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As in "never was, and probably never will be, for sale".

http://www.oddiooverplay.com/ears/fiends/index.html

This is a collection of Halloween music from last year.

http://www.archive.org/details/plague009

This guy is awesome. I especially like "Our Weapons Are Useless Against Them", "Fragility", and "A Quiet Death".

I also get a lot of music from Newgrounds. I have several tracks from GS-Screamer and Hating4AM.

My only issue is that I rarely find any free music with a singer whose voice doesn't suck. I like being able to sing along with my music, but I can cope.

So. Do you like the free music? Do you have any favourites to recommend?

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All music is free in Canada. So long as you don't upload. For now, anyway.

It seems to be interesting. I really don't care whether a song is based on voice or not, so long as it's good.

I have some music from Newgrounds, but I don't really like it. I have all of the OverClocked Remixes. Video game music for the win.

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The tax thing, no?

I has lots of remixes from video games. I haven't been to Newgrounds in a while to dig through the stuff, though, so hopefully when I go back around there eventually I can grab more than one song. There is a lot of junk there, but there's enough good stuff to warrant spending a bit of time looking for it.

You obviously don't sing along with your music. It's most fun to sing to kitty.

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Aww, you could've left Morph's message. At least the bit about MTV. =P Thanks for the cleaning, though.

I was poking around the Archive earlier. I don't like this as much as I like Sublinear, but it doesn't seem to suck. (But I might be very lax.)

http://www.archive.org/details/future_state_of_rhythm_-_fsor001_va

The song Ship Shape made me lol, though I suppose I might like it later after I listen to it a hundred times. I guess it is "eccentric and unusal", but I don't think it's a jewel. >.>

Shards of My Heart and Tiger Bomb sound pretty good to me so far--I'm not really sure about the rest of the album, since I haven't sat and listened to it (just downloaded it and let it play in the background, and my attention is always wandering).

I wish I could get my dad to be more into this stuff, since he's usually taking music from my collection (he has to listen to it when I'm in the car--I can't stand the radio around here). <.< It'd be nice to hear some recommendations from him for once.

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lol. 'free music' is everywhere for me. :P

if i find a song that i like, (whether if its for sale or not) i just go to www.esnip.com (which is a COMPLETELY legit site thank you) and just stream/download it from there.=]

well, it's stream if you don't know how to download it. :P

also, it has other great things such as pics and .. stuff.. lol.

Anyway, free music usually sucks...well the ones that i've heard.

The ones that are good arem ainly Dj's and stuff. haha,, the non-mainstream stuff. =D

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 11 months later...

I am reviving this thread instead of making a new one, because the idea is still the same.

I mentioned way earlier Jamendo, which, as of now, is my primary, if not sole, source of music. It's free, you can send albums to your friends with proper credit without worrying about someone hitting you with a fine that far exceeds the value of the song, and some of it you can even use to make your own songs (with credit, of course). Basically, the way they approach the music industry is more friendly to the filesharing community (which is the vast majority of the Internet). The site is currently being updated, so you can check back later, but if desired, most (maybe all) of the albums are file-share friendly so it won't be a big deal for me to send them to you.

There may be some stigma regarding music that is being offered for free--primarily that it is lower quality, or that you won't find anything that appeals to your specific tastes. Regarding quality, you can't tell me you've never known anyone incredibly talented, either with an instrument, their voice, or in the creation of computer generated music and thought they could easily get a record deal. With Jamendo, and any others who follow a similar path, the idea is that these talented people choose to offer their music for free rather than restrict it only to those who can purchase it. (And never mind that even prior to "official" release of a CD, you can almost always find a download of it somewhere.) It can be free and it can be of high quality. Not all talented people expect you to pay them.

Regarding taste, I've heard people talk about how they don't want to dig through trash just to find something they may like, but I contend that you will always have to do a little digging to find something you like, and this has nothing to do with the fact that it's pay or free. Even when it comes to music I would have to buy, I still have to sift through stuff that doesn't appeal to me. When I go clothes shopping, I have to walk past all the idiotic clothing they peddle to women to get to some plain clothes. The music at Jamendo is varied, and while it may not offer every possible type of music, chances are you'll still come upon something that appeals to you.

These artists on Jamendo do get paid. They receive donations from their listeners, and revenue from Jamendo itself. It operates on the fact that people like to try things out before they buy them, and that some people will gladly pay for something they enjoy even if they don't HAVE to pay.

