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10 sites for free legal music

by Ryan Jarrett
August 17th, 2007 | Posted in Audio | 104 Comments

Nowadays there is much reported about the rise of illegally copied music being made available on the Internet. However, there is also plenty of music on the web that is free and legal. In this post we look at ten sites or services that offer free legal music to download.

ArtistServer.com
ArtistServer.com ArtistServer has been around since 2001, albeit under the name ElectronicScene.com. In 2005 they transformed the site to widen their scope and incorporate social networking features. At its core is a database of over 7,000 songs that can be downloaded for free. An artist’s catalog also has an RSS feed that can be subscribed to like any other feed, allowing the user to keep up to date with any new additions. Photos, videos and blogs from artists complete this interesting site.

Live Music Archive
Archive.org The Live Music Archive has a large collection of live recordings from a wide range of artists, from David Gray to Mogwai, and there is also a lot of music from lesser known bands. The site runs a policy which does not adhere to any particular set of laws, and states so in its Terms and Conditions, and makes the user responsible for making sure that the content is legal in their own country.

Archive.org
Hand in hand with the Live Music Archive is archive.org’s collection of regular mp3s, including a good selection of out-of-copyright music. Although only hardcore fans of pre-1950s music will find this interesting for now, I expect this to become more and more important as time goes on — the early Beatles tracks are due to become public domain in only five years! Update: aside from out of copyright music, there are lots of contemporary tracks available, released under a Creative Commons license.

Epitonic
Epitonic Epitonic has a great selection of free tunes, ranging from Grandaddy and Mercury Rev, through to Carl Cox, Mr Scruff, Badly Drawn Boy and TV On The Radio. The site is a little confusing at first, but once you work out where the genre and artist lists are, its fairly simple from there on in. Epitonic also has a large number of online radio stations based on several genres and subgenres that are worth a listen.

GarageBand
GarageBand The mighty GarageBand, the unsigned band promotion and social review network, has proved to be the catalyst for success for a few bands in the States. After uploading their tracks on GarageBand and then being favourably rated, they have gone on to be offered contracts and even made it to the Billboard charts (the band “10 Years” hit number one with “Wasteland” in 2006 by doing just this). The site covers a wide range of genres and offers a large number of tunes for download. The majority of artists will be unknown to most people, due to the nature of the site, but the review and rating system makes it easy to pinpoint and listen to the most popular tracks.

Download.com
Download.comCNET’s Download.com offers a music section which combines an online store and a repository for free and less widely known music. Fortunately they’ve realised that a lot of people come by solely for the free tracks and have provided a direct link. Again, the music is generally from unknown and unsigned artists, but the range and quantity of material here is staggering — at the last count it stood at 75,425 free MP3s!

SpiralFrog
SpiralFrog Bit of a blind recommendation this one, but SpiralFrog has just entered limited beta, with a view to launch later this year. Its proposed model is interesting — downloads will be free, from a number of labels (Universal seems to be the biggest backer at the moment) with a potential catalogue of 700,000+ tracks, but users will be made to view advertisements while each track is downloading. I dont know how this will work in practice (i.e. will download speeds be throttled back to give more advertising time) but in theory it sounds like a good deal. Unfortunately the service is only available in the US and Canada at the moment, but I expect it to be available in other countries if it takes off in North America.

(Update: see our full SpiralFrog review)

Amazon.com
Amazon.com The popular one-stop-shop has a small selection of tracks available for download for free. These are changed regularly, but are often by known artists.

iTunes
iTunes Its also worth mentioning that Apple’s music store also offers free tracks, usually by up and coming artists. The list varies depending on which country you are in. [Ed. this website keeps track of what music is being offered for free on iTunes each week.]

eMusic
eMusic eMusic is a digital music store that doesn’t offer free downloads per se, but I thought it was worth including because some of the introductory offers let you download 100 free tracks in the first month, after which you’re free to can cancel your membership and it wont cost a penny!

Note: We’ve probably only scratched the surface, so if you know of any more places on the web where you can download free and legal music, please add those in the comments.

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104 comments for “10 sites for free legal music”

    Don’t forget Napster. While you can’t download the songs for free - you can listen to just about for free five times.

