Free Music on the Web... Some of the Top Starting Points
NPR Music This is a fabulous, vibrantly alive free online music resource! Everything from live streaming music to podcasts of concerts to "Song of the Day" delivered each day by email. Covers a wide variety of genres: Jazz, Blues, Rock, Pop, Folk, Classical, World. Listen to Live Concerts on Demand, recordings of Studio Session, Interviews with singers and musicians. Watch music videos. Get the latest music news and blogs... and much more!
Apple iTunes "Free Single of the Week" You can also check out specials on iTune's Facebook page.
AOL Radio ".... offers over 350 Internet radio stations with song skipping and includes music, news, sports and talk..."
Daily Online Music Newspapers and Magazines
Billboard.com ".... From the latest music news and music reviews, to Billboard music charts, music articles and more, you'll find the free music information you want at Billboard.com. Experience the most in-depth music news online and get access to exclusive videos and digital music, as well as the hottest new releases, music videos and more. Visit Billboard.com each day to see what's happening...."
MOG ".... With thousands of contributions from music lovers and the top 300 music blogs that make up our network, MOG generates over 6,000 music blog posts per week, all hand-curated to deliver the web's best daily music newspaper. MOG makes it easy to dig deep and find up-to-date information on your favorite artist, album, or song by searching our archive of hundreds of thousands of blog posts. Sign up for MOG and get personalized music recommendations and blog posts designed and chosen just for you. Subscribe to your favorite artist on MOG and get instant updates. And if you've got something to say, come say it where 5.5 million music lovers per month will hear you...."
Free Music Review Sites
Critical Metrics "... is a bibliographic database of the 40 thousand most highly recommended songs of all time. We index rave reviews, playlists, year-end lists, awards, artist & celebrity picks, and other editorial superlatives...."
Listen to Free Internet Radio Stations and Libraries that Recommend and Play the Kind of Music You Like to Hear
AccuRadio ".... the first multichannel Internet radio station desgined specifically for adults with sophisticated musical tastes. ...
- We give exposure and airplay to numerous genres of music and hundreds of artists that virtually never receive broadcast radio airplay.
- We constantly display the title and artist and album name for the song that's playing.
- We display the CD covers of the last three songs we've played, with each cover linking to the appropriate Amazon page for purchasing that CD.
- We stream at 32 kbps, which makes for a good-sounding Internet radio station but is not quite a quality level that most consumers feel is a substitute for CD ownership...."
BlueBeat.com ".... transmitting simulated live musical performances for free at 160 and 320 kb/s..."
FineTune.com "... Comprehensive music library. Proprietary recommendation engine. Easy to use (oh and its free!)
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Type an artist's name, we create a playlist of related songs for you to listen to.
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Explore the finetune community - browse artists, users, playlists and more.
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Listen to professionally managed playlists spanning todays most popular terrestrial radio formats...."
Last.fm ".... Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about
what you like. It can connect you to other people who like what you
like - and recommend songs from their music collections and yours too....".
MeeMix "... is a fun and easy music service which allows users to create and share personalized Internet radio stations and video channels for free. Enhancing the user experience is our own uniquely developed taste prediction technology, which enables us to bring you a combination of your favorite music with an added element of discovery – introducing you to new tracks and artists that match your own individual taste in music in accordance with your current mood...."
Pandora Radio ".... we have a single mission: To play only music you'll love. To understand just how we do this, and why we think we do it really, really well, you need to know about the Music Genome Project .
".... It's the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.
With Pandora you can explore this vast trove of music to your heart's content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.
You can create up to 100 unique "stations." And you can even refine them. If it's not quite right you can tell it so and it will get better for you...."
Slacker.com ".... is a free personalized radio service featuring over
100 expert-programmed genre stations and the ability to create
your own perfect stations. To get started, pick your favorite
type of music or search for your favorite artist or song...."
Be a DJ and Set Up Your Own Internet Radio Station
Live365.com "... radio network reaches millions of listeners worldwide, offering greater breadth and depth of high-quality streaming music, talk, and audio than any other network. Featuring 260+ genres of music produced by 5,000+ broadcasters and music tastemakers from over 150 countries, the network boasts a roster of artists and radio producers ranging from the Atlanta Symphony, Pat Metheny, David Navarro, and Carlos Santana, to commercial and public radio stations, to individual DJs who program stations in every musical style. In short, Live365 is programmed by real people with a deep passion for music. Live365's end-to-end broadcast platform empowers individuals and organizations alike by giving them a "voice" to reach audiences around the globe. Through easy-to-use tools and services as well as royalty coverage, anyone with a computer and Internet connection can create his or her own Internet radio station and reach a global audience with minimal cost and effort...."
ShoutCast.com "... Setting up your very own internet radio station & making your voice heard as a DJ on SHOUTcast Radio is a simple 2 step process...."
Free Software to Record Internet Radio
StationRipper.com "... Want to Record Internet Radio? Get thousands of sounds every few hours? Record your favorite Shoutcast Radio or TV show? Record Pandora.com, Last.fm, iTunes radio, AOL Radio, Slacker.com, and Podcasts? Then download the latest version of StationRipper now!..."
Free iTune Plugins
Musicovery ".... releases a plug-in Itunes allowing to listen to your own music library according to the mood your are looking for.
The plug-in displays right to the Itunes application window Musicovery’s mood/dance matrix. Songs from your music library are played directly by roll-over on the matrix, a click generates a playlist which is played straight..." There is a free and a paid version.
Subscription-based "Pay to Download" Music Services
Kazaa "....
is a subscription-based service .... provides the means for record labels, film studios and software developers to market and sell their products to a worldwide audience of 70 million users. With the Kazaa service you get unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of CD-quality tracks for one low monthly fee..... you can download unlimited music files, and play those files on up to 3 PCs that you own. The subscription package is for PC only, which means that you won’t be able to play those files on a portable music player. The files will remain playable while your subscription is active – once your subscription ends, you will no longer be able to play those files...."
Articles and Information on How to Download Free Music
Mahalo's "How to Download Free Music" Covers a complete 'how to ' spectrum including legality issues, specific techniques for locating and downloading free music, etc.
Software Needed to Play Free Music
Windows Media Player Make sure you have the latest version. |
