SXSW put together a great set of torrents in the build up to SXSW with tracks showcasing artists that appear every year.  You can find the torrent here : Link to south by southwest festivals + conferences.  A word of warning the torrent is BIG.

Tags: Torrent SXSW Music Show Case

Q Magazine this month (March 2007) published a list of a 100 websites where you can download music for free from. I’ve had a quick flick through the article – although some of the sites are artists giving away some additional tracks, others are actually streaming sites – which I thought was a cope out, so I thought I’d try compile my own list. Obviously there will be some overlaps, but hopefully I’ve got a few sites that Q haven’t. I can’t always guarantee that the sites provide the mp3s legally – but I can say that they don’t promote the wholesale sharing of copyrighted albums.

2. iTunes – yes they have a free weekly song to help promote artists. There are other similar sites with free downloads or introduction freebies these include:
3. eMusic
4. Mp3.com
5. Napster – now it has been legalised.
6. XPoNential Music on demand – associated with the American WXPN radio station who record live sessions, some of which are available here.
7. Archive.org – source of live bootlegs – archive insist on explicit approval from the artists for bootlegging of live performances – huge choice of bands. Archive.org also cover books and other downloadable content as well. More information on how allows tapping can be found at “bands that allow taping” here.
8. MySpace’s music – artists both signed and unsigned promote themselves through the site including free track downloads.
9. Live Spaces – Microsoft Equivelant to MySpace
10. Wolfgang’s Vault – a nice library of live performances.
11. An Aquarium Drunkard – blog which reviews and makes downloads available.
12. Day Trotter – This site with blog etc. have managed to get artists to call in to their little studio to record songs for them which are made available though their site.
13. GarageBand – unsigned and independent artists.
14. LegalTorrents – As bit torrent becomes more common as a means to download, I’d imagine this site and others like it will pop up.
15. Epitonic
16. SXSW – The South By South West event website provides a huge preview download of artists performing at the festival.
17. Blogs, some blogs provide free tracks to downloads, such as Arjan Writes
18. Large Hearted Boy – my favourite blog, with a daily roundup of press articles and downloads
19. Idolator – a prolific blog.
20. An Aquarium Drunkard
21. Stereogum
22. Glorious Noise
23. Furthur Net – dedicated to sharing live bootlegs using a dedicated peer to peer client.
24. DimeADozen – a torrent based site for sharing bootleg recordings. Great site.
25. Trader’s Den – An alternative to DimeADozen.
26. dmusic – providing music licensed by artists using the Creative Common license .
27. Filter Magazine – an online US magazine with downloads available.
28. Big O Magazine – an online magazine from Singapore (written in English) although it covers a lot of politics it is also an interesting source of bootlegs and reviews.
29. WOXY – the partner site to LaLa.com (US CD swapping service) provides live performances.

Okay – so it isn’t 100 strong – but not a bad start. I’ll update the list when I find other good sites worth of adding.

Tags: MP3 Download Sites Music Downloading Torrent

It would seem that the next Radiohead album has had a date set – with a degree of confidence that Amazon have provided a page for pre-ordering Radiohead’s album for 2007!

Tags: Radiohead music

This is an exciting step forward, if as Digital Music News reports (Link to EMI Pushes MP3-Based Plan, More Details Surface — Digital Music News ) the first of the big four maybe prepared to to risk a DRM free world.  If EMI doesn’t report any down trend in revenue I suspect the others will have to follow suit.

I, for one would make use of any service that sells a serious catalogue in a DRM free manner.

  I was looking at the EFF site about DRM in music and followed their link to Live gigs you can buy in DRM free downloads (Link to nugs.net presents LIVEDOWNLOADS | Catalog of MP3 FLAC Downloads). Although a lot of the artists of predominatly of the Alt and Indie seens that is a good representation with stuff from:

• Gomez
• Iron & Wine
• Barenaked Ladies
• The Editors

To name but a few.