Here’s a quick roundup of some of the websites where you can find the music that you love for free. The market for these kind of websites is exploding so it’s definitely not a complete list but it should give you a good start.
1) BeeMP3.com
BeeMP3.com is a mp3 search engine. The BeeMP3 crawler searches through the Net and indexes all the brand new and popular songs. They claim to have over 800,000 mp3 files and are adding 10,000 mp3 files daily.
2) Blip
Blip is a quick way to tell your friends what song you’re into right this minute. You also find out what your favorite people are listening to in real-time, no need to refresh the page. TechCrunch called it “Twitter for music” and that seems like a good description.
3) Critical Metrics
Critical Metrics is a database of highly recommended songs. The site keeps track of awards, hot lists, must lists, 5-star reviews, artist picks, testimonials, select discographies, and other notable on-the-record expressions of love and enthusiasm.
4) Deezer
Based out of France, Deezer offers, free of charge and legally, all kinds of music, from rock to hip-hop, jazz, electro and world music.
5) Free Albums Galore
Free Albums Galore is a full-album “mp3 blog” for listeners of eclectic music. You won’t find a lot of popular artists here, but the site posts only complete albums, not individual or scattered tracks.
6) Free Music Zilla
Free Music Zilla is a tool specialized for social music downloading. It lets you download free music from almost all of the social music services, including many on this list. It is not available for Mac unfortunately.
7) GrooveShark Lite
Grooveshark gives you the ability to find and listen to any song and get personalized recommendations. It has an excellent, easy-to-use interface.
8) Hype Machine
The Hype Machine tracks a variety of MP3 blogs. If a post contains MP3 links, it adds those links to its database and displays them on the front page.
9) Imeem
Imeem is a social network that offers access to a wide range of media including music, video and photos.
10) Internet Audio Archive
The Internet Audio Archive contains over a hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by its users.
11) Jango
Jango allows you to create a custom radio station just by typing in an artist’s name. You get the music you want, along with similar favorites of Jango users who share your taste. You can customize your station by adding more artists and rating songs that you want to play more or less.
12) Last.fm
Last.fm is one of the most popular custom radio sites. It also has social networking features and the ability to choose specific songs for a playlist. Unlike many sites on this list, Last.fm saves some of its best features for premium subscribers who pay a fee for the service.
13) Musicovery
Musicovery is a unique website that lets users choose which songs to play based on things like mood, genre, and musical era. It has a unorthodox interface that shows songs in relation to each other creating a kind of “music map.”
14) Music Search Online
Music Search Online is a mp3 search engine. Each result has a link to listen to the song or download the mp3 to your computer.
15) MuxTape
MuxTape is a simple way to create and share mp3 mixtapes. Anyone who signs up for an account receives their own subdomain (ex. http://samplename.muxtape.com/) which makes it easy to share the collection with friends and family.
16) Pandora
One of the most popular music sites on the Internet, Pandora is great for finding new music. The site’s database has the Music Genome Project at its core which contains in-depth information on each song (up to 400 attributes, including melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, and lyrics). You can create as many custom radio stations as you want, but you’re not able to play specific songs on demand.
17) SeeqPod
SeeqPod is a media search engine. It allows you to find, play, and enjoy the vast multitude of rich media files and applications available online, including video, audio, slideshows, Adobe Flash files, and more. The interface is somewhat cluttered however. It’s worth noting that SeeqPod’s database is used to power many other music sites, including several on this list.
18) SpiralFrog
SpiralFrog is an ad-supported Web site that offers over 700,000 songs for you to download.
19) Skreemr
SkreemR is a search engine for locating mp3 files on the web. They have a feature called AudioRank which helps suggest the version of each song with the highest quality.
20) Slacker
Slacker is a custom radio station site with an emphasis on letting people access their stations in many different places.
21) Songerize
Songerize is a simplified interface for the SeeqPod music search engine. The site describes itself as “SeeqPod’s ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button”, which is about right. You can get to the song you want to hear very quickly, all you need to do is enter the song title and the artist name.
22) Songza
Songza is a music search engine with the ability to create playlists and ranks results by quality. It has one of the best user interfaces of all the websites on this list.
Hopefully you found at least one useful new music site on this list. Be sure to add any sites we may have missed in the comments.
