radio Unsigned

97 - Trash

98 - Slashmusic

99 - The Interface

100 - Pete Tong

LargeheartedBoy's Links/A-Z Guide To Free Online Music Downloads

A - April Winchell - Musical oddities are the specialty of this long-standing favorite.

B - Better Propaganda - Providing streaming and downloadable mp3's and videos.

C - Cocaine Blunts & Hip Hop Tapes - My favorite hip hop mp3 blog.

D - Dimeadozen - The place to find a varied selection of live shows and rarities in lossless formats.

E - elbo.ws - An mp3 blog aggregator, listing recent posts to music blogs.

F - Fluxblog - A Perpetua motion machine of insightful commentary and interesting downloads.

G - gabba.pod - mp3 download community with lively discussion.

H - The Hype Machine - MP3 blog aggregator that lists mp3's featured on music blogs.

I - Insound - A leading online indie record store, Insound is also home to a copious amount of downloadable mp3's.

J - Jazz and Conversation - A jazz mp3 blog that is as informative as it is enjoyable.

K - Kiddie Records - Takes us all back to our youth with a different children's album every week.

L - The Live Music Archive - An archive that truly lives up to its name with live shows and net label album releases across musical genres.

M - Myspace - Download and/or stream music from many up-and-coming and established artists.

N - No Love For Ned - This weekly internet radio show is my favorite online stream, and often offers in-studio guests to go with an intelligent, eclectic playlist. Not a download source, but a download inspiration.

O - OverClocked Remix - If video game remixes are your thing, this is the place to find them.

P - The Puzzling Music Archive - For the collection of Deerhoof tracks alone, this is a personal favorite.

Q - La Blogoteque - I practice my French while reading this excellent mp3 blog (yes, I know I cheated on this one, but La Blogoteque at least has a "q" in it).

R - ready rock moe rex (Moebius Rex) - My current favorite mp3 blog, Moe Rex is always opening my ears to something new.

S - Said the Gramophone - One of the original mp3 blogs, and still one of the best.

T - The Tofu Hut - Not only the leading prophet for music blogs, The Tofu Hut is also home to wonderfully diverse music downloads and the most comprehensive blogroll of music blogs in the world.

U - Us Kids Know - Arcade Fire fan site with a bittorrent tracker for the band's live shows as well as a lively forum.

V - John Vanderslice - The singer/songwriter/producer extraordinaire makes much of his past discography available for download.

W - Women Folk - An mp3 blog of female artists' works.

X - XTC4U - Many live shows and rarities from the seminal English band, XTC.

Y - You Ain't No Picasso - YANP has been blowing up recently, whether posting indie cover collections or live shows, the content is always fresh and interesting.

Z - Zenguin - An independent artist collective with many free downloads available.

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  • 1 year later...

Music Blog Aggregators

A good place to start your search for music on the web is with music blog aggregators like Elbo.ws, or The Hype Machine which host thousands of music blog's tunes and lets you stream them. The latest music blog aggregator to enter the scene is TasteStalkr, which is acts as an mp3 search engine.

Other great resources include:

The Tofu Hut which lists revelvant blogs

Totally Fuzzy which compiles blog's track listings

Boogie4Us - A new blog mp3 aggregator ala The Hype Machine and El.bows

Red Ferret Journal, which lists a number of prominent blogs and archives for free music

MonkeyFilter - which lists blogs by music genre

Here is my current list of favorite music blogs - they cover every genre of music. Once you begin surfing around the blogs and find your favorites, you will find other recommendations from the blogs themselves. Also check out XO London - they compiled a list of their top 100 Music Blogs on June of 2009.

Music Blogs

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Music Videos

Youtube

Cyber-Knowledge has catalogued over 20,000 Youtube music videos

Google Music Videos

MTV

VH1

Better Propaganda

AOL Music & AOL Alternative Music

MSN Music features videos and concerts

Video-C (UK)

Yahoo Music Videos

IFilm

Rhapsody

Urge

Truveo

MyStrands TV - A video sharing community. A nice collection I might add.

Daily Motion

LastFm

MetaCafe

Joost

Music.com

ATTs Blue Room features live concerts and festivals

Much Music

E-Music

Cyber Knowledge

Internet DJ - Electronic Music

Mog TV - A music blogging community

Abazab - Video sharing community

Revver - Allows you to embed their play on other websites

Brightcove Music Videos - Allows you to create channels, post videos and promote them elsewhere

Mog TV claims to feature over 400,000 music videos

ChimeTV is the brainchild Taylor from The Hype Machine. ChimeTV features various channels and a cross section of music categories, including HipHop, indie and pop. They will be covering various shows at the 2008 SXSW Music Festival.

Music video blogs

Antville.org features director's music videos

Shots Ring Out

Do Copenhagen

MusicToob

RadioHead TV

Music.com - Music videos listed by genre.

