The Beatles never broke up.
posted by klangklangston on Nov 9, 2009 - 111 comments

The Social History of the MP3.
posted by chunking express on Aug 24, 2009 - 75 comments

Summer Mix Series is the soundtrack to your summer. Created by yewknee.com, this collection of user submitted mix CDs encourages submissions to have unique, specific themes, giving many of these mixes a more cohesive edge than "Bill's Favorite Tunes June 2009". Listen to summer, 48 CDs and counting! [more inside]
posted by CharlesV42 on Jul 24, 2009 - 17 comments

Pilgrim Productions Presents: Voices Across America, an archive of gospel music in a variety of genres, submitted for free play and download by church groups and folk and traditional groups across the country and beyond. Style, age, and quality vary greatly, but fans of noncommercial music will enjoy hunting for the gems of blues, Cajun, bluegrass, choral, shapenote, country, vintage, and mountain gospel and more.
posted by Miko on May 24, 2009 - 15 comments

Four Hours of Free Funkiness Filter: Pretty Lights [more inside]
posted by jammy on Mar 31, 2009 - 20 comments

For the fourteenth year, Yo La Tengo will murder the classics tonight. (Previously: 2002 2006 2007 2008) [more inside]
posted by roll truck roll on Mar 13, 2009 - 61 comments

The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko on Feb 16, 2009 - 27 comments

Your favorite music blog sucks.

Rock/Psych/Prog/Indie/Folk
ChrisGoesRock
Prog Not Frog
Like Dynamite to your Brain
YoungMossTongue
Glamorous Indie Rock'n'Roll
FANTASY
SONZEIRANANET
A L A I N F I N K I E L K R A U T R O C K
Orexis Of Death
[more inside]
posted by swift on Jan 19, 2009 - 55 comments

“You can’t roll a joint on an iPod” or how the iPod killed the music industry. First the music biz overlooked the computer CD rom when they put copy control on cd burners. Then they eliminated the single. Shortly after that "mp3" replaced "sex" as the most popular search term. Apple has become the largest music seller largely against the wishes of the music biz, but 99 cents beats free. Yesterday Apple announced they were eliminating DRM. The questions remains, who needs Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI, does Apple? When is Apple just going to replace them? There were rumors a year ago that they would launch a record label with Jay-Z but that does not appear to have come to fruition.
posted by caddis on Jan 7, 2009 - 105 comments

In the 1980s, songwriter, artist and cultural critic Momus recorded a number of albums for the legendary indie label Creation Records, combining influences as diverse as Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Pet Shop Boys-style synthpop and Balearic acid-house. These have largely languished in Sony Music's vaults over the past few years, occasionally fetching hefty prices on eBay. Now, Momus has taken the step to commit auto-piracy and release his Creation albums online, for free; over December, he will post MP3s of all six albums to his LiveJournal blog, each with freshly written liner notes. The first one, 1987's The Poison Boyfriend, is here. [more inside]
posted by acb on Dec 9, 2008 - 15 comments

"So, that’s my long and winding history of a little postcard from the Upper West Side of Manhattan!" Suzanne Vega writes about writing the hit song Tom's Diner, coping with its numerous remixes, and its part in the birth of the MP3 music compression format.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 24, 2008 - 34 comments

Have you ever wondered what the national anthem of Bolivia, Nepal or The Republic of Seychelles sounded like? Well wonder no more because NationalAnthems.info has got you covered! It claims to have the national anthem for every country in the world in MIDI format, along with downloadable lyrics and sheet music so you can sing and play along. But if the MIDI format isn't doing it for you, there's also other sites that you can visit that have downloadable MP3s of pretty much every national anthem this planet and its inhabitants have to offer, such as this one or this one, which is notable in that the anthems featured there were performed by the US Navy Band. And finally, for your further reading and listening pleasure, check out this forum which contains background information on and even more links to downloadable national anthems.
posted by Effigy2000 on Sep 22, 2008 - 14 comments

A lifetime of lost playlists Martin Belam offers a personal history of music formats and describing how he made playlists with each of them. I'd love for his conclusion to become a reality.
posted by feelinglistless on Jul 31, 2008 - 13 comments

The following is a list of over 3600 titles recorded from my collection of 78 rpm records....Right now, there are over 2,450 titles on this page linked to mp3's....I have about 2500 more records to record, so I'll be adding more titles as time permits over the next hundred years or so....I loaded a searchable ACCESS database for this list HERE. [.mdb] I don't know if it will work for everyone. Good luck! [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Jul 24, 2008 - 84 comments

