I have an odd taste in music. People looking through my collection will notice albums by Elliott Smith, Nine Inch Nails, Sage Francis, and Blink 182; some may find this a confusing hodgepodge of music. I have no problem paying for music, but I think we all can agree that free is better. So I set a quest out for myself; can I find free (and legal) music.
To get the best results from this journey, some guidelines have to be formed.
• I must be able to get the whole album.
• The artist does not need to release their whole catalog.
• Albums cannot be offered for free for a limit time. This rules out sites like amiestreet.com.
• The music must be downloadable and in a format that can play on the majority of portable players.
• I like the music.
The start of this adventure could actually be traced back almost two years ago. At that time I had read that Harvey Danger, a band that I enjoy, released their third album Little by Little for free at their website. I immediately went to their website and downloaded the album. Before I pressed play I remember thinking that the production value was going to be low and that it was going to be just a passable effort. However the opposite was true. That album has now be
e one of my favorite albums in my catalog. Knowing that this album was released for free, I knew there had to be others.
I went to google.com and did a search for 'creative commons music.' One of the first links was to creativecommons.org/audio. This site feature articles about creative commons music and also contained links to sources for music. I picked three that sounded interesting to me: opsound.org, magnatune.com, and jamendo.com.
First impression of the opsound.com website was confusion. It had sections for genre and artist, but it was hard to actually find and a whole album by an artist. It seemed more like a collection of singles. The biggest problem I saw was that music was available in Ogg Vorbis or MP3. This is not to say that you get to pick, it will either one or the other. Based of my first impression and the fact that you might get stuck with some Ogg files, I would not recommend this site.
Next up is magnatune.com. This site looks good and seems well organized. You can stream the music from the site, but you have to pay to download. Moving on.
Finally we get to jamendo.com. My first impression was not good; I saw a login box. I would prefer to not have to create another account for another website. However I clicked on the music table and was present with a thumbnail view of albums. This is a great. According to the page navigation, they have 2808 albums available. I clicked on an album called Increase the Dosage by Revolution Void. I was intrigued by the genre tag; 'Electronic breakbeat jazz.' From the page for this album I could stream or download. I streamed the first song and it seemed descent. Clicking on the 'Download this album' button provided me with some options. I could download via bittorrent or eMule. I could also pick MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. I picked MP3 download via bittorrent and within 30 minutes I had the album, complete with album art. The files were 192k VBR. While I cannot comment if this is good 'Electrornic breakbeat jazz,' it definitely had good production value and was enjoyable to my ears.
Based on this quest I think I found a winner in jamendo.com. The site seems well laid out and I did not need to create an account to download. The only thing I would like in this site is some form of charts. I like to be able to see what other people are enjoying; I feel that it makes finding new music easier. Maybe that feature is there; I will dig around for it a bit.
I have used jamendo.com now for about a week. I still have positive feelings about it. However, it seems that the majority of music is non-English speaking. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however I do like to be able to understand lyrics when they are present. So far I've had no problem grabbing about 5 albums from the site and I have been impressed with all of them so far.
This is by no means the end of my quest; it is just the beginning. I will continue to report on my finds.
To get the best results from this journey, some guidelines have to be formed.
• I must be able to get the whole album.
• The artist does not need to release their whole catalog.
• Albums cannot be offered for free for a limit time. This rules out sites like amiestreet.com.
• The music must be downloadable and in a format that can play on the majority of portable players.
• I like the music.
The start of this adventure could actually be traced back almost two years ago. At that time I had read that Harvey Danger, a band that I enjoy, released their third album Little by Little for free at their website. I immediately went to their website and downloaded the album. Before I pressed play I remember thinking that the production value was going to be low and that it was going to be just a passable effort. However the opposite was true. That album has now be
e one of my favorite albums in my catalog. Knowing that this album was released for free, I knew there had to be others.
I went to google.com and did a search for 'creative commons music.' One of the first links was to creativecommons.org/audio. This site feature articles about creative commons music and also contained links to sources for music. I picked three that sounded interesting to me: opsound.org, magnatune.com, and jamendo.com.
First impression of the opsound.com website was confusion. It had sections for genre and artist, but it was hard to actually find and a whole album by an artist. It seemed more like a collection of singles. The biggest problem I saw was that music was available in Ogg Vorbis or MP3. This is not to say that you get to pick, it will either one or the other. Based of my first impression and the fact that you might get stuck with some Ogg files, I would not recommend this site.
Next up is magnatune.com. This site looks good and seems well organized. You can stream the music from the site, but you have to pay to download. Moving on.
Finally we get to jamendo.com. My first impression was not good; I saw a login box. I would prefer to not have to create another account for another website. However I clicked on the music table and was present with a thumbnail view of albums. This is a great. According to the page navigation, they have 2808 albums available. I clicked on an album called Increase the Dosage by Revolution Void. I was intrigued by the genre tag; 'Electronic breakbeat jazz.' From the page for this album I could stream or download. I streamed the first song and it seemed descent. Clicking on the 'Download this album' button provided me with some options. I could download via bittorrent or eMule. I could also pick MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. I picked MP3 download via bittorrent and within 30 minutes I had the album, complete with album art. The files were 192k VBR. While I cannot comment if this is good 'Electrornic breakbeat jazz,' it definitely had good production value and was enjoyable to my ears.
Based on this quest I think I found a winner in jamendo.com. The site seems well laid out and I did not need to create an account to download. The only thing I would like in this site is some form of charts. I like to be able to see what other people are enjoying; I feel that it makes finding new music easier. Maybe that feature is there; I will dig around for it a bit.
I have used jamendo.com now for about a week. I still have positive feelings about it. However, it seems that the majority of music is non-English speaking. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however I do like to be able to understand lyrics when they are present. So far I've had no problem grabbing about 5 albums from the site and I have been impressed with all of them so far.
This is by no means the end of my quest; it is just the beginning. I will continue to report on my finds.