VirvTv - Serves up indie music videos. Not a bad playlist, but it requires a plug-in and works only for Windows users.

Fuse - Warner Bros Record's 'Fuse' bills itself as the national music network, "Where Music Meets Film™, and offers free music downloads. The jury is still out...

• Pitchfork TV (Coming April 7, 2008)

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  • 2 months later...

Radio on the Web

Radio on the web seems to be getting better and better. Here are some of my favorites:

Aggregators

• Shoutcast/ITunes/WinAmp, Songbird and Miro Music Players each have a large selection of radio stations (check your player)

Delicious carries a ton of radio streams

LastFm Radio

IndyMedia Radio carries worldwide listings

PodcastAlley lists music podcasts by genre

The RadioBlog Club generally podcast their radio shows and then post them their music blogger sites afterwards

Live365 supports 1000s of little radio stations that play every genre of music.

LiveRadio.net - Thousands of free radio stations from around the world

Oddio Overplay and Fluctu8 also specialize in radio programs from around the world

Beatking hosts a radio forum here, which includes information on how to start your own web radio station as well as postings on various programs from around the world submitted by our members

Major Stations

BBC Music and BBC: The Hub, which features video sessions

XFM (UK)

NPRMusicandNPR Music/All Things Considered feature daily downloads, artists features and full concerts

KCRW (audio and video), KEXP•  and Minnesota Public Radio MPR

have daily podcasts, and in house appearances of cutting edge musical acts

• Virgin Radio - Indie rock

On The Wire - Radio Lancashire (UK)

Sirius Radio (free trial)

XFM (UK)

Special Programming

The AquariumDrunkard blogster features a regular show devoted to new indie music and classic rock and blues

Project Vibe streams R & B

DayTrotter features sessions with indie bands

SomaFM from San Francisco features underground music and indie bands

WOXY from Cincinnati features indie bands

KROQ from LA features mainstream and indie rock

Q4Music features contemporary pop music

Insomnia Music presents live bands and events

PulseRated features new and unsigned bands

BreakThrough Radio - Alternative/Indie Rock

Internet DJ - Electronic Music

David Byrne Radio

Ryan Adam's Cardinals Radio

Radio3 - Showcases indie Canadian content

Interactive Radio

• Slacker Radio - Play music on-demand along with music recommendations. Restrictions: US only

Broadclip (aka Flytune) - TiVo for Internet radio stations. Schedule recordings of your favorite music and download them later as MP3s.

FineTune - Make a Playlist of more than 45 songs and it'll play in random order via flash app. Has a Wii interface too!

Project PlayList - Build streaming playlists of music on demand.

WimboMedia - Allows users to index MP3 links of music and podcasts on the internet which other users can listen to for free.

Jango - A social radio community. Type in what you want to hear - and Jango will play your song and other favorites of Jango users who share your taste. You can customize your stations further by adding more artists and rating songs. As you listen, Jango will show other people listening to the same artist. You can "tune in" to the songs they're listening to, chat or share your music with friends.

Musicovery - Listen to streaming music. Input your mood, genre, and/or era, and the tunes play continuously.

Social FM - Let's you create playlists and share with friends. Nice iTunes Coverflow-style navigation.

Zulu Kangaroo is a radio that plays songs when you search CD Baby for your favorite indie artists.

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  • 4 weeks later...

For getting full albums, my favourite so far has got to be archive.org. i've found so many ambient/minimal/dark electro/drum and bass things on there... the metal side of it is generally pretty rubbish, but the ambient stuff is incredibly good... found about 30 albums once by an artist called mystified, who is highly recommended, and around 25 by nofi/found. the latter of which is one of my all time favourite electro artists.

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  • 5 months later...

Daily Downloads

• EMusic's Daily Free Download

Pitchfork's Forkcast

ITunes (On Tuesdays)

KCRWs Today's Top Tune

NPRs Song of the Day

AOLs Spinner - They've recently added this feature and it's quite good.

LargeHeartedBoy's Daily Download

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Music Communities and Intelligence Websites

There are a growing number of social community music websites with a lot of functionality. HubPages lists 47 Web 2.0 music websites - if I missed anything below, you will probably find it HERE.

Creative Commons

ccmixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.

MashStix - Mashstix offers up bootlegs and mashups.

Music Communities

Discover Music

Owl Music Search - Owl Multimedia, Inc. offers Internet music search and discovery solutions. Owl claims to be able to locate and catalog every song on the Internet, in order to help find new music that you will like. Click a song in your music player and Owl does the rest.

MusicIP - MusicIP provides music discovery and identification solutions for websites, software and consumer electronics devices. MusicIP allows people to rediscover forgotten songs in their digital music library and be introduced to new music based on the songs they already love. Pick a song, MusicIP Mixer puts together a playlist. MyDJ searches for similar songs on your music player, software or website.

