Top 20 sites for free music

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Johnny without the cash

Strapped for funds after Christmas? In a bumper version of his regular column, Chris Salmon offers a guide to the best music you can find - for free - on the internet

Best for covers: Cover Freak
coverfreak.com

US blogger Steve McIntyre is, by his own admission, "obsessed" with cover versions. "I've been giving covers CDs to my friends as Christmas presents for years," he says. "The site is an outgrowth of that." Every Sunday since October 2006, McIntyre has posted five cover versions on a particular theme, be it war, ukuleles, Johnny Cash, drinking or California. One post a week may seem sparse compared to many blogs, but for McIntyre it's about quality, not quantity. "A good cover is different from the original, for better or worse," he says. "The artist needs to put something of him/her self into the song and give new meaning to it. Otherwise it is a waste of time."

Luckily, McIntyre has a seemingly never-ending collection of genre-straddling covers to fit both his manifesto and his weekly themes. "It's great fun to foist your musical tastes on an unsuspecting world," he says.
Download: Tricky - The Love Cats (posted 30/12/07)

Best for tomorrow's big names: iTunes Store
apple.com/itunes

Having sold 3bn downloads since opening for business in 2003, Apple's iTunes Store is more famous for making millions from music than for giving it away (particularly in the UK, where its prices are higher). However, the site still offers its Single of the Week as a free download. In fact, because iTunes has such an enormous share of the global digital music market (around 80%) the slot has become a much sought after way for labels to break new acts. But insiders insist that iTunes still decides each week's track purely on the music's merit. If that's the case, their taste appears to be improving; after providing valuable early exposure for dreary mainstreamers like James Blunt, Paolo Nutini and Scott Matthews, recent free downloads have tended towards the credible (Simian Mobile Disco, Battles, Yoav). But whatever the quality, it's always nice to get something for nothing from an organisation that makes a fortune out of you.

Download: Palladium - Happy Hour

Best for old gramophone records: Turtle's 78rpm Jukebox
turtleservices.com/jukebox.htm

As a rule, the older the music, the less well-represented it is online. Which is why Turtle's 78rpm Jukebox is a rare treat. Although it isn't updated often, the site now contains more than 120 MP3s, which have been lovingly converted from dusty old phonographs dating from 1909 to 1928. The scratches and hisses that remain on the recordings add to the evocative experience, as do the song's excitable titles - Yes! We Have No Bananas and Oh, Gee! Say, Gee! You Ought to See My Gee Gee from the Fiji Isle being two particular highlights. The tracks are divided between sentimental slowies and breezy comedic numbers, all with the tinny Dixieland trumpets and syrupy vocal harmonies you'd expect to hear on a vintage cartoon. The site also provides a telling lesson in US social history, with a small handful of songs labelled as being potentially offensive because of their less than enlightened portrayal of black characters by white minstrel performers.

Download: Yerkes Novelty Five with Arthur Hall - Yes! We Have No Bananas

Best for discarded vinyl: Vinyl Orphanage
vinylorphanage.com

"I'm a huge fan of things like self-produced recordings, school band albums and records by cruise ship and cocktail lounge performers," says Pastor McPurvis, the Florida resident behind the terrifically off-kilter Our Lady of Perpetual Obsolescence Vinyl Rescue Mission and Orphanage blog. Describing his site a "safe haven for forgotten and downtrodden record albums", McPurvis shares the fruits of 20 years scouring thrift shops by offering a full album for download each month. In December, it was Sing for Lovers by husband and wife duo Kathy and Tony Rich, who apparently entertained holidayers in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains in the late 1960s. The record is typical of McPurvis's ability to unearth obscure, but extremely worthwhile music. Elsewhere in the Pastor's archive, the three early-70s albums by the Bellport High School Jazz-Rock Ensemble posted in April 2007 are particularly worthy of your hard-drive space.

Download: Bellport High School Jazz-Rock Ensemble - Long Train Runnin'

Best for Swedish music: Swedesplease
swedesplease.net

Blogger Craig Bonnell lives several thousand miles from Sweden, in Illinois, USA. Which is why it's so remarkable that he writes a blog that carries weight in the Swedish music scene. Swedesplease grew out of Bonnell's "main blog" songsillinois.net. "I was continually finding great Swedish music to post about. So, eventually, I decided to set up a separate blog devoted to Swedish indiepop."

That was in January 2005. Since then, Bonnell has proved his fine ear for the for the best new Swedish sounds by helping to break acts including José González, the Shout Out Louds, Hello Saferide and, recently, Ida Maria. "I'm always getting emails from people in Sweden asking me how I find so much great music in their backyard," says Bonnell. The answer is by trawling the web and, as the site's profile has grown, by checking his email inbox. Amazingly, though, Bonnell has still not been to Sweden. He deserves a very warm welcome when he does.

