New Weird Australia is a not-for-profit, government-sponsored initiative promoting new eclectic & experimental music - plenty of free downloads & podcasts are available on the site.
posted by UbuRoivas
on Dec 4, 2010 -
6 comments
An iTunes For The Rest Of Us? Just for laughs I often flip through my (free subscription!) Stereophile magazine. You know, the one with the ads for the
$12000 speaker wire and
$5000 CD players. Imagine my surprise when I saw a
preview of a new music service,
MusicGiants, that is offering lossless music downloads for $1.29 each. Targeted to "audiophiles", MusicGiants is also selling its "
SoundVault", which seems like some kind of Windows Media Center PC, albeit with a $10,000 price tag, and an ability to download the lossless tracks to some portable media players, with the notable exception of the iPod. Oh, and there's a $50 annual fee (!). Ho hum so far, but then I noticed that the
service has significant buy in from most of the major labels, indicating that they seem to have developed some faith in the ability of Microsoft's DRM to shield their "top quality" downloads from pirates. My thinking on this is that if successful, it should prompt Apple to offer lossless downloads from the iTMS Service, if only because Apple likes to present a "high end" image, and having a competitor
actively dissing iTMS by lumping it in, quality-wise, with "pirated music from p2p networks" has got to hurt.
posted by meehawl
on Nov 18, 2005 -
63 comments
Burnt Church, the Opera - When I was a kid some of my greatest literary influences were "Quadrophenia", "The Wall", "Tommy", and "Jesus Christ Superstar". And did I mention "Quadrophenia"? Jeff Parker and Paul Roessler have put online their entire Floyd-esque concept album "Burnt Church" (complete with groovy Flash bits) and they are encouraging people to download for free. Check it!
posted by nromanek
on Nov 7, 2005 -
6 comments
Below Code. Comatonse Records has
been around for a little over 10 years, and to celebrate, the owner,
Terre Thaemlitz, put out a
free best-of CD. The
physical copies are all long-gone, but it's
available for download (along with a bonus track that didn't fit on the original disc). Most of the stuff is
relatively noisy (and
some found sound stuff), but there's some cool
electronic type pieces,
rock and pop songs and
solo piano pieces as well. Also of note is
his own personal site, which has links to
a lot of cool essays, typically about
gender issues and music. (There's also links to images of
graphical scores to some of his music.)
[Poking around these sites are pretty much NSFW -- the only explicitly NSFW links are on "his own personal site" and "music", but there's quite a few naked people and suchlike around, including on one of the postcards that make up the main link, so, yeah -- take care!]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me
on Aug 1, 2005 -
4 comments
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
on Jan 16, 2005 -
17 comments
Thinner/Autoplate is the real deal: a netlabel that doesn't suck. Ambient/dub/minimal house/drone/experimental sounds that'll turn your home into the chillout room of a Finnish club at 5 am. Or at least pleasantly buzz in the background while you read. Sixty-five releases, high-quality bit rates, zipped files, creative commons licence -- the site itself is very nicely done. But more importantly, the music is just freakin' good, for fans of this sort of thing of course.
For a taster, try the excellent
ambient dub mix (125MB) or the more beat-oriented
house standard mix (95MB).
The label chief explains the rationale behind giving the music away in an interview
here.
posted by dydecker
on Nov 25, 2004 -
20 comments
MP3 Blog Roundup • A far-flung variety of free mp3 singles posted almost daily. Without
Sense's roundup I would have never stumbled across the excellent
Enchanted Sounds
of the Islanders. Equally worth bookmarking:
Fat Planet,
NewFlux,
Pop77,
ScissorKick,
TangMonkey,
TtIKtDA,
Tofu Hut,
Cocaine Blunts & Hip-Hop Tapes,
Music for Robots,
Soul Sides,
MoistWorks,
A Million LoveSongs,
Copy Right?,
The Big
Ticket,
TalkieWalkie,
Bubblegum Machine,
Fingertips,
#1 Songs in Heaven,
Mythical Beast,
Fruits of Chaos,
Moebius Rex...
