Fingertips--Music Site Guide

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Music Site Guide

Below is a listing of relatively major web sites that offer an assortment of free and legal music downloads. Keep in mind that Fingertips is not about comprehensive presentation. This is not, therefore, a list of all the sites I can find on the web with free and legal music downloads. This is a list of sites that have some good music among their offerings.

More information about this directory, including a word about the four categories of sites (Hubs, Boutiques, Record Companies, Blogs), is available on a separate page.

If you're interested in diving into smaller, idiosyncratic collections of free and legal MP3, don't miss also the Secondary MP3 Resources page and the Smaller Record Labels page.

last updated 27 Apr 08

MP3 Hubs

Insound

The MP3 section of the indie music site Insound is large, eclectic, and engaging; over time, this is the site that is proving to be perhaps the single best source of high-quality leading-edge free and legal MP3s on the web. What makes Insound special is that in many cases the MP3s stored here are not available anywhere else.

That said, there's definitely going to be a lot of stuff here that's pretty far off the wall for many ears, but the people here listen and care about what they're offering, which is a good thing. Browse the site and you're sure to find a few songs by musicians you've never heard of that you'll be very happy to know.

You can find Insound's MP3 storehouse--and it's quite a big one--by clicking on "mp3" near the top of the page. Another way to find some of the good stuff is simply by clicking on a featured release from the home page that sounds interesting, then seeing if there's an MP3 available (often there is).

CNET music.download.com

Anyone remember the old MP3.com at this point? If so you might be interested in knowing that Music.download.com is CNET's re-launched version of that semi-legendary site, which was shut down for good in December 2004.

After a rocky start, music.download.com has turned out to be a much better site than MP3.com ever was. Now hosting more than 75,000 free and legal MP3s, this is still, of course, an upload free-for-all at one level, but at the same time there is enough editing and high-level selection at work here to make it a worthwhile hub for the intelligent music fan. Whoever puts together this web site is definitely attempting to locate worthy MP3s in and around the mass of amateur offerings, and to place them in genre context.

And there certainly is some really good stuff here; that is in fact one of the aggravating things about the site--how it rather blithely mixes MP3s from genuine musical heavyweights (Sinead O'Connor, XTC, Suzanne Vega, et al) in among obscure, unsigned acts of often dubious merit. MySpace does this too and it's just not right. Maybe it makes the unsigned acts of dubious merit feel good but to me it cheapens everything: all music exists in this ridiculous flatland where quantity is king and no one is allowed to be better than anyone else. Phooey to that.

While there are simply too many artists (more than 27,000) to make plain browsing feasible, a good way to get a feel for what's available is to click on sub-genres (and boy are there sub-genres here!) of interest from the left-hand column of the main page; when you arrive at each sub-genre's main page, you'll get a short list of featured artists that can be worth checking out.

SXSW.com

Now 22 years old, Austin's South by Southwest Festival, has truly grown into the pop music world's biggest and most influential annual event. Known in particular for showcasing emerging artists--Norah Jones, the White Stripes, and the Strokes are among the acts to have been launched into stardom via exposure at SXSW (as it's called)--the festival has grown to gargantuan proportions, featuring more than 1,500 musical acts from more than 30 countries, performing in some 70 venues around Austin.

To help promote the festival, the web site not only informs attendees who is playing where and when but also features literally hundreds of free and legal MP3s from a wide variety of SXSW artists.

They aren't completely easy to find, however, since the site is not designed as an MP3 hub but as a showcase for the festival's talent year by year. There is no index of MP3s; rather, you have to page through the list of performers to see which ones have free and legal MP3s to download. Plus, everything is separated by year, so the festival has more or less separate sites for each year.

The place to begin is here. Each artist's geographical home and genre are noted on the list; when you see a little cassette icon next to the artist's name, that means there's an MP3 available to download.

If, somehow, the hundreds of 2008 MP3s aren't quite enough, there are plenty of MP3s still available from the last three years as well: to poke around the MP3s from 2007, start here; for MP3s from the 2006 festival, you can begin here; 2005 MP3s are here.

