[DudeAsInCool]

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.

[DudeAsInCool]

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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[DudeAsInCool]

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)

[DudeAsInCool]

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.

[paulrawnerve]

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.

[DudeAsInCool]

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

[DudeAsInCool]

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.

[takis.ethel]

[DudeAsInCool]

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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[melissa]

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.

This post has been edited by DudeAsInCool: 04 March 2008 - 07:52 PM
Reason for edit: Added additional sources

[DudeAsInCool]

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

[DudeAsInCool]

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

[DudeAsInCool]

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.