One of my most recent additions to my collection is an album called "The Simple Life", by Josh Woodward. Tags attached to it are indie, pop, and acoustic--it's one of those albums from Jamendo that sounds like something that you could buy from the store, that would hit the top twenty charts and draw the attention of teenaged girls across the nation. I have a soft spot for the songs "Go" and "Don't Close Your Eyes", but I'm a sap. It's not all mushy-gushy--"Revolution Now" is, as you might tell from the title, is more driven and has more of a rock feel. I'm not a huge fan of every song in this album, but the variety available in the album makes it worth at least checking out, in case you might find a song or two you like.

The album "Nights and Days", by Greendjohn, as mentioned in a review of the album and by Muj, definitely feels like something out of a movie (Muj said Harry Potter). Without lyrics or an accompanying movie, you can sense that there's a story behind these songs. One of the weakness I find in some songs with vocals is the music the vocals accompany doesn't seem to have much depth. It sounds like it's just there in the background to be there, to fill up space. I have a weakness for music without vocals that, through its melody and mood, allows me to imagine any story I want to go with it.

"Happy Sadness" is, of course, a rather bittersweet song--it doesn't lean too heavily towards either the melancholic or the upbeat--think perhaps of someone leaving home to start a life of their own. There is a sense of hope in the song, but it's all open to interpretation. "3 Minutes to Midnight" has a more dramatic, spookier feel to it. The mounting tension is there as the song progresses, almost as though it were in preparation of some ritual or other event that would be rather appropriate in a movie similar to Harry Potter.

One of the first albums I discovered on Jamendo was "Listen", by Tryad. Arguably one of the most diverse albums on Jamendo, it covers a broad range of moods and genres. It starts off with "Struttin'", featuring confident, laid-back vocals--done in the style of rap with a technological spin. With lyrics like, "Baby blonde battery Barbies ain't got nothing on this" and "music junkies get all for free // major labels don't get me // contracts kiss my industry // I'll sing the system to its knees”, it is, to me, the best song they could have chosen to start the album off. It shows exactly where they stand and how much confidence they have in themselves (it's apparent to me the "baby blonde battery Barbies" are those such as Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and so on). The rebellious and confident feel of the song is not one apparent in all of its songs--“Lovely” and “All the Same” are more subdued and melodic, with obviously different topics being sung about.

The song “Empty” may at first seem nihilistic and incredibly dark, given some of the lyrics--“grab all you want // you'll never hold on to me // everything you see // is totally empty // nothing we feel // is lasting or real // everything fades // womb to the grave”. But despite this, and the fact that the music in the background itself seems to amplify that impression, consider this: the current world we live in is largely a materialistic one and one in which some people will do any amount of brownnosing to someone with power in order to get their hands on that power themselves. With that in mind, the song turns away from being one of angst and takes on a more spiritual feel--many religions and modes of spiritual thinking teach that greed and materialism are to be avoided. Some even teach that any form of materialism is wrong, and thus we have mendicants, meaning they live entirely on charity, having taken a vow of poverty.

The album, “Dreamer’s Paradox”, by JT Bruce, is easily deserving of its popularity. With strong, driven melodies, I find the songs tend to be energising. An album without vocals, the instruments are more than enough to keep interest. If the volume is turned up a little too much, the moment “Parasomnia” comes on, you'll definitely know what song it is after you get over the shock of the volume. It comes in strong, and maintains a majority of that strength throughout without being overpowering. The word parasomnia refers to sleep disorders, including sleepwalking and hypnic jerks, which is the title of the final song in this album. Hypnic jerks are experienced usually right before one falls asleep--your leg suddenly twitches, or perhaps, like in my case if I’m sleeping at a table, your entire body convulses right before you get to sleep. The song “Hypnic Jerk” features six minutes of rather disjointed music (it’s still coherent by all means) and four minutes of speaking. I find this ending speech rather interesting and clever--it uses all of the song titles in order, it features different voice effects, and the view offered on sleep and dreaming is something worth thinking on. The song titles JT Bruce chose for this album was no mistake, nor did he pick them just because they sounded pretty.

I could go on forever, but hopefully I’ve started someone on their journey through Jamendo. There’s so much there worth listening to at least once.

Now that I've spent an hour typing that out, the site's back up. =P I don't know what your tastes are, mysterious people who may be reading this, but I can probably point you in the general direction of what you may like if you don’t really like the albums I listed above. While it would please me so to see everyone use the site and stop pirating music, I'm not your mother or the morality police. If you find even one album you enjoy, I've done my job as self-appointed Jamendo spokeswoman. =P

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