Beginning last year, my sense was that SXSW MP3s are not as exclusive as they were in earlier years--the songs I'm encountering this year tend to be MP3s that are available in other places also. That said, I'm sure there are nuggest to be found, and in any case, this does become a centralized repository, which is helpful in any case.

betterPropaganda

Founded in part by one of the founders of Epitonic (see below), Better Propaganda gathers onto one site a large selection of free and legal MP3s from worthy independent and otherwise lesser-known musicians.

Better Propaganda divides itself into four genres--electronic, hip-hop, rock, and other. Each category page features recommended downloads, along with reviews and articles about artists in the genre.

While I believe the site has some design issues, there's no denying its value as a resource. And, what the heck, they're worth supporting because I'm also now writing a monthly feature for them, in which I pick out my top five favorite downloads from among the new songs they offer each month. You can check that out here.

Amazon.com

Amazon for years offered a nice, if static, array of free and legal MP3s from noteworthy musicians.

By 2006, however, the site had all but abandoned its free and legal downloads. The old ones were still there, but they became really hard to find. This move, in retrospect, was setting up the big change in the fall of 2007 at Amazon: its launching of an MP3 retail section, as a direct competitor to iTunes and the other fee-based music download stores.

At first glance, I have to say Amazon's MP3 store looks pretty good. They've got lots of songs at 89 cents, rather than the 99-cent standard pioneered by iTunes. And they've got MP3s from Pink Floyd and Radiohead, two seminal bands that you will not find on iTunes (although Radiohead requires people to download entire albums rather than pick individual songs). And these are DRM-free MP3s rather than iTunes' proprietary files.

Why am I mentioning all this here, in what is supposed to be a guide to free and legal music? Well, first off, it's pretty big news in the MP3 world. Second, it appears that Amazon will be featuring a free download on the site, typically one a week. Scroll down on the main MP3 page and look in the left-hand column. The process is a bit clunky--Amazon wants you to use their own downloading software and you have to look hard to figure out how to do it without that; plus, you have to agree to terms of service. But this just might end up being a nice place to find some exclusive free and legal MP3s. Let's see how it develops.

PasteMusic.com

PasteMusic.com is another one of those outfits that make it hard to tell precisely what it is from looking at it. Is it a CD store? A promotional agency? A magazine? It appears to be all of the above, but for our purposes here, it is most of all a nice-sized MP3 hub, housing more than 250 free and legal MP3s from an interesting assortment of artists. (When you arrive at the page of free and legal MP3s you will first have to give the site your email address.)

That's a lot of MP3s but be aware that this collection seems rarely if ever updated. I've been watching it for the better part of three years now and if anything new has been posted it's awfully difficult to tell--they don't indicate new listings with any sign or symbol, and everything seems pretty much the same to the casual observer.

As for what sort of music you'll find here, let's start with PasteMusic's own assertion that it is interested only in music of "high caliber," and that the site, accordingly, will only sell and/or promote and/or write about what it considers to be really good stuff. And what, you may ask, do they consider to be really good stuff? At first glance the taste at Paste appears to be stuck rather too thoroughly in the well-worn singer/songwriter, "triple-A" rut. And yet a closer look at the artists whose CDs are sold on the site shows a certain tolerance for harder-edged sounds; at the same time, these guys show admirable resistance to the overly-indie sounds that tend to clutter up even well-intentioned MP3 hubs all too often.

Among the at least somewhat well-known artists you'll find with free and legal MP3s here are Eddi Reader, Over the Rhine, Kate Rusby, and Elliott Smith. There's a bunch of good stuff here but the page is rather difficult to navigate--the font is tiny and cluttered, and the MP3s are divided into a number of categories with too often negligible lines between them--an inevitable problem when you try to discriminate between, say, "alt-country/roots" and "folk/acoustic" and "americana/traditional" and "singer/songwriter." A sign that the categories don't really work is that a few artists actually end up with MP3s in more than one place.