Download: Friday's Bridge - Literature (Rubbah remix) (Posted 26/12/07)

Best for mash-ups: Get Your Bootleg On
getyourbootlegon.com

The mash-up scene isn't as hot now as it was at the beginning of the decade, but with virtually anyone now able to mess about with music editing software on their home PC, there are more amateur mash-up artists than ever. Many of these bedroom bootleggers congregate on Get Your Bootleg On, a vibrant community site with more than 14,000 registered members. Every day, budding producers post links to MP3s of their latest masterpiece in the Bootlegs forum. Some of them are terrible, but the quality on GYBO is generally high; as a vague rule, the more replies to a posting, the better the track tends to be. To keep its members inspired, GYBO also runs regular challenges to create a bootleg around a particular theme - be it the Charlatans or dancehall/reggae- which is where many of the best mash-ups surface.

Download: mARKYbOY - Deee-liteful Milkshakes (posted 29/12/07)

Best for B-sides: The "B" side
redkelly.blogspot.com

"I don't think B-sides are a dying art," says blogger Red Kelly, "they're already dead". Perhaps so, but Kelly does a sterling job of keeping the memory of old flipsides alive. About once a week, the New Yorker thumbs through his extensive collection of classic soul and R&B 45s and picks a B-side to post on his blog. But Kelly's work doesn't stop there. Each MP3 is accompanied by a well-written and meticulously researched essay on that particular artist's career. "You know when you hear a song on the car radio and you pull into your driveway and wait to hear who the artist was, but the guy never bothers to tell you?" asks Kelly. "Well, my site is kind of like the opposite of that experience. You may not want all of that information right now, but, hey, it's good to know it'll be there for you when you do."

Download: Kim Tolliver - I'll Try To Do Better (posted 28/12/07)

Best for electro/techno: ill-ec-tro-nic
ill-ec-tro-nic.blogspot.com/

When London blogger Langer started ill-ec-tro-nic two years ago, there weren't many MP3 blogs dedicated to writing about underground electronic music. These days there are plenty, but Langer's (which he co-edits with his friend RAW) still stands out as one of the best. The site has a catholic remit, with experimental electronica, techno, remixes of indie tracks and even the odd slab of psychedelic rock thrown into the mix. "No cheesy house, though," says Langer. "And we've gradually steered away from the whole electro house/new rave stuff as every other blog seems to be posting it and most isn't very good." That focus on quality over fashion is one of ill-ec-tro-nic's strengths. Another is that it's able to write about electronic music in a way that's informative and entertaining without being overly technical or scene-y. In fact, the only pity is that they don't post a little more often.

Download: Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill (Ripperton Dub) (posted 30/12/07)

Best for unsigned acts: Amie Street
amiestreet.com

Any musician can sell their tunes through Amie Street, with 70% of the revenue going directly to the artist; perfect for the thousands of unsigned acts out there. The big twist is that each of the million-plus MP3s on the site were initially "sold" at zero US cents. As people download a particular track, its cost rises, to a maximum of 98 cents (around 50p). Because so many new songs are added every day, there are always plenty of free tunes to grab. They're easy to find too; just click Browse, then Songs, then Free and you'll be offered hundreds from across the musical spectrum. There are definitely gems to be found, particularly as record labels are also now beginning to break their new signings through the site. To add to the fun, users can "REC" (recommend) tracks when they first appear, earning credit if the value of that song then increases and thus rewarding your talent spotting. Download: Gnotes - Throw Your Nickels Up (posted 2/1/08)

Best for 60s garage: Garage Hangover
garagehangover.com

Chris Bishop's excellent blog is like an extended, internet version of the legendary Nuggets compilation, shining a light on garage rock made by long-forgotten teenage bands in the 1960s. Since founding the site four years ago, the Brooklyn resident has posted tracks by almost 400 acts. Most are American, but Bishop's trawls through flea markets and online shops have somehow unearthed garage tunes from 26 countries, including Peru, Greece, Malaysia and Bermuda. The majority of it glows with that fresh, melodic warmth that apparently came so easily to 60s bands. "The blog is definitely worth the effort," says Bishop. "Not a week goes by without a band member getting in touch. I hear great stories from people who made the songs and I learn about an historic era in music. I'd do this eight hours a day if I could."

