NY Times Looks at Free Music on the Web

[DudeAsInCool]

No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast

By JON PARELES

September 10, 2004

Downloading music from the Internet is not illegal. Plenty of music available online is not just free but also easily available, legal and — most important — worth hearing.

That fact may come as a surprise after highly publicized lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing major labels, against fans using peer-to-peer programs like Grokster and EDonkey to collect music on the Web. But the fine print of those lawsuits makes clear that fans are being sued not for downloading but for unauthorized distribution: leaving music in a shared folder for other peer-to-peer users to take. As copyright holders, the labels have the exclusive legal right to distribute the music recorded for them, even if technology now makes that right nearly impossible to enforce.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/arts/music/10INTE.html

Examples

webjay.org lets music fans post playlists that connect to free music and video, describes free Internet music as "a flea market the size of Valhalla."

Musicians' own sites. e.g.

(www.bobdylan.com)

(www.yeahyeahyeahs.com), post hard-to-find songs for listening: some as free downloads, some as streaming audio (which can be recorded with a free program like StepVoice at www.stepvoice.com).

labels, particularly independent rock and electronic labels like Matador (www.matadorrecords .com/music/mp3s.html), Vagrant (www.vagrant .com/vagrant/audio/audio.jsp), Barsuk (www.barsuk .com), Saddle Creek (www.saddle-creek.com) or Tigerbeat6 (www.tigerbeat6.com/html/catalogue.htm).

Public radio stations

the classical-music station WNYC (www .wnyc.org)

eclectic stations like WFMU in Jersey City (www.wfmu.org) and KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif. (www.kcrw.org)

MTV (at www.mtv.com) presents an entire album each week as an audio stream.

Epitonic--the best place to look for any band with an independent recording

At www.webjay.org, music fans share their Web finds with the world-- just lists of links that allow users either to play entire lists or to download items directly one by one; it also includes links to videos and news sound bites

www.furthurnet .com). It is a peer-to-peer network that trades only recordings of bands that encourage listeners to record concerts: not just the Dead but Phish, Gov't Mule, Dave Matthews Band, Los Lobos, Wilco and David Byrne as well. The concert recordings don't use MP3 files, but a better quality audio format, SHN, which also requires some software installation. ( the site explains all the technicalities)

The Library of Congress has made a considerable amount available free online. A place to start is the American Memory Collection (http://memory .loc.gov/ammem/audio.html), with fiddle tunes, American Indian music, border music from the Rio Grande, Dust Bowl songs and more.

Folkways Records

In 1987, the Smithsonian Institution bought the catalog of Folkways Records, which had set out to document every sound in the world and continues to support projects like a 20-disc collection of Indonesian music. Many of the Folkways recordings can be heard on the Web at www .folkways.si.edu, from "Classical Music of Iran" to "Creole Music of Suriname" to "Music of Indonesia Vol. 1: Songs Before Dawn."

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive (www. .archive.org) has set out to preserve material that might otherwise disappear from the Internet, including Web pages, documents, books and video clips as well as audio, and it includes a Live Music Archive with more than 10,000 concerts via etree.org. Most are from jam bands, but there is plenty to choose from. (More than a million people have downloaded Grateful Dead music from the archive.) The archive also includes an assortment of other audio under All Collections, which has 131 songs from 78-r.p.m. discs, and more than 3,000 songs on what it calls netlabels, most of them releasing electronic music. Try the exotica-tinged selections from Monotonik.

Iuma

The Internet Underground Music Archive (www.iuma.org) was a pioneer of free Internet music. It was founded in 1993 as a place for musicians to post their own music online, and it just keeps on expanding.

Garageband

Hopefuls face Darwinian competition at www.garageband.com, where musicians are encouraged to rate 30 songs before submitting one of their own (or pay a $19.99 fee instead) and other listeners are also assigned tracks to rate.

The computer experts at CNet include an extensive selection of music among their software downloads at http://music.download.com. A vast bulk of the music is submitted by musicians themselves, so there are a lot of derivative sounds to wade through, but the well-organized site also includes worthwhile bands as Editor's Picks, currently including Dios and Ex Models.

England's Vitaminic

www.vitaminic.co.uk, offers tens of thousands of aspiring bands and a smattering of better-known acts, although brand-name bands like Franz Ferdinand tend to offer only streaming audio rather than downloads.

Europe's BeSonic

Musicians place their songs online at www.besonic.com for user reviews

Pure Volume

More than 76,000 songs are available at yet another site for aspiring musicians, www.purevolume.com, which is strongly weighted toward rock.

DMusic

Musicians can also post their own songs on DMusic (www.dmusic .com). It helps users wade through more than 17,000 acts — an overwhelming majority categorized as alternative or rock — by listing DM Picks and by having users give songs a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and append comments.

Smart-Music

Dance-music experimenters dominate at www.smart-music.net, a selective site that draws its downloadable MP3's from hard-to-find small labels.

Ragga-Jungle

Slow, deep reggae bass lines are the foundation for whole families of dance music represented at www.ragga-jungle.com. It's an outlet for amateur and professional producers and toasters (rappers), and the downloadable songs, available free after registration, include echoey dub-reggae vamps, sparse dance-hall productions and frenetic jungle tracks.

Classic Cat

At www.classiccat.net, it's possible to search by composer, from Monteverdi to Messiaen.

Asian Classical

www .asianclassicalmp3.org, a dedicated collector of Asian music has transferred recordings from cassettes to downloadable MP3's. The site includes music from nine countries, including 28 minutes of gamelan music from Java.

Iraqi Music

The straightforwardly named www.iraqimusic.com is a resource for both the classical Iraqi improvisations called maqams and more recent Iraqi recordings based on traditional (and thus noncopyrighted) songs.

Trama

A Brazilian record label, Trama (www.tramavirtual.com), offers about 10,000 MP3's, primarily from local Brazilian bands.

www.micromusic.net focuses on electronic music from the sounds of the first primitive video games.

RELATED SITES

Bob Dylan

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

StepVoice

Matador

Vagrant

Barsuk

Saddle Creek

Tigerbeat6

WNYC

WFMU

KCRW

MTV

Epitonic

Webjay

Furthurnet

The Library of Congress

Folkways Records

Internet Archive

Iuma

Garageband

CNet

Vitaminic

BeSonic

Pure Volume

DMusic

Smart-Music

Ragga-Jungle

Classic Cat

Asian Classical

Iraqi Music

Trama

Micromusic

[Shawn]

Nice. :good job:

[DudeAsInCool]

Bump :strumma:

[Mosiq]

Mosiq.com is a great website where everyone can download Music FREE and LEGALLY. Featured Bands, Charts and Rating System, Online Radio and much more all at www.mosiq.com.

Peace