While the MP3 page appears to be frozen in time, you should know that there are in fact more MP3s available on PasteMusic than simply those in this storehouse. If you browse the CDs that are for sale here, you'll sometimes find MP3s to download along with the track listing.

Last.fm

I tend to be overwhelmed quickly in the online social community world in general and in the music side of such enterprises in particular, so I have long steered clear of Last.fm. It certainly appears to be one of the most thorough and reputable of these music community sites, but me, I just can't seem to get myself involved, because, well...I don't know. Maybe because I already have my music pretty well under control on iTunes and there's basically only so much time in the day to look into this stuff. And maybe because all the lists and numbers of plays and seemingly unending playlists and recommendations and journals and comments and shoutboxes just kind of give me the creeps after a while. I'm weird that way, I know.

That said, because I have avoided Last.fm for so long I did not notice that there are in fact free and legal MP3s floating all around this place. Start here and see right away how easily you can search by genre (of course that's another thing that bugs me about these places: very very genre-intensive!). I'm not sure how long free and legal MP3s stay online here, I'm not sure how much of an upload free-for-all this ultimately is (I don't think it's that bad), and I don't know if there's a way of looking in particular for the new ones that come online; that said, there do appear to be some worthy artists with free offerings here, including Andrew Bird, Neko Case, Stars, Nouvelle Vague, and Sambassadeur.

Feeling adventurous? Click here for more web sites that feature free and legal downloads. These are by and large less "professional" and feature mostly obscure musicians, but if you're in the mood for a hunt, you may find some great stuff here as well.

MP3 Boutiques

Filter Magazine
"Good music will prevail," proclaims the Los Angeles-based Filter Magazine, which seeks to rescue us from the barren world created by over-commercial radio stations and blockbuster-hungry record labels. I might personally wish they could do it with a less busy and, in truth, extraordinarily commercial-looking web site, but at least the music is by and large good. Among the offerings on its web site is a Media section featuring videos, streams, and an ever-expanding and usually very interesting selection of free and legal MP3s, at least some of which seem not to be available anywhere else.

Pitchfork
While the site as a whole suffers from both design frenzy and a simmering indie-rock elitism, neither of those things matter much if you're interested in a consistent assortment of good free and legal MP3s. For years you could browse the "Free Downloads" section, which was a somewhat endearing hodgepodge of paid-for MP3 placements (with lots of good stuff in there, actually), but that section was deep-sixed in January 2007 as Pitchfork went ahead and introduced its own blog, of sorts, with the this-will-probably-get-tired-fast name of Forkcast. Every weekday any number of MP3s and/or streams are written up and posted here. Even with this new page, there are still other places on Pitchfork where you might find free and legal MP3s; a good place to check is the News section, as items there regularly come with MP3s attached, occasionally exclusives.

Spin.com
While never much of a Spin Magazine fan, I have been happy over the years to discover that the online version offered an unexpectedly large number of free and legal MP3s, which is more than you could say about most mainstream enterprises. A recent site redesign, circa early '08, seems to have cut the number of MP3s floating around the site, and they're a little harder to find. At this point, it seems the "Artist of the Day" feature, which spotlights one relatively unknown band or artist each weekday, is the most reliable source of free and legal MP3s. But even so, not every artist featured comes with an MP3. That said, it's worth checking out, as any number of Fingertips-featured bands have shown up here over the past couple of years, including the Bon Iver, Sally Shapiro, the Broken West, among many others.

Paper Thin Walls
I'm not really sure where to list this site. It's sort of a blog and sort of a community site and sort of an online song review magazine. It looks clean and nicely-organized except that you get there and you don't really know what to do or where you are. And I don't think many, if any, of the MP3s you can download here are exclusive to the site. But here's the good news: the site has a winning personality, some really good writing, and sure does host a whole lot of MP3s. If your taste veers a bit towards the arty/avant-garde side of the pop world, this here is a good place for you to explore. It seems as if three new tracks are posted and reviewed each day. Start on the home page and see if you have any better luck figuring out what this whole thing is about than I, so far, have had. I like it anyway, however.

