MetaFilter posts tagged with downloads

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Artw — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:13:08 -0800

Home taping didn’t kill music, says Ben Goldacre - but where did all the money go?

SXSW 2009 music

Pronoiac — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:44:41 -0800

If you're interested in the bands playing at SXSW this year, you have more to draw on than the blurbs in the schedule. First, the 2009 collection of mp3s from showcased bands is up - like last year, as unofficial fanmade torrents - offering samples of a thousand bands in five gigabytes. Second, there's Paul's SXSW Artist Catalog, an excellent catalog of artists. It provides links to Last.fm & Youtube for each artist, & many tags to follow sounds you like. (Previously: my 2008 post, & 2007.)

Portable Film Festival

harriet vane — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:02:37 -0800

Voting is open for the Portable Film Festival. A curated collection of the year's best short films, music videos, animation, and features, from high-quality amateur films to hard-to-find professional releases. The international festival is delivered completely online: all entries are available for download, with awards decided by user ratings.

SXSW 2008 showcased artists

Pronoiac — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:23:10 -0800

Each year since 2005, SXSW released a torrent of songs for people to sample their showcased artists. It's a terrific source of new, eclectic music. This year, a fan found out they weren't planning to do this, so he took matters into his own hands: here's the torrent, with "764 different artists... almost 3.5 GB of new music, for free." (previously in 2007)

Ya'll n----- gonna make me leave the game. I thought ya'll loved me

damn dirty ape — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:48:42 -0800

Ghostface Killah begs his fans to buy his new album. He figures that if he has 100,000 myspace friends then he should have at least 30,000 early sales. He doesnt and tells downloaders that they should "cop" the CD at the store even if they've downloaded it.

Sorry again about not buying a CD or whatever.

bowline — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:32:21 -0800

Dear Rockers. Guilt ridden music lovers get to feel better about themselves.

Junior Generals

Mitheral — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:47:00 -0800

Junior General is intended to promote the use of historical simulations as a tool for teaching history by providing free resources that anyone can use. To go with their teaching scenarios they make available thousands of paper solders for download and printing. Everything from stone age primatives thru Myceneans, Confederate gunboats to US Iraq infantry and futuristic Cyber Assault Droids. Also available are accessories like castles, houses, trenches, battering rams and hangers.

Art to Go

djgh — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 21:15:13 -0800

The Grand Tour. Until August 31st, the National Gallery in England is putting reproductions of famous paintings on the streets of London, with MP3 audio guides and maps available for download. The reaction has been good.

Free music - SXSW 2007 artists

dobbs — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:30:36 -0800

Tons of bands playing at this year's SXSW. Not going or going and don't know what to check out? They've put up a torrent of 739 MP3s by 739 artists. The organization also has plans for an upcoming torrent of trailers for scheduled films. {via waxy}

Back in my day, we got our movies on shiny little disks, and we liked it!

Horace Rumpole — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:02:12 -0800

Netflix is dead. ...or so claims Robert Scoble (others disagree). Wal-Mart couldn't do it, Amazon couldn't do it; has Verisign produced a Netflix killer?

Paper TGV

Mitheral — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:17:52 -0800

Paper models of the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) free for download. Complete with a finished model gallery.

The Firefox Cold War: “Mr. Mathowie, we must not allow an extension gap!”

rfbjames — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:11:47 -0800

Firefox really is amazingly extendable, but perhaps WAY too much so. [previously]

Satan still goes for straight Debian

jimjam — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:54:32 -0800

Jesus would run Ubuntu So all I have to do is take a copy of Ubuntu, add in a couple apps, and I too can start peddling mugs, tshirts, ballcaps, etc. using their trademarks? I guess so. I must be getting too used to Apple putting the smack-down on everyone lately, or something...

Graph Paper PDF Generator

crunchland — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 10:50:22 -0800

Because graph paper wants to be free ... Free downloadable graph paper ... plain, lined, multi width, hexagonal, even semi-bisected trapezoid. All free, in PDF format, for all your open source graphing needs. (Let's just hope the PIAA doesn't catch on.)

One Man Gathers... ah, whatever

muckster — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:27:18 -0800

Outrage in Deadheadland: fans are furious since the Grateful Dead pulled thousands of freely available concert recordings from Live Music Archive. Some threaten boycotts. Are the Dead really looking out for "Grateful Dead Values" or simply protecting their commercial interests? Have Deadheads been spoiled by free access to the music? Bassist Phil Lesh says he had no say in the matter, Barlow thinks it's "like finding out that your brother is a child molester," and heady bloggers are torn. Or is it all moot anyway? "The idea that they could stop people from trading these files is absurd... It's no longer under anyone's control. People have gigabytes of this stuff." (Previously on Mefi.)

An iTunes For The Rest Of Us?

meehawl — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 12:39:02 -0800

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.

Long Live Rock (Opera)!

nromanek — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 11:08:05 -0800

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!

Making a killing off the price of gas / bet he would have been up in Connecticut twice as fast.

SweetJesus — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 17:54:10 -0800

Rappers I Know - FMJU presents 31 days of the "best shit you've never heard" for download. Featuring Talib Kweli, De La Soul , Oh No (Madlib's brother), J-Zone and the Kanye West "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" Gold Digger remix, a response to Hurricane Katrina from The Legendary Knock Out Boyz. ...and much, much more.

I checked, but oh man, I am hoping this isn't a double post...

Rev. Syung Myung Me — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 13:08:36 -0800

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!]

Eat up your Beets

holgate — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:35:48 -0800

"This, as never before, is Beethoven for free - a gift to the world, just as he might have wished." From Sunday, the BBC will broadcast Beethoven's entire musical output over a six-day period, with all nine symphonies offered as free (and DRM-free) MP3 downloads. By doing so, critic Norman Lebrecht argues that the BBC Philharmonic's cycle may become 'the household version to computer-literate millions in China, India or Korea who have never heard of Karajan or Klemperer.' What that might mean for the struggling classical recording industry is anyone's guess.

radical torrents

crunchland — Mon, 16 May 2005 22:18:34 -0800

Chomskytorrents.org provides a gathering place for torrents with progressive and radical content. As for now, it preserves a special place for the work of American dissident Noam Chomsky.

mp3 blog's galore

noizyboy — Thu, 12 May 2005 15:51:47 -0800

mp3 blogs galore Need some fresh new mp3s? John over at Tofu Hut has compiled what he thinks is "the most comprehensive list of musicbloggers yet available." There's dozens upon dozens of (vaguely) categorised mp3 blogs, which should keep you and your high-speed internet connection merrily ticking over for weeks... Happy listening.

Fiona's Back, baby!

indiebass — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 11:21:23 -0800

Where has Fiona Apple been? A fair question, and here's an answer. Seattle radio is now playing some new Fiona Apple tracks (you can download them here and here; and if those don't work, there's a mirror here) What can I say? I miss her particular brand of angst ridden piano pop. (via Waxy)

Free Legal Music Online

copacetix — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:27:44 -0800

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.

Manybooks.net

Doohickie — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:33:01 -0800

"This site contains more than 10,000 eBooks formatted for reading on your Palm, PocketPC, Zaurus, Rocketbook, eBookWise-1150, or Symbian cellphone." So if you have a PDA and especially if you're into the classics, you no longer have to settle for lame video games on your cell phone or inconvenient newspapers for your downtime entertainment.