I've been wanting to start this thread for some time.

I sure most of you have heard about the P2P music sharing systems out there. Some legal, most of it questionable. What a lot of people have missed is that there are free MP3 files out there that are totally legal.

Most muscians know that in order to expand their fan base they need to give people a way to try out their songs. So what many of them will do is offer a free song off of their albums. The trick for those of us that love music is to find these links as a way to discover new music.

When I see the currently listening to thread I think - wouldn't be cool if members provided a link to get the song for free. Of course you are not likely to get a real popular song for free but you can get an idea what a given artist is like by down loading their free songs.

So my challenge was to find a good link to kick this thread off with. I think I found it. The page is kind of old (end of 2004) but it offers a wide range of tastes without being over whelming.

These are songs that where distributed in Wire to be used in creating smash ups (a whole other story).

http://creativecommons.org/wired/

For me I really enjoyed the Gilberto Gil track the best. The tracks from My Morning Jacket, Spooned and Paul Westerberg are also good. To be up front I didn't check out the hip hop songs (not my thing).

So if you come across a site that gives out free songs that you think are worth checking out - then please share that info in this thread.

Thanks, music lovers of Canada - :Canada:

A good source of free songs is iTunes. Every Tuesday they list a song or two for free. This week includes a song from Daniel Lanois!

If the admin does his job right, he should close this. It is illegal to talk about stuff like that (since it is illegal to download free music, unless it is a song that isn't for sale) on a site that is open to the public.


But anyways, if you download bittorent, there's these sites that you can download movies, games, books, and music.


mininova
Torrentspy

I made a point to say I'm not talking about a P2P system. I'm not about to "share" a part of my hard drive with people I don't know, regardless of the file contents.

Please at least check out the link I posted before you suggest that this thread be shut down. Not to mention that I explained how I waited to find just the right link to kick things off with and you didn't even bother to look at it... :angry: I can only guess that you read the title of the thread and never even read my post :eyebrow:

Plus were's the logic in saying that bit torrent feeds contain illegal files and then post two bit torrent links?? :wacko:

Sorry I'm tired. :blink:

I'm a huge fan of the Beastie Boys so I guess...





Beastie Boys / Now Get Busy

bit torrent has many legitimate uses (ie: before the guys at redvsblue.com got themselves a server that could handle all of the downloads they got they resorted to offering their flicks up as torrents so the community could help provide some needed bandwidth), granted the illegitimate traffic dwarfs the traffic for all other purposes by a pretty substantial margin

I use the iTunes and so look forward to Tuesday and the new free songs. Quite a few of the songs cause me to go out and get the entire cd - Relient K, Kathleen Edwards, Nikka Costa, Annie, Katie Todd Band, etc.

I've forgotten where, but Radio KoL often posts fan music as downloadable files. It's KoL oriented, but hey, like that's a bad thing.

Many of the sites that allow you to purchase and download music tracks also allow you to download a free sample (usually lasting around 20 seconds).

I'm now going to leave this thread as some of the issues have touched a nerve.

Actually samples are usually streamed more often than they are downloaded. However, I am hoping to share links to full songs. It's possible I may be the only one into this and this thread won't take off - time will tell...

Another source of free songs is Amazon.com Free Music Downloads. I'd say about 80% of what they offer doesn't appeal to me but I have gotten some interesting stuff from the site. I see they currently have a new Maddness song - have to check that out. Whoa and a new Gang of Four song B)

When if came to using the Amazon free music page I had always just checked out the songs listed on the top page. Turns out that if you search through the categories there is a huge amount of free songs. I'm guessing at least 5000!

I did a quick pass through and downloaded over 150 songs. I found stuff from:

Wilson Pickett
Dennis Brown
Brian Eno
Joe Strummer And The Mescalero
Jimmy Eat World
Dropkick Murphys
Alison Krauss & Union Station
Natalie MacMaster
Joe Ely
Friends Of Dean Martinez
The Burns Sisters
Burning Spear
Doc & Merle Watson
Norman Blake
The Nighthawks

And a bunch of others - Wow! And all for free B)

Isn't music downloading still technically legal in Canada? It's the uploading of music that's the crime, no?

What's the legality of downloading TV, too? The non-Tiny non-Villages one.

Yup. Downloading music for personal use is still legal in Canada. Gotta love our copyright laws...

Josh Ritter is one of my favorite musicians ever. hes actually from Moscow Idaho, where i live. hes not very well know in the states, but has a decent following in ierland.
theres a few mp3s here of some of his live stuff. some of these songs are unrecorded.
you should all totlay check him out. the music itself is similar to the style of bob dylon, and a few other singer songwriters.

Josh Ritter

My opinion was that downloading was legal, but uploading is not. However, the Federal Court of Canada suggested that uploading may also be legal.

As I recall, the case actually centred around Canada's privacy laws. The music lobby (SOCAN, I believe) wanted to compell ISP's to link names of users based on ISP addresses they had interecepted. The ISP's refused, so they sued to compell production of the names. The Court refused, as they were unconvinced that any breach had been committed.

Essentially, the case was flubbed up from the beginning - the Music Industry did not do a good job of presenting its evidence and reasonably proving that the users in question had broken any copyright provisions. The case for disclosure was doomed to fail regardless of whether uploading and downloading was legal.

The media interpreted the result as meaning "downloading and uploading is legal", when really, all the case said was that privacy rights couldn't be overridden because the evidence presented by SOCAN was too poor.

All this is moot anyways - new copyright legislation is being considered by parliament which will certainly make uploading illegal, and may make downloading illegal as well.

To the best of my knowledge, TV and Movies would be subject to the same standard as music, as I don't see anything in teh copyright act which would differentiate between music and video downloads.

is the legality issue realy gonna stop anyone though? it deffinetly doesnt here in the states.

Whoa.... NFN. Definitely folk/storyteller Dylan style.

Loved Girl in the War clip. I had heard of Josh Ritter, but didn't remember hearing his songs. :clapping:

its good stuff isnt it? Girl In The War is good song.
Josh has so much good stuff. you should try to find some more. by downloading from the internet or buying a CD. oh yeah, and tell your friends about him:)

check out the Josh Ritter stuff!

Thanks for Josh Ritter. Tres kewel!!! :clapping: :fonz:

hes very good i think.

Thanks for the tip on Josh Ritter NFN. Be sure not to miss the link on his site "Doug's Jukebox". That page has music of other performers that Josh wants to turn people on to.

Very nice - thanks again...

ill check it out. thanks for the info. i must say im rather suprised at the responce posting that page got.

If you liked Wilco's album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot it turns out that in Australia it came with a free six song EP. Being the cool band that they are, you can down load all the songs on the EP.

They also give you three different hi-res albums covers to choose from. I like this one:

Katie Todd Band has a few songs available on in streaming form. In & Around :)

not bad, prety good stuff. i liked In & Around.

This link will not be to everyone's liking. If you like Experimental Rock I'll bet you already know about Faust. This site has some selected free songs to down load from their early period.

The Wümme Years

This site has a ton of Spoon Songs. Some of the links supplied by the label have died but the links from the band all work fine. B)

^ i just sampled some of their stuff and i love it. im gonna download more.

Glad you liked it - their new stuff is very good.

This post isn't about free music. I just saw a neat music factoid on the Wiki:

I bought that CD when I was in Ireland - how cool is that!