    There is also Jamendo (http://jamendo.com) - all music there is free and legal.

    And the best of all, http://www.mp34u.com !

    Another nice thing about eMusic.com is that they have free tracks available after the 100 you get for joining. While you don’t have the option to pick from everything in the store, full albums and compilations pop up for free from time to time.

    CNET’s MP3.com offer some free music from bands who decide to put it up there.

    There’s ruckus….granted you have to have a college email account, but it’s good to get some of the more famous albums from a good variety of artists, as well as some remixes and tributes (Gothacoustic tribute of Disturbed comes to mind). Good selection of music nonetheless

    Although still in Beta, http://www.we7.com is one to add.

    Acidplanet is another great option.

    Wolfgangs Vault is a great place to listen to concerts from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

    http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/

    http://www.AmieStreet.com is a good place for indie music (although they’re offering some mainstream stuff now). All music starts free and price goes up as more people download it.

    I like using StationRipper to Record Radio - http://www.stationripper.com

    Free and legal way to get music. Not always perfect, but a great way to FIND new music.

    eMusic does have a free daily download:
    http://www.emusic.com/dailydownloads/toolbar/main.html

    How could you forget http://last.fm ? Not only does it log the music that you listen to and have free radio, most artists put up one or two full songs to listen to on the website, some even put up free mp3s.

    And you also forgot PureVolume.com

    That website is HUGE.
    100,000’s of artists and like over a million tracks.

    MetalHordes for free extreme metal mp3s.
    http://www.metalhordes.com

    TuneShout.com allows indie artists to upload their music for free, and gives artists the opportunity to offer their tracks for free as well. You can find bands that you just can’t find on itunes or emusic. Check it out… http://www.tuneshout.com

    Yeah Purevolume is amazing for finding a few tracks to download free and legally that have been made available by the artists. I have a profile and put all of my work up there for free.

    One of the best ones Ive found recently… http://www.musiclovr.com. Gives you the ability to download songs (via Itunes and Rhapsody) or order CDs. Great site. I highly recommend it.

    http://www,sellaband.com offers free downloads as well.

    http://www.ccmixter.org/ features lots and lots of remixes by independent artists.

    I like some of the stuff on poesybeat.org.

    almost any site that plays music in a flash player is a free music source. just use firefox with the firebug extension, playing song URLs will appear in the firebug net tab.

    virb.com is a great site too. It uses the same player as Purevolume.

    Here are a couple of music blogs that offer free and legal music:

    http://blog.largeheartedboy.com (Largehearted Boy, my site)
    http://fingertipsmusic.com/ (Fingertips)

    Yet another site, http://www.myindiradio.com (indiradio), is devoted to free independent music, available for download and streaming. Artists can sign up and post their own material under a variety of licenses, and we offer a free 24/7 streaming radio station (in mp3 format) with an eclectic mix of independent music.

    How about Magnatune?

    http://www.magnatune.com

    They let you listen to free streams of full albums, and let you choose your price for album downloads, and they have licensing options as well.

    allofmp3.com - legal according to Russian law lol

    And http://www.e-Ok.ro - tons of mp3, for free, legal

    Can’t forget http://www.ruckus.com for college students

    Stereogum.com free legal MP3s every day

    http://freesolopiano.com (new age piano)
    http://freesologuitar.com (acoustic guitar instrumentals)
    http://freemusicgroups.com (Iinks to and updates for several sites)

    What? Not a mention of Creative Commons licensed FREE music, art, movies???

    I guess the folks who hope to rope-a-dope you with free samples don’t want honest artists to get any fans. Google it, folks. With over 300,000 Creative Commons works already done, there is plenty to keep ya busy!

    You are also welcome to submit your performance, under the protection of the Creative Commons license.

    I will try every one’s idea. Nice site.

    70,000 unsigned artists with free music and ringtones:

    http://www.betarecords.com

    Easynews.com is pretty good.

    ruckus.com is a great source for free drm protected music.. you have to download their player and i think its for college students but it has the largest selection of music i’ve seen on a free site.

    http://www.finetune.com a pretty cool site for steaming music with and option to buy

    ansiform.afraid.org is a really nice one for ambient music for free

    Do not forget BlogMusik.com! With free music where you can upload Mp3 player music.

    here is a collection of more than a 1,000 links for free legal music download (no streaming)
    http://rezal404.org/wikini/wakka.php?wiki=Mp3Legal

    mp3.com of senet abd download.com is biggest who offer that in east but in arabic there ara more thank 1 K loool

    This site is very helpfull w/ finding music! thanx

    There’s always http://last.fm/ - Plenty of free stuff to download there.