posted by dhoyt
on Jul 10, 2004 -
43 comments
Why Isn't Judee Sill's Beautiful Music More Well Known? Everyone has a favourite musician who, for some reason, remains unknown and unfairly overlooked. My choice for a much-deserved and long overdue revival is the silky-voiced, eccentric, tragic, ethereal and ultimately mysterious
Judee Sill, one of the great Seventies singer-songwriters. Who would you nominate? (
Here are a few mp3s of demos and unreleased recordings which will give you an idea of her beautiful voice and highly-strung delivery and, hopefully, lead you to explore her two main albums.)
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Nov 24, 2003 -
50 comments
Do you have to be black to possess that elusive quality known as "soul"? Soul Music's
New Face: 16, Blond And British.
Joss Stone, the 16 year-old winner of the BBC TV talent show Star for A Night, traveled to Miami to work on songs for a pop album. Instead, she hooked up with a group of gifted but
long-overlooked musicians who were among the prime movers and shapers of "The Miami Sound" of the Seventies: Betty Wright ("Clean Up Woman"), Timmy Thomas ("Why Can't We Live Together"), Latimore ("Let's Straighten It Out") and Little Beaver ("Party Down"). Some of them had not been in the studio for years; Little Beaver was working for Amtrak and Timmy Thomas was a college administrator when they got the call. Together they recorded her first album,
The Soul Sessions, in only four days. Listen on
All Songs Considered or download full mp3 versions of the first 2 songs at
Amazon.
posted by probablysteve
on Oct 14, 2003 -
46 comments
eMusic Ends Unlimited Service - starting in November, $10/month only gets you 40 downloads. They're "pleased" to announce $50/month for 300 downloads. eMusic has been one of my favorite sites for a while. Just a moment ago, I cancelled my subscription.
posted by Fantt
on Oct 9, 2003 -
98 comments
Killing the music Who is the real enemy here? Mefites argue on whether downloading the latest eminem is theft or merely copyright infringement. RIAA says this activity is killing CD sales and wants to slap a lawsuit on everyone with a cable modem. Everyone seems to be missing the real culprit here. [via
Ars-technica]
posted by Nauip
on Aug 5, 2003 -
128 comments
BuyMusic.com debuts, a service that allows the 90-some-odd percent of people out there who use Windows to legally download music like their Mac-loving brethren have been able to do with iTunes. I went and used it today and give it an initial grade of "C": The music collection is adequate but could be larger and definitely needs indie artists, the UI is tolerable but needs improvement, and the music files themselves are generally okay but of inconsistent quality. One major problem I saw is that it listed -- and let people buy -- albums that they couldn't actually download: I had this happen with a Depeche Mode singles collection. Has anyone else used it yet? What are your thoughts? And notwithstanding the imminent Windows version of iTunes (which we are told will arrive by the end of the year), how long until this site has more real competition?
posted by jscalzi
on Jul 22, 2003 -
36 comments
As
Penis enlarger with new credit line will clean your septic system *--a recent piece of spam which I received--puts it:
OH MY GOD. No, really - this is one of the coolest websites of ALL TIME. You know I love you lots for sending me this url, and I am sworn to secrecy. Who the hell is this guy? And how did you find the site?
I'm going to look at every single page and download every single one of these mp3s. Before you post this to mf, that is ;) - iconomy
Ladies, Gentlemen, Neuters and quonsar, I give you ...
