When it comes to filling a digital audio player you have several choices. If you purchased a Play For Sure device, you can use Napster, Rhapsody, or Yahoo! Music. If you purchased an iPod, you can utilize the iTunes Store. But all of these options will set you back some coin. A question a lot of people ask is, “Is there any free music, that is also legal, available for me to download?” and the answer is, “Most definitely.” Let us take a look at some of my favorite places to find free legal music.

The idea here is to point you at places where you can download music that is compatible with most portable digital audio players, so I will focus on pointing you to places that offer downloads of files in the Mp3 format. The reason for this is because Mp3 is compatible with just about every player out there be it an iPod, Sansa, or even Microsoft’s Zune player. All of the web sites I plan on discussing offer music either in Mp3 format or a lossless format that can be encoded into Mp3.

The first place I us to look at is the Internet Archive. The internet archive is a non-profit organization that was built for the purpose of being an internet library of sorts. In the Internet Archive you will find audio, video, text, as well as software all available for download. There are two distinct areas of the Internet Archive that I want to focus on: Netlabels and Internet Archive. However, if you are interested there are plenty other sections under the Internet Archive Audio site.

Netlabels are defined by Wikipedia as a label that

…distributes its music in digital audio formats (mainly MP3 or Ogg) online. Netlabels often work like traditional record labels to produce and promote music projects (such as albums or compilations).

Basically think of it as a record label that exists solely on the internet. They release albums for artists and utilize grassroots marketing strategies to promote their products. Most, if not all, of the music available from Netlabels is available for free. The music available on the Internet Archive is free, there are other Netlabels out there that charge for downloads off their on websites. There is a wealth of music to download at the Internet Archive’s Netlabels section.

The other side of the Internet Archive I want to tell you about is the Live Music Archive. Internet Archive has been working with live concert archive website eTree for a couple of years now. The eTree people have helped define the standard for live music trading over the internet. The Live Music Archive contains hundreds of artists, some popular and some not so popular, and live concert recordings for those artists. If the singer/band you like has allowed their music to be uploaded to the archive, then you will be able to download their shows. The downside is that while there are tons of bands that allow live recordings of their concerts, you will not see every band that allows live recordings in the archive.

Another website that allows free downloads of music is Jamendo. Jamendo, is a Luxembourg company that hosts Creative Commons licensed music. A artist or group can upload an album to Jamendo and people can download it through BitTorrent. The cool thing is at Jamendo, you can create an account and create playlists of music to listen to via streaming over the internet. Once you find something you like, you can then download the entire album, usually in Mp3 or Ogg all over the BitTorrent protocol. The semi-downside to Jamendo is a lot of the music available is from across the ocean. That is not really a downside unless you are looking for music local to the United States. But I can say that I have found some music from the other side of the world that I like on Jamendo.

Last but not least is Creative Commons’ own website. The Creative Commons specializes in providing content creators with the means of licensing their content for public consumption. You can apply a Creative Commons license to text, audio, or even video content. And Creative Commons has given users the ability to search for content licensed under one of the various Creative Commons license available. The search page allows you to search for various genres of music. What you find you can download free of charge and place into your music player of choice.

The internet is filled with places to get your music on for free and these are just some of the places you can begin looking. I am all about free music especially new music so I utilize these places on a regular basis. Hopefully you can find something you like from these web sites. If you have a place where you get free legal music from, then please share by leaving a comment.

[Technorati Tag: Music]
[Technorati Tag: Creative Commons]