You Don’t Have to Pay the Piper
If you have an iPod (or something like it ) with a capacity of tens of thousands of songs, a quick trip to the iTunes Music store and some ciphering, and it seems like you’ll need to spend thousands of dollars to fill that hard drive up with tunes.
Which of course, no one does. While there’s no denying that there is definitely a brisk trade on the Internet in music tracks that have not been paid for, I think it is important to note that when people in the record busines, like Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris say things like, “these devices are repositories for stolen music and they all know it,” it is a good idea to remind everyone that is quite possible to fill up your personal music device with free music, legally.
The first and most obvious source is your own collection of CDs and even cassettes and LPs. Ripping CDs to MP3 format is fairly obvious. Most new PCs and all Macs will pretty much go ahead and do it for you if you insert the disc in the machine. Converting older analog media is slightly more involved, and may involve some software and/or hardware purchases, but if you have a decent sized collection you want to enjoy digitally, it may be worth it. If you still have a functioning turntable and can fiddle around with the sound cables, here is a software package that will handle the job. There are others, and you can even do it for free if you don’t mind spending more time. The software does things like breaking up files into separate tracks and cleaning up the audio. If you just have the box of LPs and your turntable is out of commission, this is an all-in-one package that might do the job.
But ripping stuff from other media isn’t actually free. It’s just fair use of stuff you already bought. I promised actual free downloadable legal music. First stop is the iTunes music store, which every Tuesday puts up a new featured track of the week, available for free download. What’s also cool is that from time to time, iTunes Music Store will throw up other freebies as well, anything from TV shows, audiobooks, and other songs. Although iTMS doesn’t have a nice clearly marked section for all the free stuff (I think they want you to browse), here is a website that does that for you.
Another site I go to for music freebies is Salon.com’s Audiofile. They have a daily download, and they keep a pretty extensive archive. I have found some very cool music there that I never would have discovered otherwise.
It may also surprise you to know that Amazon.com has pretty decent list of free downloads. The Amazon tracks I find are slightly more mainstream than the Salon tracks.
Download.com, which you may be familiar with as a source for shareware, also claims to have seventy-five thousand free MP3 downloads.
Most of these choices are not likely to lead you to free download of a current pop hit, but just given the sheer volume of stuff to download, you’re bound to find something you like.
One final thing to try if you’re looking for a specific artist is to check their web page. Smaller bands trying to get the word out, and even some established artists take a more liberal attitude toward unrestricted music files that the draconian approach of the RIAA. As an example, Canadian chantuese Issa (formerly known as Jane Siberry) has put a good chunk of her catalog on her web site, and she lets you choose the price-anything from zero, a gift from the artist, to standard price of $0.99 for a track.
So there’s a ton of stuff out there, a lot of it very good, even if every track you download isn’t your cup of tea. Bring on the music!
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