    I know that Dennis mentioned http://www.purevolume.com but I need to give a bit of extra info. Sure the site has thousands of artists and millions of songs, but it’s also very well constructed.

    Mainly for unsigned or up-and-coming bands with contracts, I’ve discovered some absolute gold from this site from bands that have cracked the mainstream.

    How did you talk about archive.org and miss this one:

    etree’s live music archive is on archive.org - http://www.archive.org/details/etree - lots and lots (thousands if not millions) of live sets from hundreds of fan friendly bands who let you record/share their live shows including many large label acts

    Also see: http://www.cogmios.nl/the-100-greatest-music-sites (the 100 greatest music sites)

    Heaps of free stuff http:///www.bestmp3links.com

    yep you could also watch and listen to loads of music videos @
    http://www.yeoq.com

    Check out mp3raid. Totally free. 100% legal.

    http://www.soundclick.com are celebrating their 10th aniversary, musicians and listener’s community, charts, your personal station …

    Great List Ryan!
    Thanks for an awesome post!

    http://xlr8r.com/downloads/

    indie electronic, rock, & hip hop from XLR8R magazine

    Recordstore, but with over 100000 Free Samples (trance dance house techno) for Vinyl DJ

    http://www.cdnav.com Free daily MP3 posts plus A/V stuff…

    http://www.DAZ.com also offers a free mp3 every day. You can subscribe to the free mp3 RSS too. DAZ is a very large music resource with all kind of music related information. Music lovers can join and participate, share music or use the embed music player to show others their favorite music.

    http://www.audio-democracy.com allows you to listen to new bands, read reviews and comment on plus rate tracks yourself.

    http://www.acidplanet.com is an Original music and Remix community music site. Please come by and check out our artists or join and share your music. If you want a taste of what our members are making, check out the official podcast: http://www.acidplanet.com/podcasts/rss.asp?id=6

    most of these sites are for primarily indie music (as in the genre, not simply independent artists), if, however, you like your music to have teeth and break some boundaries, i suggest giving http://freealbums.blogsome.com/ (Free Albums Galore) and http://freemetalalbums.blogspot.com/
    (TGR’s Free Metal Albums) each a shot.
    the first site offers a variety of work (including indie stuff) but also branches off into classical, modern composition, free jazz, avant-garde, and electronic works. navigation is a little annoying, but the artists on this site are worth it. also, it is a blog, so each album (yes, all of them are full albums/ep’s) is described, tagged, and enjoyed by the blogger.
    the second site is for some really good metal, and it breaks it’s content down into alot of genres for ease of use. no descriptions beyond the tagging, but they are all free and legal, and are all full albums/ep’s.

    P.S. ruckus is terrible…

    Check out http://mobile.jensen.com and click on Downloadable Music and Bass Tones. Apparently they post 15 new tracks every month.
    A music listener

    http://www.beatpick.com also let you stream music ad-free. A wonderful selection for each and every genre of music is available there.

    An Amazing site that works as a social networking site, P2P site and all around cool and easy to use. You can upload playlists, as many as you want, and anyone can download the songs, likewise for you, if you find a song on someones playlist, hit the download button and go….I love this site.

    And there is the http://www.freemusicpodcast.de/ that is specialized in introducing new tracks that are published under one of the free licences that allow for commercial use as well.
    Besides there are interviews with those great artists who license their songs under such a licence.

    this is one i regularly use its got most of the well known tracks…

    Awesome website that has most up to date songs, and no membership required!

    why is the SpiralFrog Web site is available only to residents of the United States of America and Canada?

