TRULY FREE
“Rip. Mix. Burn” was the theme of a series of Apple ads a few years back.
It is also the catchphrase of a new online movement to deal with the swirling universe of digital music. Most people know it’s legal to rip (that is, copy) selected tracks from a compact disc you own, and burn a mix CD for your own personal use. But you cannot share that CD with a friend legally. The whole discussion often deals with the issue of DRM, or digital rights management.
There are plentiful free ways to get music online that don’t break copyright law or get you a nasty letter from the recording industry.
One of the easy ways to get free music on the net is to listen to Internet radio. This requires that your computer have an active connection the Internet. Pandora ( www.pandora.com), LAUNCHcast (http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast), Shoutcast ( www.shoutcast.com) and Fine Tune ( www.finetune.com) are popular Internet radio services.
There are also devices such as the Sonos ( http://www.sonos.com), which lets you listen to the Pandora service without turning on your PC or owning a PC. The Sandisk ( www.sandisk.com) Sansa Connect mp3 player can dial you into LAUNCHcast via Wi-Fi, in addition to being a digital music device. You do need a free Yahoo ID to listen to LAUNCHcast.
A specialized site that many older music fans may enjoy is Wolfgang’s Vault (http://concerts.wolfgangs vault.com). It is the home for live music. The vault features live concert recordings and live-concert downloads from the archives of Bill Graham, King Biscuit Flower Hour and others. If you want to listen to Derek and the Dominos at the Fillmore East from Oct. 23, 1970, this is the site for you.
You can listen to streaming concerts, picking from more than 500 in that well-stocked audio vault.
You can also download for a fee – around $10 in most cases – many of the full concerts in an mp3 file. Those are unrestricted, DRM-free mp3s in high-quality audio, meaning they can be played on any portable music device.
Speaking of downloads, here are some sites that deliver free mp3s:
“Download.com’s music site (http://music.download.com) has more than 75,000 free mp3 files, ranging from classical and religious to hip-hop and country. The music is from mainstream and indie artists. The site also streams music. You will need to allow pop-ups from the site to enjoy the streaming option. You can specify your bandwidth speed, from Dialup to T1, so you get the best quality audio possible for your Net connection.
“AOL’s Spinner ( www.spinner.com) blog has information on new and established artists along with free mp3s to download. The site also has audio and video podcasts you can subscribe to.
“Audio Street ( www.audiostreet.net) works with new bands to publicize their music. It also provides detailed artist pages with lyrics, news, bios, photos and event listings.
“GarageBand ( www.garageband.com) is operated by iLike Inc. (A story on the separate iLike Web service ran in TXT last week.)
“Garageband.com is a very tightly knit community of musicians and it is also a great place to discover free music,” is the way Hadi Partovi, iLike’s president, describes the site, which encompasses a broad spectrum of styles.
GarageBand.com also has charts showing the top music by genre, reviewers’ ratings and the popularity generated at several major U.S. and international cities.
There are also other services worth a look such as the Podsafe Music Network (http://music.podshow.com/)and the new WE7 ( http://www.we7.com/), which offers legal and DRM-free tunes.
Once you look around you will see that there is a large selection of free music available for listening and downloading. Knowing how to get free music legally provides you with good karma and helps the artists you listen to gain fans and recognition.