Free Legal Music Online

January 16, 2005 8:27 PM

With all of the talk and posts about itunes, the RIAA, P2P, etc. I thought that I would take this opportunity to point out that there are hundreds of great, free music files online that are legal to download. Sites like Soundloads which posts links to new music every day, Garageband which features up and coming bands, and CNet's music site that lets anyone and everyone upload their files to share with the masses, all feature some great music. And the creators of the music are asking you to download the files for free and add them to your playlists.

I've also downloaded some good music from epitonic.com, purevolume.com, audiostreet, even blogs can be a good source of new, free, legal music downloads. While you're not gonna find the latest big media pop diva or boy band, you can find good music if you take the time to look a little.
posted by copacetix (17 comments total)

Thank you; that's a healthy long list of links.

Even if half of it ends up being laptop techno.
posted by NickDouglas at 8:34 PM on January 16, 2005

There's this site called MetaFilter that has music too.
posted by eyeballkid at 9:00 PM on January 16, 2005

<shill> cdbaby.com </shill>

Not free, but independent and contains some excellent stuff
posted by polyglot at 9:08 PM on January 16, 2005

Tried a bunch of the downloads, only got music samples. I'd use Amazon if I wanted to listen to samples.
posted by fleener at 9:21 PM on January 16, 2005

It should be noted that the casual "even blogs" link is a self-link. Bad form, even if you did try to cover it up. It always makes me wonder, did you construct the entire post just to get the self link in there?
posted by cell divide at 9:41 PM on January 16, 2005

Where exactly did you find samples?

There are full MP3's on all of the sites listed.
posted by copacetix at 9:41 PM on January 16, 2005

Tried a bunch of the downloads, only got music samples.

A lot of the bands on purevolume offer downloads, too bad most of it is pretty homogenous emo/screamo scene shit.

I found these guys pretty interesting, however.
posted by tweak at 9:42 PM on January 16, 2005

The blog link is indeed a self link, feel free to mod me down, remove the post, whathaveyou. Everything is everything.

The post ( and the blog) were constructed because that is what I am into - finding free, legal music online - and trying to hip other people to it.
posted by copacetix at 9:45 PM on January 16, 2005

The blog link is indeed a self link, feel free to mod me down, remove the post, whathaveyou.

Errr, no. Around here, gratuitous self-linking gets you a rabid fist-fucking, minimum. You don't spend much time reading MeFi, do you?

(eyeballkid, thanks, I'd forgotten about MetaMusic!)
posted by cosmonik at 9:54 PM on January 16, 2005

good for you to out your own self link!

what follows, however, won't be so good.
posted by moonbird at 10:02 PM on January 16, 2005

iRate provides a free service which downloads various songs from various music sites, you rate these songs. Using the ratings, iRate tries to download similar music as recommended by users similar to your tastes. It's opensource and all the music it downloads for you is free.
posted by abez at 10:02 PM on January 16, 2005

Afore this clusterfuck gets deleted, visit the Free and Legal .mp3 Wiki and don't look back. Don't ever look back.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:39 PM on January 16, 2005

The MP3s are the true victims in self-link posts like these...
posted by Dreamghost at 1:08 AM on January 17, 2005

Dreamghost is a dirty pirate who knows nothing of what MP3s suffer through. Pay him no mind.
posted by Jairus at 1:14 AM on January 17, 2005

ARGH YE MATT'Y SHALL CLEAN THIS MESS UP SOON...
posted by Dreamghost at 3:22 AM on January 17, 2005

The blog link is indeed a self link, feel free to mod me down, remove the post, whathaveyou. Everything is everything.

Mod you down? Do you know where you are? Are you familar with this site? Didn't you read this on the post page: "Because linking to your own site in this space will result in a deletion and your account will be banned."
posted by boost ventilator at 3:47 AM on January 17, 2005

I don't care about any of that. I would like someone to tell me if my perceptions of epitonic are correct: it's slanted toward house/techno type stuff, and is pretty out-of-date on other genres.
posted by scratch at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2005