Download: The Dillons - Simple Way of Living (posted 28/12/07)

Best for new sounds: Pitchfork Media
pitchforkmedia.com

Some see Pitchfork as the world's brightest beacon for new music. Plenty of others lambast the site for its florid writing and self-congratulatory tone. But nobody can deny Pitchfork's influence. Thirteen years after it was established as an indie-rock webzine by Minnesotan high school graduate Ryan Schreiber, the site now receives more than 1.5m unique visitors each month, with around half of those living outside the US. That's enough for Pitchfork to make a significant global impact on any new band's fortunes. The Go Team!, M.I.A. and, recently, the Black Kids have all benefited from their support and the site is acknowledged to have kickstarted the Arcade Fire's career with its glowing 9.7 out of 10 review for the band's Funeral album. As well as its constant stream of news and reviews, the site offers music via its daily-updated Forkcast section. Here, you'll often be able to download free MP3s from the site's favoured acts, both new and established, sometimes before they're released.

Download: Cave - Hunt Like Devil (posted 14/12/07)

Best for remixes: Discobelle discobelle.net

Since beginning life in January 2006 as the English-language offshoot of a Swedish site, the dance-centred Discobelle has established itself as a fine place to discover remixes and DJ mixtapes. "We try to have as much exclusive material as possible," says Björn, one of four party-loving Swedish DJs who run the site. "In an online world of overflow, it's important to be able to offer something that you can't find anywhere else." They don't just talk a good game either; shortly before Christmas, Discobelle was the first site to post Kanye West's remix of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. Goodness knows how they got it, but it was the latest in a long line of exclusives that have ensured Discobelle now has a large readership. That in turn explains why DJs, artists and labels are so keen to be featured on the site. "The industry has been more supportive of the blog than we would have thought initially," says Björn. "We get fantastic tracks sent to us on a daily basis."

Download: Turbo Weekend - My Name is Legion (Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid Mix) (posted 2/1/07)

Best for vintage soul: Get On Down With the Stepfather of Soul
stepfatherofsoul.blogspot.com

Jason Stone is a man with a passion for vintage soul music. Even as a teenager, the Atlanta, Georgia resident had a collection of more than 1,000 45s and LPs. These days, Stone has an iPod crammed with 6,000 tracks and a mission to share them with the world via his blog. "I decided I needed to get this music out there for people to enjoy," he says. "And there was so much good soul, funk, blues, jazz and gospel from that time that I have no worries about running out of material!" Since starting the site in 2005, Stone has proved to have both of the key skills needed by a good music blogger; a DJ's ability to pick great songs and the writing skills to tell you about them. Whether he's blogging about Wilson Pickett's little known Italian songs, Stax records' rarities, or as happens all too often, a newly deceased soul star, the post is always worth reading and the song worth hearing. The site's regular podcast is simply the icing on the cake.

Download: James Brown, Bobby Byrd and Hank Ballard - Funky Side of Town (posted 26/12/07)

Best for world music: Fat Planet
fatplanet.com.au/blog/category/mp3s

Stuart Buchanan is a Scotsman living in Australia with a radio show about contemporary world music. In 2003, he set up a blog to accompany his programme, "as an early experiment in fusing broadcasting with an online component, linking to free downloads of music heard on the show". Bloggers across the globe soon discovered the site and began to write about it. Before long, Buchanan's readers outnumbered his radio listeners. Almost five years on, the blog still offers a fantastic melting point of cutting-edge international sounds; be it Danish rap-techno, Argentinean cumbia, Israeli dub or Chinese hip-hop. The range and quality of the music Buchanan tracks down is astonishing. "Most of it is sourced from the web," he says. "You just need to know where to look and spend many hours a week hunched over your laptop." In other words, Buchanan does the hard work, so you don't have to.

Download: MC Gringo - Berimbal (posted 28/12/07)

Best for hip-hop: Cocaine Blunts
cocaineblunts.com

A surprisingly small proportion of MP3 blogs dedicate themselves to hip-hop. So, while unsigned indie-rock acts can expect blog exposure almost as soon as they've formed, upcoming MCs can struggle for attention. "There are a lot of local and niche scenes [in hip-hop] that are painfully under-represented on blogs," says Nos, a Washington DC-based hip-hop writer. Since 2003, Nos has done his bit to redress the balance with the excellent Cocaine Blunts, writing expertly about both the latest hip-hop micro-scenes and big name releases, often with accompanying MP3s. Cocaine Blunt's influence is reflected by the fact that big name MCs like Witchdoctor and the late Pimp C have agreed to be interviewed by the site. Not that Nos feels he's exactly been embraced by the hip-hop industry. "Well, they haven't sued me, but beyond that they haven't been particularly supportive," he shrugs. "And artists only get in touch when they think they're being dissed."