Johnny Spencer's 'vanity site' directed towards fans of Black popular music c1940's to 1970's. Music from both Jamaica and America!You have scans of various 45s, Johnny's beautiful dust jacket artwork, his interesting system of nomenclature defining Jamaican popular music, detailed notation and...
music!!(caveat & details within)
posted by y2karl
on Jun 23, 2003 -
25 comments
iTunes 4 + iLeech = Napster. iTunes can stream songs over the internet right now. With
iLeech or
iTunesDL (direct download link, no info available) you can download files from other iTunes 4 users. With
ShareiTunes and
Spymac Music you can search for available iTunes libraries. Now you have access to hundreds of thousands of songs. Will this mean big trouble for Apple or were they planning for this?
posted by capndesign
on May 14, 2003 -
14 comments
The future of music retail... will be nothing like this. Echo Networks, a Los Angeles based "digital venture", in partnership with Best Buy, Tower, Wherehouse, Virgin & FYE, has launched an instore downloadable purchase initiative whose chances of failure are only exceeded by the extreme vagueness surrounding the announcement.
For more, read the news article at
CNET.
posted by jonson
on Jan 27, 2003 -
14 comments
Live Phish (for flame's sake, this is not a post about the band itself) is a new service created by Phish through which people can download SHN or MP3's of their upcoming new years eve shows and burn them themselves, for a fee of course. The recordings are due to be available two days after the shows are over. It will be interesting to see if the service is successful and profitable. Assuming it is, will there be an effect on the music industry and the RIAA? Might they realize they can make money on music downloaded on the internet? Only time will tell.
posted by kurtosis
on Dec 20, 2002 -
15 comments
$0.99 song downloads are here! Universal Music Group will release 43,000 songs as digital downloads. The tracks will be available to US consumers for $0.99 for individual songs, and $9.99 for the entire album. There's only one little problem, the songs are available as either Liquid Audio or Windows Media.
posted by riffola
on Nov 20, 2002 -
41 comments
One Dollar Cuts So many times so many of us have said we would buy music online if the price were right. It looks like that opportunity is now here. Are we going to put up or shut up? Is this article going to end up as a piece of PR or as an online social shift? (via /.)
posted by Tystnaden
on Oct 24, 2002 -
49 comments
Open source music? Give away the songs without copyright, sell the audio source files dirt cheap and waive the copyright. That's the idea behind
Brad Sucks. Are any bands you know of doing something like this?
posted by Leonard
on Jul 30, 2002 -
5 comments
Sweet! The Flaming Lips' new album,
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, comes out in mid-July. But you can listen to it in its entirety right now. Battling robot goodness.
posted by RakDaddy
on Jun 29, 2002 -
28 comments
Napster refuses to die, promises viable business model which you can now download for free. Someone tell these people that the dot-com "I've got no way of paying you anything other than stock options" boom is over. If I have to pay for the service of downloading software from a central server, the P2P model is useless. Morons.
posted by rev-
on Aug 22, 2001 -
3 comments
Songbird is billed as a Napster anti-piracy tool. It's job is supposedly for an artist to see the many title variations of their material as documentation for copyright violations. I don't know if this is truly a thinly-veiled claim of legitimacy or whether the author is just being earnest - but because it shows what users have what variations, I'm finding it a great tool to track down songs that I couldn't find before because of Napster's filtering and not necessarily being able to think of every possible variation...Neato.
posted by DiplomaticImmunity
on May 10, 2001 -
7 comments
Motley Crue ROCKS man! Okay so maybe they're just as old and washed up as Metallica, but the diff here is that Motley Crue supports the idea of their fans downloading MP3s of their music via Napster and Metallica is just trying to get cheap publicity by screwing their own fans. Personally, I listen to bands like
these and I made fun of groups like Metallica and Motley Crue back when I was in high school and everybody else thought they were cool, but I'll stop badmouthing Crue for the rest of my life. I might even try to appreciate their music.
Metallica still sucks though.
posted by ZachsMind
on Jul 3, 2000 -
3 comments
Mötley Crüe offers their new single "Hell On High Heels" as a free MP3 download...promoting their upcoming album "New Tattoo", hitting stores, June 20th.
See guys...*that's* how it should be done.
posted by EricBrooksDotCom
on May 23, 2000 -
8 comments
