Really free music places

[amazinghorse]

Many people still don't know about existence of Creative Commons, and also don't know how many awesome absolutely legally free content exist due to CC license!

One of the biggest part of all CC licensed  content is music, and many many times I found artists that sound much better and more interesting than famous commercial bands!

On other hand, several  famous  musicians like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead released some of their music thru CC!

So... here is my list of places with really free music:

 

Jamendo is a music website and an open community of music authors. It bills itself as "the world's largest digital service for free music".

Since the beginning in 2005, Jamendo's music has been licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Applied to all songs, these licenses allow artists to publish their music and preserve their rights while providing users the freedom to download it for free and redistribute at least noncommercially, with other permissions varying by license. The goal of Jamendo is to be the link between artists who want to share their music and audiences around the world, both private and professional.

Based in Luxembourg, the website has a community of 1.4 million members.

At the end of 2013, the catalog comprised 410,000 tracks by 30,000 artists from 150 countries. The site is available in 6 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Polish.

The name "Jamendo" is derived from a fusion of two musical terms: "jam session" and "crescendo".

 

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads.  The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.  Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every MP3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era.  These uses vary and are determined by the rights-holders themselves (please see our FAQ) who feel that allowing a degree of free cultural access is beneficial not only to their own pursuits, but to our society as a whole.  Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio?  A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep?  A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples?  Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist?  The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

The Free Music Archive is a platform for collaboration between WFMU and a group of fellow curators, including KEXP, dublab, KBOO, ISSUE Project Room, and CASH Music. The site combines the curatorial approach that these organizations have played for the last few decades, with the community generated approach of many current online music sites.

Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist page will have a bio and links to the artists’ home page for users to learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s).  Users can also “tip†an artist if they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’ PayPal account.  Artist profiles include tour dates, encouraging users to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live music.

While the Free Music Archive is free and open to anyone regardless of registration or other requirements, written and audio content is curated, and permission to upload/edit content is granted on an invitation basis. 

 

Bandcamp is a privately held company founded in 2007 by former Oddpost co-founders Ethan Diamond and Shawn Grunberger, together with engineers Joe Holt and Neal Tucker providing an online music store launched in 2008, as well as a platform for artist promotion, that caters mainly to artists. Artists on Bandcamp have a customizable microsite with the albums they upload. All tracks can be played for free on the website and many artists offer free music downloads.

Bandcamp saw a rise in popularity in 2011 when several indie game developers published their game soundtracks on Bandcamp, including the creators of Aquaria, Bastion, Sanctum, Machinarium, Terraria, Plants vs. Zombies, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, To the Moon, Fez and Minecraft.

 

Cctrax project started just recently and for now it's more or less a directory of cc licensed music. Full music albums are available for both streaming and download, the site performs well on mobile devices too.

Content is fast growing, updates on an almost daily basis.

 

Netlabels collection at the Internet Archive This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of 'virtual record labels'.

These 'netlabels' are non-profit, community-built entities dedicated to providing high quality, non-commercial, freely distributable MP3/OGG-format music for online download in a multitude of genres.

[dbz2k]

I only knew about jamendo  didn't know there so many creative common music sites.