Download: Battles feat Joell Ortiz - Leyendecker (DJ Emz Remix) (posted 12/12/07)

Best for jazz: All About Jazz
allaboutjazz.com

Since 1995, the multi award-winning All About Jazz has established itself as the definitive jazz website, with its team of volunteer editors and contributors having created over 100,000 pages of content which are now accessed by 1.5m visitors per month. As well as daily CD reviews, the Philadelphia-based site has a lively artist profiles area for jazz musicians, some 15,000 of whom have registered their details. But perhaps the most popular feature is the site's free MP3 area, where labels and artists can upload tracks to promote their album releases to AAJ's huge readership; in the last two years, some 2.1m tracks have been downloaded. The "Top Downloads" lists are the best place to start for new users.

Download: The Vipers - Night & Day (posted 1/1/08)

Best for Latin music: La Onda Tropical
laondatropical.blogspot.com

"In 2003 I spent a year in Guatemala, and fell in love with all forms of Latin music - traditional and contemporary," says Dries Gevaert, one of two Belgian bloggers behind La Onda Tropical. "Back in Europe, I found that only the most horrible songs could get a European release. So I started the blog with the goal to introduce Europeans to quality contemporary Latin music." Initially, La Onda Tropical's readership was limited by the fact it was written in Dutch. But, since making the switch to English in 2006, the blog's audience has gone global. Its writers may live a long way from Latin America, but they clearly keep their fingers pressed firmly to the region's musical pulse. The pair write sharply and infectiously about everything from Ecuadorian hip hop and Argentine indie-rock to Dominican Republic merengue. Some of the acts they cover are familiar - Shakira and Manu Chao, for instance - but the site consistently throws up wonderfully vibrant music by acts you'd simply never stumble across elsewhere.

Download: Calle 13 - Pa'l Norte (posted 1/1/08)

Best for live gig bootlegs: Smuggled Sounds
live-bootleg.blogspot.com

Live concert bootlegs used to be badly recorded cassettes sold by furtive-looking geezers at record fairs. These days, thanks to Smuggled Sounds, any computer owner can relive gigs in impressive quality audio, for free. Since the blog took its current form in August 2006, its prolific London-based author, ZazafromJahor, has posted recordings of hundreds of concerts, all available to download as large MP3 files (so you'll either need quick broadband or plenty of patience). Last month, the site offered a bootleg almost every day, including shows by Ike and Tina Turner from 1972, the Beatles from Hamburg in 1962, reggae legend Yellowman from 1983 and brand new recordings of reunion concerts by the Police and Led Zeppelin. As if the frequent posting didn't give you enough options, the site's download links seem to stay live longer than many blogs', so it's worth trawling back through the archive. Björk's 2007 Roskilde show and a belting 1985 Springsteen set are two November 2007 highlights.

Download: Björk - Hyperballad (posted 26/11/07)

Best for pre-war blues: Honey, Where You Been So long?
prewarblues.org

"I love pre-war blues music because of the purity of expression," says Peter Patnaik, whose excellent MP3 blog has offered that music to the world since May 2004. Patnaik believes that reviewers and compilation makers tend to undervalue these powerful early recordings. "A lot call this music 'primitive'," he says. "This just continues the marginalisation of a black artistic expression, which has been going on since this type of music was called 'race records'." There are no such issues with Honey, Where You Been So Long?, which treats pre-war blues with an infectious mix of reverence and enthusiasm. Should Patnaik's informed posts spark an interest in a particular strand of early blues, then the site's well-organised archive makes it simple to dig deeper. Old posts are divided into 24 categories, so further entries covering areas such as "work song", "field recording" or "hokum" are just a click away.

Download: Blind Willie McTell - Dying Crapshooter's Blues (posted 28/11/07)

Best for 80s obscurities: Lost in the 80s
lostinthe80s.blogspot.com

"The 1980s were the best decade for music," insists John C Hughes, the Californian blogger behind Lost in the 80s. "You had all these acts trying to walk a tightrope between being taken seriously critically and still wanting a huge pop hit. Sometimes it really worked and sometimes it flopped spectacularly. In any case, the music was always entertaining." Hughes' blog plays home to 1980s' musical detritus, be it an obscure solo track by Ringo Starr, a hidden gem from a flop Adam and the Ants album or the one minor hit by a forgotten new-wave pop act. Happily, after three prolific years of blogging, Hughes isn't concerned about running out of music to post. "It's amazing how much material is floating out there in a sort of purgatory, unavailable on CD or iTunes, but sitting in a rack in some old record shop. I think the 1980s will live on via my blog for quite a few more years yet."

Download: Ringo Starr - Wrack My Brain (posted 20/12/07) archived at popdose.com/category/music/lost-in-the-80s/







Chris Salmon
Friday January 4, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
 
Hype Machine is a good one for indie/electro

hypem.com
 
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