CherryPeel - CherryPeel is a music community where the members add music and vote on their favorites. "... Major labels, radio stations, and TV channels have been the only ones with the power to decide the artists and genres that get heard. CherryPeel's goal is to give the power back to the fans.

thesixtyone.com - Earn points as you upload and share your favorite songs in a social community setting

Mystrands and MyStrands TV is similar to LastFm and offers recommendations based on your tastes. Mystrands plans to expand its platform to cellphones.

Deezer is a community driven search engine. It can search for music and much more. Deezer will pull up multiple versions of a song if they are available. It also allows you to upload songs if you have an account. And you can imbed them in other websites. I also like its player and sound quality.

LastFM - You can post your favorite songs, see what your friends are listening to, hear new music, get personal radio, and recommendations based on what you are listening to. As of 1/23/08, you can stream full songs.

Mog - An online community that allows people to share their entire music and video collections online with the community, blog about them, and get recommendations from other tastemakers.

IMeem - Similar to LastFm, but their technology allows you to put flash videos and audio players on your favorite web sites.

FineTune - Finetune is a Flash tool which allows users to build playlists. The minimum playlist is 45 songs and you can have up to three songs per artist. Finetune also runs on the Wii.

iJigg - iJigg is a digg-esque music discovery service that allows users to vote on individual songs. The most popular rise to the top of the front page. The iJigg player can also be embedded on other sites so you can share it with friends.

TuneFeed - Similar to Imeem - it allows you to upload music, discover new music, videos, and share your tastes with friends. Their technology allows you to put flash videos and audio players on your favorite web sites

MusicMesh.net - MusicMesh is also an advanced music search engine. Type in your favorite artist's name and MusicMesh pulls up related albums and track listings, YouTube videos if they are available, user reviews, Wikipedia entries and other recommendations. MusicPortl covers pretty much the same ground, it's really a personal preference to which layout you prefer using.

Pandora is a personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on what you listen to and post.

Goombah searches your ITunes collection to see what kind of music you like and finds people that like your style, and makes recommendations from their collections.

Share Your Music

SoundFlavor - Upload and share your music, and search for favorites at the website.

iLike - Allows you to share your playlists and library with friends, but according to one comment I saw, ILike doesnt play entire songs (correct me if I'm wrong). Works with iTunes and Windows Media Player The website makes use of a sidebar that is used with Apple's iTunes. Very popular at Facebook.

QLoud's MyMusic - Similar to iLike, Qloud's MyMusic provides allows ITune users to embed their music into social networks where they can discover and share with their friends. Like Mog, you upload your entire music library. Allows you to put tags to your songs. Available at Facebook, expanding into other social websites.

MediaMaster - Similar to QLoud's MyMusic, but without the tagging tool, but far more versatile - you can connect your library to your browser, cellphone, tivo and your stereo - and you can embed your radio player at your favorite social site. There may be upload limits of 400 songs temporarily due to technical issues...

MP3Tunes Oboe - Similar to MediaMaster in that it allows you to upload your collection and send it to multiple devices.

Sideload.com is a website that aggregates popular free music tracks on the web that have been sideloaded into Oboe, the online music locker from MP3tunes. You can quickly preview tracks and store them permanently in your Locker with one click!

Faces - An Australian app which allows you to upload various media and embed it elsewhere.

Simplify Media - Similar to QLoud's MyMusic and MediaMaster in that you share your music collection and see your friends favorites - it works both in ITunes and Winamp, and on your browser.

SoundPedia - A Singapore-based internet radio and music community website where recommendations are based on user voting count. Members can't download but they can create their own unique playlists and radio stations.

Trig is an online community that allows people to share mp3 streams and videos and images. Unlike Mog, you don't share your entire collection, but you can imbed the Trig player on selected websites.

Haystack - Post favorite songs, videos and reviews of your favorite artists in a blog, find music through friends and tastemakers, create radio playlists and send them to friends. In this system you make recommendations of other songs (they call it stacking) when you hear something you like. Formerly called BlogMusic - in Beta.

LaLa.com - Lala has expanded from a CD trading website, allows you to put your music online and share it, create your own online radio stations and send your music to your IPod. LaLa.com recently bought WOXY and offer up free shows from visiting artists at their website, as well as MP3s

BoomShuffle allows you to add and organize music into streaming playlists, and lets you embed your playlist in blogs or websites. BoomShuffle streams entire tracks, but only after you've added 15 or more songs.

Support New Artists

TuneSquare - Allows new artists to post their music and make money when their music is played.

Project Opus - Similar to Tunesquare in that it supports new artists. The app allows you to embed music on other websites.

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  • 5 months later...

Ad-Supported Free Downloads

We7 has accumulated over 75,000 tracks of all music genre...