The Deli
The Deli ("music recipes from the big apple") is a hodge-podgey-looking site with quite a lot to offer in new band coverage and free and legal MP3s. While focused only on New York City bands, enough musicians end up there after having started somewhere else to make this feel like much more than a local publication. In its "Specials" section, the Deli focuses on a series of worthwhile new artists with interviews and MP3s available. The layout is comfortable but confusing, with MP3s scattered this way and that. Your best bet is to start on the home page and keep your eyes open for the little headphones symbol, which in most cases offers a direct link to a free and legal MP3. Also, scroll down center column under in the section that it calls its blog and you'll see the occasional free and legal MP3 posted in conjunction with an entry about a band. Among the artists you'll find featured here are a number of former TWF picks, including the Cloud Room, We Are Scientists, Calla, the Double, and Asobi Seksu--not to mention Nicole Atkins, whom I found out about right here at the Deli. She's now signed to Columbia Records. So you never know.

Kruger Magazine NEW
Kruger Magazine is a Wales-based print quarterly that, as a web site, is a bit difficult to figure out upon immediate inspection. There are features, there are album reviews, there are single reviews, but I get no sense of unifying presence here. Also, it's one of those sites that automatically needs to start playing music before you've asked it to--not a favorite feature for me. Needless to say, I wouldn't be telling you any of this except for the fact that it does feature a page of free and legal downloads. The good news is that at least some of them appear to be exclusive; the less good news is that they don't stay online forever (and if you head to download one that's been removed, you even get taunted for your efforts--"Wake up, Poindexeter!" and the like).

Pop Matters
Calling itself an "international magazine of cultural criticism," the Illinois-based Pop Matter is an agreeable if insanely busy-looking site that covers many elements of pop culture beyond just music. For our purposes, however, note that the music coverage is wide-ranging and eclectic without being too snooty or elitist. Unfortunately they seem to have mucked up their free downloads page by turning it into a so-called "Media Center" and featuring lots of videos and film trailers. Not only doesn't this make any ergonomic sense--why does anyone think films and music are logically grouped together?--but it takes forever to load the page now if you happen to have an older computer. This used to be a regular visit for me but not anymore.

Artist Direct
My goodness, the name Artist Direct brings back memories of the early years here on Fingertips, back in '03 and '04, when all sorts of interesting and exclusive MP3s might be found on the this otherwise mysterious site. (Okay, it claims to be "a network of web sites offering multi-media content, music news and information, communities organized around shared music interests, music-related specialty commerce and digital music services"; like I said, it's a mystery.) (Oh, and note that they insist on spelling it ARTISTdirect but such flagrantly pointless capitalization is unlawful according to the Fingertips Style Sheet). Eventually the site appeared to pull all of its free and legal MP3s but what's this? I seem to have stumbled upon a page of--yes--free and legal MP3s here, about three dozen of them. And me, I thought the place had gone belly up years ago. I still have no idea why this web site exists, but I will note that among some more widely available MP3s are maybe a few songs--"Know Your Onion" by the Shins and "Smile" by Lily Allen among them--that I don't think are otherwise out there online as free and legals. I don't know how often this page is updated but it's worth checking out.

Tonspion
Even though I can't speak German, I can tell that Tonspion is a pretty darned interesting and useful MP3 site, and that the folks behind it are doing their legwork and their homework. A lot of the music the site features is in English, even if none of the descriptions are. While they do borrow a good bit, MP3-wise, from both Epitonic and Insound, they also find enough MP3s in many other nooks and crannies on the web to make regular visits here definitely worthwhile. (None of the MP3s are exclusive to Tonspion, which is why I finally decided to move this entry from the MP3 Hub section here to the Boutique section.) I can't give you too many browsing hints, given the language issue, but if you go there and start clicking around you'll bump into lots of interesting things. For a start, try clicking the "MP3" box next to the word "Tonspion" at the top of the page.

