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More
of the Free
In my
last column I talked about a bunch of places on the Internet
where you can get free music that, if not 100- percent legal,
at least won’t get you sued by your nice friends at the
major record companies. I hit my word limit just as I was
getting warmed up, so here are a bunch more places to go and
get free music downloads.
There
is a growing body of great music available through Creative
Commons licenses, where the artist specifically releases the
music on the Web for people to download for free. Why would
they do that, you ask? So you will listen to it, dummy! These
artists have come to the conclusion that they’d rather
have folks actually listen to their music than pitch it to
a big label on the slight chance that a label would release
it and the even slighter chance that the label would properly
promote and distribute it, and the miniscule chance that some
radio station might actually play it. Post it, baby, and it’s
gone.
Tons,
days, weeks of free music like this is available at www.archive.org.
There are, right now, almost 40,000 live concerts posted there
for free download, all with the blessings of the artists—these
are of varying quality, so keep your expectations modest,
but there are some real gems there. Archive.org also hosts
a bunch of Net labels, record labels that post an astonishing
array of studio recordings from all over the world. You’re
not going to find the Billboard 200 here, but you are going
to find a whole lot of interesting and unusual stuff. There’s
another comprehensive directory of Net labels at www.phlow.de/netlabels.
Another outrageous directory can be found at www.odd iooverplay.com,
with hundreds of fantastic sites catalogued, described and
linked. One of the greatest Net labels is the pioneering www.comfortstand.com,
which has a deep catalogue of wild stuff, including the sublime
MartiniBomb and the always-pleasant Gimp Nipples.
Want your
Creative Commons music pre-vetted? Go to my pal Biotic’s
blog at biotic.blogspot.com and see what he’s picked
out. Biotic hosts the radio show “Black Sweater White
Cat” Saturdays from 9 to 11 PM on Great Barrington’s
WBCR-LP, streaming at www.berkshireradio.org. Biotic plays
exclusively music he finds on the Web with Creative Commons
licenses, and features regular live interviews with various
luminaries of the growing CC community of artists. He then
posts his playlists on his blog, with links to all of the
songs he plays so that you can download all of them at your
leisure. And if you’re lazy and just want Biotic to be
your guide, a bunch of his radio shows are archived as podcasts
that you can download and keep.
Which
brings me to the topic of music blogs, which I think are the
best-kept secrets on the Web. This is where music lovers post
tunes for download. Often much of this stuff is posted on
shaky legal grounds—much of what I see on music blogs
probably have existing copyrights, at least hypothetically.
But the nature of copyright today is such that there is a
ton of music that have existing copyrights that nobody cares
about. The artists are long gone, the label is defunct, or
a track is so far buried in some label’s portfolio that
it would never see the light of day without the intervention
of the music bloggers. In this light, I feel that most of
these bloggers are providing a remarkable service, they are
heroes; they are liberating some fine, fine music. Many of
these sites have disclaimers, saying that if a copyright holder
objects to the music being posted to let the blogger know.
It’s telling that I’ve rarely seen a track removed
off of any of these sites.
One of
my favorites is www.little hits.com, which posts, more-or-less
daily, indie singles mostly from the new-wave era of the late
’70s early ’80s. This site is more curated than
managed—the descriptions of the tracks and the bands
is scholarly and personal, the selections lovingly presented
with original cover art. This is a brilliantly cool site.
Another
favorite is www.45blog.com, which periodically posts rare
45s from the ’60s, again with great explanations and
original labels/cover-art. Wanna have some fun? Start at 45blog,
grab the handful of tracks there and then start exploring
the extensive list of links to like-minded music blogs listed
on the right-hand side. Kiss your day goodbye. Each of the
30 to 40 links goes to a similar site, with names like “Cake
and Polka Parade” and the “The Naughahyde Life,”
each of which has loads of tracks, from the beautiful to the
absurd, for download. And most of these sites have large link-lists
of their own to even more music blogs; the possibilities,
the sheer volume of terrific free stuff these blogs have,
is truly endless.
Get into
it, and it’s addicting. Follow your mouse and you’ll
be hooked. Fill up your iPod and hit the road. You may never
listen to the radio again, and you’ll be a better person
for it.
—Paul
C. Rapp
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Classifieds