    ——————————-
    Play Free Flash Games
    http://www.flashclip.org

    Try bearshare.com….I found over 2000 in three nights……it was amazing…..u can purchase there too……

    http://www.newgrounds.com has a music section that is free and legal. its all user created stuff but some of it is real kick ass. Sorry if it was suggested already…

    don’t forget http://www.musana.com
    See ya

    Don’t forget http://www.pandora.com

    http://www.last.fm - The music site

    gyz and girls get great music here

    don’t have to bother downloading

    This site is great you can look up music by artist or name of song and it will bring up similar artists plus you can mark what you like and dislike all for free.

    The Dejunair Project creates Free and Open Source Music.
    http://www.dejunair.com

    This means simply, you can use the music for whatever you want at no cost (free). Our individual mix tracks are also free and available for download in FLAC format for sampling or remixing (open source). We provide OGG versions along with MP3 versions of our downloadable instrumentals.

    Peace,
    McStrum

    How are you supposed to know which sites are legal if they all claim that they are legal??? Like that site someone mentioned allofmp3.com, I read that its being sued by the U.S label companies and yet they claimed, and still do, that their site is legal.

    Great List Ryan!
    Thanks

    Download Music and Listen to MP3 Songs for Free! It’s Easy and 100% Legal! Search from over 30,000 free songs or browse MP3 music downloads by category. Http://www.ez-tracks.com

    is this website all for free music

    Free online arabic radio and mp3 arab songs http://www.listenarabic.com

    spiral frog really doesn’t work well. the songs are protected so you can’t download them to a mp3/ipod whatever you might have.

    TurnItUpMedia is in the beta phase right now, but it appears to have all the right stuff. Check it out.

    This is turning into a definitive list. Here’s my recommendation, the Free legal music downloads at Foxtunes.com are definitely worth downloading to your ipod or mp3 player.

    what about limewire? I use it and was told it was legal. Is that true?

    if u get te basic it is illegal to download it but if u pay $13.95 a month then it is legal

    limdwire should not set people up,if it’s illegal unless you pay.like the dateing services! can’t get in unless you pay. limewire should be like that-can’t download until you pay-don’t punish the people,punish the sites for letting people download before they enter
    point is if it’s wrong to download before you pay-sites should be set up so you can’t download till you pay..limewire advertises free!! then that should be wrong too as well,if it’s illegal. again blame limewire,not the people.

    *what about limewire? I use it and was told it was legal. Is that true?*
    limewire is illegal and full of viruses!

    You have to be careful with Free Music Download sites, yes iTunes and eMusic offer free downloads but usually from artists you or I have never heard of.

    For Puerto Rican music this website can help you

    on spiralfrog.com you can download to a mp3 player or other sync devices, but you have to be on the internet to do that. It will not let you burn to an audio cd though.

    spiralfrog.com is pretty good. Its free downloads basically. The only catch is that you cant burn onto a cd so you cant listen to your cars cd player. But i have my Zen mp3 plug, so i have 500x more songs than a cd. if you have one of those mp3 jacks, i suggest spiralfrog.com

    Nice selection of sites! Just checked the free and legal sites that were posted. I gotta say that I’m leaning towards Spiralfrog since I’ve already been using it for so long. Great service, great speeds, and a pretty big library. Other than Spiralfrog, I found Garageband was pretty good for the indies. If you surf around, you can get a hit once in a while… but otherwise, I’d keep using Spiralfrog

    this is a stupid website :] :] :]

    i agree with kung fu hustle

    If you want free unknown intrumentals ranging from country music to acid jazz try (freeplaymusic.com) It offers mp3 and aac, great quality sounding music. After choosing a song and where to save it to on your pc it only takes seconds to download, problem free. They Just added indie music and a few sound effects. Thousands to choose from. Also, if classical music is your gig, try (classic cat) for links to music by well known composers. This site is more of a hassle because you have to search for the target song to download. ( Usually found to the far right.)

    SPIRALFROG! this site rocks! i got fergie music puddle if mudd music solja boy music brook hogan music! this site is the best! and all totally free sunshines! and FAST!♥

    I’m currently addicted to Maestro.FM… i go there to listen to music, find lyrics, everything… it’s cool

    Seems like there are a lot of sites that offer a free legal mp3s… heres another http://www.volumevote.com … Just one song a day, sometimes the songs are pretty cool.

    try http://www.dilandau.com its pretty awesome too.

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