Glorious Noise
This engagingly written, independent Chicago-based online music magazine, five years old already (where does the time go?), offers a homey, spirited vibe of the sort you just can't get from magazines filled with glossy ads and industry hype. In addition to a regular battery of features and reviews, head honcho and all-around nice guy Jake Brown offers an ongoing, hand-picked list of free and legal MP3s he comes across which are always worthy.

Spinner (AOL Indie Music Blog)
America Online, of all places, has been trafficking in free and legal MP3s in a variety of ways for a few years at least. The latest development is something called Spinner, which comes with the slogan "slightly left, always right." Spinner is the sort of blog a corporation seeking to be semi-relevant seems to put out these days. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just don't expect the personal sensibility that one might otherwise assume is what characterizes a blog in the first place. In any case, I don't come here for someone's personal taste, I come here because AOL being AOL, they are able to score free and legal MP3s that are not always available anywhere else. The full blog features both MP3 posts and other news; the link I've given you at this top of this paragraph goes straight to all the MP3 posts.

RECORD COMPANY SITES

Barsuk Records
The long-running, irrepressible duo They Might Be Giants and melancholic indie-rock outfit Death Cab for Cutie are probably the best-known of the artists associated with Barsuk Records (although DCfC have sinced moved on to a major label), but you can also find the wonderful John Vanderslice among the label's acts. The web site is sleek, easy to navigate, and MP3-oriented--many of the artist have three (or more) MP3s uploaded. Worth a visit. All 70+ MP3s are listed here, but in reverse chronological order by album release date.

Beggars Group, U.S.A.
The "Beggars Group" is an umbrella name for a number of independent record labels, a number that has grown over the years to include, by now, 4AD, Beggars Banquet, Matador, XL, Too Pure, and Rough Trade, among others. Availability of free and legal MP3s at Beggars has come and gone over the years; the company used to be listed here, but the site was really sketchy and ill-tended and the MP3s pretty much disappeared, so it was de-listed. But it's back because the site has been completely overhauled, seems to be decently updated, and, lo and behold, now features a very nice selection of free and legal MP3s on their own page--a couple of dozen, at last count, including songs from the likes of Emma Pollock, Super Furry Animals, the National, Electrelane, Blonde Redhead, and Elvis Perkins. Well worth a visit.

Matador Records
One of the indie world's landmark record companies still boasts a powerful roster of left-of-center artists (including Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power, The New Pornographers, and Laura Cantrell) but over the last year or so has decided to scale back their free and legal MP3 offerings. No longer does Matador gather their MP3s onto one page, the way it used to do; what's more, the number of MP3s offered has shrunk quite a bit. To find what remains, click on "bands" on the left and hunt artist by artist. If you're not careful you may stumble upon web pages here that haven't been updated since 2000 or 2001. But maybe they're hoping that, given the clean and friendly design, you might not notice.

Record Collection
Record Collection is an indie-looking imprint from Warner Brothers, and while it's a bit disingenuous of them to try so hard to look independent, I will note that no other major label I have found so far has actually had the nerve to post full-fledged free and legal MP3s (not Windows Media files!) for downloading. So give it up for Record Collection, which features roughly 20 MP3s, from the likes of the Walkmen, Kate Earl, and Simon Dawes. Click on "Audio/Video" to see the full listing of them.

Sub Pop Records
Once upon a time the most active progenitor of the "grunge" scene in Seattle in the early '90s, Sub Pop remains an active, not-quite-that-small small record label, with about three dozen active bands and a few dozen other acts that used to record for Sub Pop but have either moved on or broken up (or both). Among the label's current big-shots are the Shins, Iron & Wine, and Band of Horses, although I'm kind of tickled that Mudhoney, one of the original grunge bands, is still on the label and still alive and kicking. In its most recent site redesign, Sub Pop has abandoned its centralized listing of MP3s; the only way (I think) to find them now is to go to the artists page and search artist by artist. There are, however, a good amount of quality free and legal MP3s here so definitely give it a try.

