Best Free and Legal Music Download Sites
The internet makes it
easy to download just about any song
you want for free. But illegally downloading
music just isn't an option, if you're the honest type. Thankfully, there are a host
of excellent websites that allow you to legally
download and to locally store your music, free of charge. Here are a few of our favorites. Free Music Archive is a
veritable treasure trove of free content. It indexes free music, posted
by all of its partner curators. And it allows users to post
their own music directly to the archives. This creates a mind
boggling library of tracks that you could literally
spend months browsing through. In addition, the
site hosts a myriad of podcasts and renowned
radio stations, such as KEXP, frequently post live cuts
from their studio sessions, with big name acts
passing through. The smash tracks may lack some
production, but they're free. Noise Trade is part free music
site, part promotion platform. You can download any
individual track or album an independent artist
uploads to the site, if, in turn, you
generously supply them with your email address
and postal code. The premium promotion
platform also encourages you to
spread the word about artists you like,
via Facebook and Twitter, while giving you the
option to quickly tip the artist a
suggested $4 donation.
It should come as no
surprise that the Walmart of the internet has
a massive bargain bin of free mp3 downloads. Amazon has over 46,000
free tunes available. And the nice thing about
Amazon's list of freebies is that you can easily
browse it by genre. The only tricky part is
navigating to the right section of the site. To get to all the free goodies
go to Movies, Music, and Games, Digital Music, Deals, then Free.
With nearly 400,000 tracks
from more than 40,000 artists, Jamendo is easily one of
the biggest repositories of free music on the web. The site's penchant for
lesser known artists and experimental
tracking make it more suited for someone
with an open mind, than one who knows
exactly what they want. You won't find all of your
favorite artists here. But the site's
streamlined user interface makes it great for browsing and
finding talented new musicians. SoundCloud, essentially,
serves as the YouTube of music uploading,
meaning anyone can upload their
tracks to the site, before specifying
whether they're available for
download, or strictly for streaming purposes. Not every song is free. But both big name and
lesser name artists often offer free downloads,
if you can manage to find their verified profile. There's also a section
of the site dedicated to tracks released
under Creative Commons licenses, which means you're
free to download, remix, or tweak them as
much as you live.
Live music archive is a
bootlegger's paradise, with an abundance
of concert material. It mainly focuses on jam
bands such as the Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident,
and Sound Tribe Sector Nine. Still there's a
host of other bands to choose from the Smashing
Pumpkins, Jack Johnson, Animal Collective, etc. Along with plenty
of genres to browse ranging from jazz to reggae. Navigation is a bit of a chore. But you can stream or
download the individual tracks as a flack or mp3. Happy downloading, everybody..