Spiral Frog or HERE, has over 700,000 songs. Windows Only, DRM.

QTrax - Unlimited downloads and song plays with contextual ads. P2P-based client. Restrictions: DRM(?) Launched 1/25/08--Times Online does a full review.

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Mobile Phone Enabled

Download music to your mobile phone - Hooqs

EZ-Tracks

Orb - Allows you to upload all your media to your cellphone.

MediaMaster - Similar to QLoud's MyMusic, you can connect your entire music library to your cellphone.

MP3Tunes Oboe - Similar to MediaMaster in that it allows you to upload your collection and send it to multiple devices.

Edited by DudeAsInCool
Added additional sources
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  • 3 weeks later...

Indie Outlets

You can stream music before you buy it at:

CDBaby Use - ZuluKangaroo to search their files.

InSound

Napster

EMusic (allows you 25 free downloads just to try out the service)

Labels

Both the major and minor labels stream music on their websites - for instance, I'm a fan of Quango Records, so I often go their website to listen to new offerings. So check out your artists lablels...

Usual Suspects

MySpace

AOL Music

MSN Music

Rhapsody (Free 14 day trial)

Yahoo Music

CNet

Amazon

Ruckus - (For College Campuses)

• & of course, ITunes

Here are some other places to checkout:

Soundclick

People Sound

France MP3

MP3.com

SoundLift

AltSounds

MP3.com Australia

Websites For Emerging Artists

Artistopia

GarageBand

Pure Volume

ccMixer - Music and mixes from creative commons artists.

Jamendo - Features music from independent artists under the Creative Commons.

Project Opus

Classical Music

Wikipedia Sound- Classical music in the public domain.

Classical Cat - Classic Cat is a directory with links to over 2800 free to download classical performances on the internet, sorted by composer and work. We try to offer also midi files, sheets and lyrics, but this part of the site is just beginning.

Soundtracks

StreamingSoundtracks is a member supported website that hosts just about every soundtrack imaginable.

TelevisionTunes.com - Has over 6000 songsfrom your favorite TV shows. If they don't have the song you are looking for, they will find it if you ask!

World Music

National Geographic

For DJs

RemixWars

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  • 4 weeks later...

Archived Concerts

Archives

Archival resources are growing as well. Here are some music vaults worth checking out:

Cylinder Preservation & Digitalization ProjectVaudeville

•The library of Congress has an extensive Folk & Jazz collection

Archive.org has 10,000 live shows to choose from

Bluegrass.com has a nice country and alternative collection

• You can find a lot of grateful dead and related shows at gdlive.com

Rutgers University has an entensive jazz collection and resource guide

Video Sources

• VideoThing - Contemporary concerts

• Wolfgang's Vault - Classic rock and roll archive that includes concerts from promotor Bill Graham's collection

• Live Music Archive - Over 40,000 shows

• Digital Panic

• LargeHeartedBoy

• Echoe's Hub

• DimeaDozen

• The Perfumed Garden

• XPonential Music On Demand (WXPN)

• ATT BlueRoom

• Nugs.net - Contemporary and classic rock

DayTrotter - Invites various indie artists for exclusive live sessions, featuring re-worked and alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks

FuzzyTV offers up full concerts on its sister website to Totally Fuzzy. Their choice of music and the video and sound quality are excellent.

Fab Channel - Hundreds of full high quality concerts from Europe.

LaBlogotheque - This French website offers up top notch mini-concerts from the best of indie artists. Vincent Moon is prominently the most prominent director and his videos always capture an intimate side of the artists.

Pitchfork TV

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Emerging Music Sites

It seems as if a new music outlet opens up almost everyday. Coming soon to a desktop near you:

Playable - A free music download service from The Pirate Bay

Legal Torrents - Currently being revamped

OinkPlus - Greasemonkey script OiNKPlus, adds similar artists, tags, short bio and preview players to torrent details pages on some famous trackers and as such makes the discovery of new artists easy and convenient. Will displays 25 similar artists (Last.fm) Displays 5 tags (Last.fm),

adds a short bio (Last.fm), adds 2 preview players (MySpace, Last.fm) and adds links to external resources.

RCRD LBL is a music blog with free downloads that are supported by advertisers. The blog was founded by Peter Rojas (Gizmodo and Engadget ) and Josh Deutsch (Downtown Records). I've been checking out...pretty eclectic mix of offerings.

FreeMusicArchive (Beta) - The Free Music Archive, a social music website built around a curated library of free, legal audio. Fellow curators include radio stations like KEXP (Seattle) and KBOO (Portland OR), webcasters like DUBLAB (Los Angeles) and Halas Radio (Israel), netlabels (Comfort Stand), venues (ISSUE Project Room), and amazing online collectives like CASH Music.

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