Ren + Stimpy Production Music: 109 Instrumental Tracks!
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 24, 2008 - 38 comments

God Save The Thief (automatic download) is a mashup of The Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen" and Wolfmother's "Joker and The Thief" mixed by The Illuminoids.
posted by jason's_planet on Jun 4, 2008 - 23 comments

Looking for a song online? Use Muxfind to search Muxtape (previously) for tracks.
posted by Korou on May 27, 2008 - 30 comments

Once a week high quality digital recordings of cassette tapes purchased at the Dalston Oxfam Shop in East London.
posted by klangklangston on Apr 14, 2008 - 14 comments

Music is good. Free is good. So free music must be double good. With over 1000 albums listed from netlabels and other sources, Free Albums Galore (mentioned a while ago) is a well-curated collection of links to some of the best free full-length releases on the 'net. Of course, there are a lot more netlabel resources out there. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Apr 8, 2008 - 9 comments

Idle nostalgia led me to check on the mp3 page for Bulb Records (early home of Quintron and Andrew WK).

That all reminded me of space/noise rockers Gravitar, whose drummer Ben Cook has put up a fair amount their music (and other music he's made) for free. Oh, and he has a (rarely updated) music blog, which mentioned the Weird Sound Generator and Noizehole. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston on Mar 25, 2008 - 10 comments

Shareminer is a clownsuit engine that searches for files upped to Rapidshare, Megaupload, SendSpace, ZShare, and other similar one click hosts. A great tool for locating full, rare, and out of print albums. [more inside]
posted by Item on Mar 21, 2008 - 47 comments

Like a dog fucking a blender. Six-Word Reviews of each of the 763 SXSW Mp3s. [Previously] [Via]
posted by churl on Mar 13, 2008 - 68 comments

Geek Pop '08. Online science music festival at the Null Hypothesis science blog, with mp3 downloads. Featuring the immense Dark Matter by Johnny Berliner. [more inside]
posted by algreer on Mar 7, 2008 - 3 comments

Surf your music. Audio surfer is a new game that uses .mp3 files to create racetracks of musical goodness. If guitar hero and F-Zero had a love child, this would be it.
posted by JimmyJames on Feb 29, 2008 - 48 comments

Go way back into time with a deliciously analog collection of mastermixes from 1980s-era soul radio from London. [more inside]
posted by dhammond on Feb 29, 2008 - 3 comments

Anglo-Finnish artist Sanna Annukka's vibrant, flat design work (especially her Icons series) got me curious about her, well, iconography.

She mentioned The Kalevala previously, the Finnish national epic poem (in Finnish here), a tale of creation and heroism that arguably spurred the Finns to independence from the Russians.

Like so much else epic and awesome, it spawned a '70s prog band, with three albums.
posted by klangklangston on Feb 25, 2008 - 23 comments

Little Hat Jones - Bye Bye Baby Blues
Bye Bye Baby Blues Tab
Dennis (Little Hat) Jones, a Texas bluesman considered a notable of Naples, Texas. He record ten sides of his own and made nine more accompanying the very idiosyncratic and hard to follow Texas Alexander. Bye Bye Baby Blues is a very sweet song that also appears on the Ghost World soundtrack.
See also Texas Blues Guitar (1929-1935) .
posted by y2karl on Feb 16, 2008 - 7 comments

Here are 52 cover songs that Of Montreal have done over the years. via
posted by carsonb on Feb 1, 2008 - 37 comments

What do you call capturing sound the way the human head hears it, that is, three-dimensionally? Nope, not stereo. Binaural recording. Holophonics. Dummy head (no, not you) recording. [more inside]
posted by artifarce on Jan 29, 2008 - 14 comments

The best music of 2007 according to Stereogum, Pitchfork, All Music, NME, PopMatters, The A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, TIME, MTV, the Guardian, eMusic, Amazon, Spin Magazine, Q, Largehearted Boy, and more. Among the most frequently listed are Radiohead, Spoon, Arcade Fire, Of Montreal, Feist, and The National.
posted by Soup on Dec 18, 2007 - 68 comments

An FPP for your holiday listening pleasure. Ha ha ha. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Dec 18, 2007 - 15 comments

Vintage Christmas Wax The Edison Concert band never sounded so good.
posted by Stynxno on Dec 13, 2007 - 6 comments

The Maestro FZ-1 Fuzztone was one of the first stomp boxes a guitar player could use. Released in 1962 by Gibson, sales didn't take off until a British band used it in the introduction to one of their songs in 1965. But if it weren't for a Marty Robbins song and engineer Glen Snoddy, the pedal might have never been invented and country music wouldn't have been the same. [more inside]
posted by sleepy pete on Dec 4, 2007 - 29 comments

