One of these days I’ll get an Mp3 for myself, but in the meantime I’ll just continue to revel in all the Mp3 and related technology that is floating around out there. I have learned a lot from my nephew who has tapped into the network of “share-ware” sites that allow for free music downloads or transfers. Based on my research, I’m pretty sure these are legal. These sites allow users to bounce tunes back and forth and users can listen to them on their computer. The fact that you can upload them onto your Mp3 is –I guess — a bonus! So read, enjoy, and learn all about pulling down some great tunes for free.
The first free site is called ARES (www.aresgalaxy.sourceforge.net ). ARES goes to great lengths on it’s homepage to point out that a person can get in trouble by downloading copyrighted music! Once you understand that then you’re off and running. ARES allows users to choose from the categories of audio, video, documents, images and software that are circulated among other users. You can choose according to Title or Author. For example, the other day I was dying to listen to one of my all-time favorite Boston songs, “Don’t Look Back.” I chose “Audio“, typed in the Title, hit “Search” and before I knew it I had 79 titles with “Don’t Look Back” or variations of that title by other artists (like Oasis‘ “Don’t Look Back in Anger“) to choose from. It took a minute or two to download the song onto my computer and before I knew it, it was like 1978 all over again. Theoretically, from that point I could have uploaded it on my Mp3…’cept I don’t have an Mp3…
Moving right along…the WEBJAY (www.webjay.org) community is next. WEBJAY is a social playlist community owned and created by YAHOO. It is free and again — as far as I can — tell it is 100% legal. (I’m taking the site’s word for it. They’re FAQ says it’s legal so that’s good enough for me). Users just need to sign up for an account, and start creating playlists or open and listen to playlists created by others. There are literally thousands of playlists to choose from. After that you can upload entire playlists to an Mp3 or download to your desktop.
The next site that personally like a lot is call PANDORA (www.pandora.org). Another way-cool site that is user-friendly and free. PANDORA uses a crazy thing that it calls “Music DNA”. After you create an account, you plus in the name of a song or artist and based on the genes or musical DNA of the sound, melody orchestration and vocal character – PANDORA will create a custom streaming radio station of the same and similar tunes you might enjoy. You can’t upload this music, but hey – if you glued to your computer for hours at a time, it’s a cool site to be able to tap into.
Next up: a site that is similar to PANDORA is the HYPE MACHINE (www.hype.non-standard.net). The HYPE MACHINE culls the best songs daily from more than 100 different blogs. According to the HYPE-FAQ, some of the frequently accessed tracks are cached by the Hype Machine server, much like Google Search caches web pages, to reduce load on the bloggers’ servers and protect their bandwidth. Those tracks are NOT available for download, but you can preview them via the “listen” links that are next to each track or using your media player. However, most tunes usually have links to iTunes so you can purchase and upload the tune, and many songs are linked to eMusic which does allow for free Mp3 uploading.
Last but certainly not least (cuz I’m sure there are a lot more sites around than just these) is PODBOP (www.podbop.com). PODBOP is made-to-order for lovers of live music. PODBOP will run a search to find bands playing in your local area, will pull free sample tracks from the band’s website (if they have one) or other legal sources and then let’s you stream or download them. Anything easier would be…too darn easy!
So there you go! More music than you can shake a stick at! With all this (and no doubt more) to choose from it’s no wonder commercial radio and record companies are shaking in their boots!
But hey — after years and years of pandering to the narrow choice of where you can find and listen to a variety of great tunes, these sites offer a terrific alternative!
Enjoy!
