A link to RIAA

One of my gripes with copyright law is that it's meant to promote the arts and culture. But in my mind, it does anything but, and further limits art and culture. So someone who calls himself RIAA has released an "album" that illustrates the things people could do were they not to worry about copyright laws.

Perhaps the copyright laws are there for a reason, after all.

Free music!

My job here is done! I have found other blogs, doing what I had set out to do.

Well perhaps I won't go away so easily as that, but I have found what I was looking for which was the reason I started this thing--I couldn't find lists of music from people who had shared their music on purpose, to download from those who wanted to be downloaded from.


It is Music
Fingertips
Oddio Overplay
MP34U

So I don't know whether to continue this particular blog or not. Perhaps I will.

*Goes off to flip a coin*

Not what I had in mind--mp3 aggregators

So, I have encountered a great many number of websites that host mp3s. However, these mp3s look to be of dubious legality. They all come with disclaimers saying something like "we will only host these mp3s for sampling purposes only--please buy legal CDs". I'm surprised by this, in part because of the draconian way the RIAA goes after p2p-file traders, and also, how come I didn't know about this earlier?

Rather than link to each and everyone individually, I found a couple mp3 blog aggregators (okay so I did link to a bunch):
http://hype.non-standard.net/
http://elbo.ws/
http://tofuhaus.antville.org/topics/music
http://www.ecbrown.org/linkpage.htm

I also want to point out that http://tofuhut.blogspot.com/ has an amazing list of links for these kind of things.

DJ Mixes : DJ Sol

DJ Sol says:

Feel free to listen to or download my mixes!

Not bad stuff, if I do say so myself.

The Traders Den

The Traders Den is similar to etree.org, in that they distribute, via bittorrent, non-lossy music files of live shows. Unlike etree.org, they insist you register before you go merilly downloading. While it looks like they have interesting stuff, my little brain says "Why use this when etree.org doesn't require registration?"

Song Fight!

Song Fight is website that hosts a weekly contest. They post three things that could be the names of songs, and then people make songs with those titles and submit them, and then there is a vote, and a song is declared a winner!

LegalTorrents

LegalTorrents is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved files, from electronic/indie music to movies and books, which we have made available via BitTorrent.

Music isn't the main focus on this website, but about half of it is music.

WFMU

Before starting this list, I was searching for downloads, figuring someone else had already had done this sort of thing. However, I haven't found it yet. But I have found that WFMU has a blog where they frequently link to mp3s. Some of it is quite interesting, such as the page "Songs of Energy Crises Past", some is silly, which I noticed when I originally found this page through "39^H^H56 versions of Stairway to Heaven".

It's not all music, but it's all enjoyable.

Cajun music mp3

Mission: To foster enjoyment, appreciation, and understanding of the history of Cajun music!

If I were to label things, this would fit in the category of "Abandonware". It's a collection of vinyl records encoded on mp3 and hosted so that people won't forget the music and culture of French Louisana. Similar to websites hosting abandoned software, this webpage has a plea that those concerned with copyright infringement to contact the web author, and has secured permission from a number of them.

I've been listening to this all day, and there are some gems in there, despite the "scratchy record" syndrome. I heavily recommend it!

Don't forget links! Main page, and the mp3 page.

Jonathan Coulton

Jonathan Coulton, who got a bit of fame from Slashdot noticing his "Code Monkey" song, has several songs on his webpage available for free. However,

A few people have pointed out the fact that I have more songs available for free than I do for sale, which is maybe not the best business model. So I’ve reorganized this page into more of an online store - you can buy single songs and whole albums through Paypal or with a credit card. I’ve just recently set it up, so I hope you’ll be patient if there are any problems. If anything weird happens just let me know and I’ll fix it. You can also buy a CD if all this makes you uncomfortable.

So go give him a listen, and if you find yourself singing along with him in the car, you can help him find his new career by buying a download or two.

Also notice he has five songs available for a Popular Science Soundtrack, that I guess is meant to go with one of their issues.