Vagrant Records
This Santa Monica-based label has acquired a powerful roster over the last few years. At the same time, their MP3s, of which there are a few dozen at least, have become a bit more difficult to find. You can see 10 of them here, but after that you have to hunt artist to artist. Among the two dozen or so artists on board are the Eels, the Futureheads, Paul Westerberg, the Hold Steady, and the Lemonheads.

What Are Records?
Run by a former big-label A&R executive, the Boulder-based, annoyingly-named What Are Records? has a decent line-up of artists and a redesigned web site with an impressive number of good songs to listen to. While the label continues not to release very much, the web site has been reinvigorated with MP3s, roughly 100 in all, including songs from Glenn Tilbrook, Tim Finn, Lloyd Cole, Frank Black, David Wilcox and a number of other worthy folks. The MP3s are collected here.

At the end of the day, there are a whole lot more small record companies than you can possibly imagine, and more and more of them are offering free MP3s on their web sites. If you feel like browsing through some largely obscure (but often worthy!) music, click on this paragraph to go to the Smaller Labels Page.

MP3 BLOGS

For more information on what MP3 blogs are and why Fingertips will actively refer you only to a small number of them, click here.

(For a complete list of all blogs--both music-oriented and otherwise--that link to Fingertips, click here.)

Largehearted Boy
Self-described "music-loving guy living deep in the American South," Largehearted Boy is a literate, thoughtful, prolific fellow named David who runs a widely-read music-centric blog that features a whole heckuva lot more MP3 suggestions than Fingertips does, plus daily pointers to interesting music articles and interviews from around the web. I have no idea how he finds all these things and how he has the energy to do this every single day; I continually tip my hat to him in admiration. Oddly enough he seems to run a blog called "Fingertips" as well, but it's about massage therapy.

Some Velvet Blog
A mix of MP3 links and interesting music news and observations, Some Velvet Blog is the work of WXPN program director Bruce Warren, one of few "industry" people (XPN however is a so-called "adult alternative" station, not a big-time mainstream monstrosity) who has wholeheartedly embraced the internet music scene. I think this gives him a valuable perspective; the blog is worth checking in on regularly.

3hive
Tended by a team of five affable and capable writers, 3hive is a refreshingly clean and well-organized blog. There is one post a day, each featuring a few sentences about one artist, with accompanying links to however many free and legal MP3s the artist has available (usually two to four). I particularly like how well-rounded the writers are both in terms of their knowledge of music history and their awareness of the breadth of rock's genres and sub-genres.

Chrome Waves
Chrome Waves in a granddaddy among MP3 blogs, having been up and running since 2002. Frank, the guy who does the whole thing, has good taste and an almost incomprehensible energy for going to concerts. Not only can he actually write pretty well (a bonus, and a rarity), but he knows enough about music to admit when he doesn't know something. By and large, his blog features only free and legal MP3s; definitely do yourself a favor and check it out.

Hello! Surprise!
I have been repeatedly delighted by music emerging from Sweden in recent years, and there is no better place to go to get a good, free, and legal overview of Swedish pop than Hello! Surprise!, a friendly and informative site run by the friendly and informative Johannes, in Stockholm, since January 2005.

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MP3 AGGREGATORS

Starting back in 2005, there arose the phonemenon of the "MP3 Aggregator"--a site created with the purpose of collecting in one place the MP3s being posted on MP3 blogs all around the net. The mere concept of it is somewhat exhausting to me, and inherently belies the so-called convenience such sites claim to offer: I mean, seriously, if there are hundreds of MP3 blogs posting hundreds upon hundreds of songs per day, every day, what good does it really do to have one site you can go to purportedly to see (and listen to???) all of these songs. There are only 48 hours in a day, after all. I also cannot in good conscience condone aggregators when they are blithely collecting MP3s from around the net whether legally distributed or not. That said, these sites do exist, so if you want to see a short list of them and read a bit about each one, be my guest.