Name That TV Theme Song
Need help? Television Tunes has 3000+ themes available in mp3 format. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Dec 1, 2007 - 22 comments

“You’re Out Of The Computer” by Bingo Gazingo and My Robot Friend. Lyrics.
posted by jason's_planet on Nov 24, 2007 - 11 comments

Covering The Mouse. An MP3 blog dedicated to cover versions of Disney songs. My favorite so far is Gene Simmons' cover of "When You Wish Upon A Star."
posted by amyms on Nov 21, 2007 - 17 comments

The Ultimate Bootleg Experience is an ecclectic mp3 blog dedicated to live boots with a good number of posts up, and the links in the archives seem to stay live for quite a while.
posted by jonson on Nov 13, 2007 - 19 comments

AEROTONE. | Hello!
posted by hama7 on Nov 10, 2007 - 16 comments

Vintage [album covers nsfw] and contemporary, Rashid Sales Co, music of the Middle East, packed with mp3s and links. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Nov 10, 2007 - 16 comments

Serein v3
posted by hama7 on Nov 9, 2007 - 50 comments

World Passport Music – 75 hours of free world music in mp3/podcast format. Afrobeat, Cuban Diaspora, Haitian Kompa, Salsa, Highlife, Rumba Congolaise, Kinshasa-Nairobi Sounds, Afrijazz, Calypso, Hawaiian, American Jazz Roots, Yoruban Ejeki Jo... Let’s Dance!
posted by algreer on Nov 1, 2007 - 23 comments

Voodoo Funk - 11 African funk mixes from a vinyl archaeologist in Guinea
posted by algreer on Oct 17, 2007 - 23 comments

Control, the biopic covering the the life and untimely death of Joy Division's singer Ian Curtis, opens in the US today (on a limited release) [ trailer | fan site | on set interview ]. This is director Anton Corbijn's debut full length film [ interview ] and was co-produced by Tony Wilson (a giant in the Manchester and UK music scene, sadly missed. Check out 24 Hour Party People [trailer | clip]) . Control opened in the UK several days ago and the reviews are largely positive [ Guardian | Times Online | Independent | Channel 4 | Time Out | Manchester Evening News ]. [more inside]
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar on Oct 10, 2007 - 40 comments

Gabba gabba hey.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Oct 7, 2007 - 36 comments

Indiana's Sardina. The New Pornographers of the '90s, the Sardinas released two fantastic albums full of mixtape fodder. Now everything they've got, including some live gems, is up online.
posted by klangklangston on Sep 25, 2007 - 21 comments

4 Brothers Beats. This is a tribute to all the original music that built hip-hop – the best beats in soul, funk & jazz collected by four brothers. An amazing collection of out-of-print releases from the 70s and 80s.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Sep 20, 2007 - 18 comments

Today's post of tenuously related audio brings you ten historic radio broadcasts, 529 eternal questions in popular music, and one mildly amusing black metal band prank call.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 29, 2007 - 11 comments

To call Pat Fish the best British songwriter of the past twenty-five years is an invitation for some awfully suspicious stares. Pat who? But he might be just that. Known since the early 1980s as the Jazz Butcher (Or The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, or JBC, and at times later as Sumosonic, The Black Eg, and Wilson), Fish remained detached enough to avoid the indie-rock vortex of the last decade, dooming himself to obscurity while leaving behind one of the most valuable buried treasures in all of alternative music.
posted by carsonb on Aug 20, 2007 - 21 comments

The "Bootlegs" section over at The Rawking Refuses To Stop has a ton of great stuff, from a stripped down live acoustic Jeff Tweedy & Jay Bennet set (right before YHF was released) to a mock-up version of the unreleased new Radiohead album using the best available live tracks from the most recent tour to a rare Paul McCartney, John Lennon & Stevie Wonder jam session to all sorts of smaller gems.
posted by jonson on Aug 18, 2007 - 12 comments

Fuck Yuo I Am a Robot are offering their album Compensator for the Accelerator for free download from their site. Infectious ass-shakin' Estonian electro-pop. Lyrics to track 2 NSFW, likewise sleeve art jpgs if you opt for the .zip download. You can sample one of the tracks, Hydraulic, on YouTube if you don't know them and would like to check them out first, though personally I can't get enough of Zukunft (direct mp3 link).
posted by nthdegx on Jul 12, 2007 - 18 comments