Image Credit: jrossol
May 14th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Similar to Muxtape, Mixwit allows you to create a virtual mixtape of songs but without having to upload your own songs!
http://www.planetsurfer.net/2008/04/03/mixwitcom-an-audiophiles-wet-dream/
May 15th, 2008 at 1:28 am
musicinvasion.blogspot.com is one i use for full albums
May 15th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
You can add lala.com to this list.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
tehorng is another great site for finding fresh new indie music–over 4,000 albums from rapidshare and similar sites :)
May 15th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
http://tehorng.com/ is another great site for finding fresh new indie music–over 4,000 albums from rapidshare and similar sites :)
May 15th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
You might want to check out soundclick.com!
May 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
List of online music channels: http://www.chooseandwatch.com/
May 15th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Playlist.com is good for finding music also. You can either stream it or (usually) download the full songs, too.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Thanks for sharing! Never heard of some of those sites.
musicsearchonline.com is pretty good at what it does. :D
May 15th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
musicovery now requires registration .
May 15th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
http://lyricsfly.com
Another cool website to find your mp3s
May 15th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
StationRipper - http://www.stationripper.com
Downloads something like 3k songs every 4 hours. And legal under US laws….
May 15th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
jimmyr.com is good too
May 15th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
If you want thousands of free albums/tracks, you have to visit DatPiff. It has 14,000+ mix tapes and they are constantly adding new mixtapes on a daily basis…
http://www.datpiff.com/
May 16th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Another site that offers free music search is Wuzam
May 16th, 2008 at 2:09 am
other is very good http://www.jamendo.com is recomender ;)
this a site is of open music and free, they used creative commomns en all song
May 16th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Playlouder.com - you can stream any sony by any artist in their catalogue, but if you subscribe to their ISP (they call it an MSP - Music Service Provider) you can download them too, and it’s all properly licenced as part of your flat monthly ISP fee.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
A bunch of those sites have licensing deals with most or all of the major labels. Not exactly driving daggers… more like alternate revenue streams.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
this is another great website to access some free live music from past and present
http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/home.aspx
May 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The first link, beemp3 points to shady ringtone websites which will send you so called “free” ringtones, and then subscribe you to an expensive subscription. Stay away from them. I used to work for a company like that.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
How have I not heard about Grooveshark until now? From my understanding you can upload and stream your entire music collection, listen to anyone else’s, and if someone purchases tracks from your collection through them, you get 50% of the profits to spend on music. What format is available for purchase you ask? Whatever the uploader has made available. Including DRM-free lossless.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Music does not want to be free. How about i come round your house and steal your livelihood? yeah didnt think so…
I hope the RIAA close them all down and sue the living daylights out of them as well.
May 17th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Carl, you stupid douche, the labels all have licensing agreements with these sites. They’re not going to go around have have their business partners shut down… duh.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:21 am
DAZ.com is a nice resource too. Membership is free and you’ll get a free mp3 everyday
May 18th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
carl: music wants to be listened to, regardless of source
May 18th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
You missed out thesixtyone.com!
Probably the cleverest concept of all the music discovery sites.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Great list! Thank you for it.
You’ve forgotten about very interesting mp3 search engine - http://tagoo.ru/en/
Also i wanna add to this list http://muz-space.com - mp3 music store (yeah, it is not free, but very cheap - $0.1 per song and there are more than 1,300,000 tracks in its database)
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
If you’re into unsigned bands, you can get free music from http://www.unsignedbandweb.com . All genre’s and most songs are free to download.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Don’t forget SOULSEEK!!!
May 31st, 2008 at 1:08 am
I use mybloop, they let you upload EVERYTHING, no limits, free.
Including my music of course.
You can later create playlists and embed a flash player anywhere you can
June 1st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Für alle deutschsprachigen.
Ich habe einen Blog für freie Musik.
http://www.dougegen.de
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Try Dizzler! I recommend this site to all music whores like me that just want to enjoy some kick-ass tunes without all the headaches that most site cause our compromised brains.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am
A very definitive list. Hopefully the RIAA won’t use it as reference! They could just give the list to their SWAT team :)
June 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Though just from a single artist, another site just launched is http://CopyMyMusic.com
Smooth jazz guitarist Denny Jiosa offering over 50 tracks for free, with no DRM.
June 16th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
frostwire.com
June 18th, 2008 at 2:54 am
This content has been Agglom (erated) with other similar ones on http://www.agglom.com/agglom/44 - Where to find free music
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Not everyone has $20 to dish out every time they want a song. I know I don’t buy an entire cd for one lousy song. So why can’t we get it free?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Alternative Progressive Grunge Funk…Download our music for free…Stick it to the man!!Viva la music revolution!!Fight the power!!