emusers' standard lecture on good free stuff

amclark2

I saw that some people cited some free things I pointed out over in Simon Said, so I thought I'd put this up here. I have shared most of this before, but it seems to have taken a good 2 or 3 tries before people caught on to Lux and Ivy, so maybe you haven't seen these yet either. If you have, then no fowl, or we can fight.

Awesome Tapes from Africa - self explanatory

Free Metal Albums - try the browse by country feature

Free Music Archive

at the internet archive, get everything by Jessica Calleiro/uncle owen and aunt beru
(while you're their you can check me out too.)

If you like William Basinski or Advisory Channel, check out The Caretaker

Phoning it In - "lo-fi is the right fi" - performances recorded over land-line telephones. Check out Times New Viking - their album is ok with me, and live I felt bored, but their Phoning it In is to die for. Also; MV + EE covering an Ali Akbar Khan raga - to live for.

I recently stumbled across the Lieder Sound Archive, and it looks interesting, but I have yet to check it out. Any classical experts have an opinion on this.

That's all for now. Please add your own free findings here. Helps to fill the gaping hole.

(edited by Dr. Mutex: The original topic of this thread was "amclark2's standard lecture on good free stuff". It was changed at amclark2's request to reflect the community participation.)

mommio

I noticed Lux and Ivy when you first posted it over there. I did check it out, but those zip files are hugh! And I'm still in the dark ages, on dialup. I keep telling myself that I need to change that.

That also presents a problem over there with those multi-disc albums. I have to do some individual downloads to pare it down sufficiently to make the album download reasonable. Yes, I get albums. Before I could download one disc at at time with no problem, so this is another unpalatable change in the site.

BigD-Bluez

Lux and Ivy's Favorites is awesome, and it took a little while to download. The original of Rubber Biscuits! Poontang by The Treniers! I had only a couple of weeks earlier finally scored the original Shaking All Over by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates after much searching, and there it was. Great stuff. Eternal gratitude.

brittleblood

track down blues_hounds site and we should sticky it. xtrev???

cafreema

Is there a way to download the African stuff? I'm not tech savvy so it may well be blatantly obvious.

Craig

mommio

blues_hound = Free Albums Galore.

He took it over on January 1, 2006. Gosh, it's hard to believe it was that long ago.

I bookmarked it when he posted about it at eMu.

xtrev

blues_hound's site = Free Albums Galore I believe.

Stickied.

amclark2

@ craig: if you are pc, right click on each track and select "save as"; I usually ad numbers to the front of the file name so they stay in the proper order. If you are mac, I'm not quite sure.

cafreema

That's the problem. I'm on a mac. Tried the Mac version of right clicking and didn't get a save as. I'll figure it out.

Thanks!

Craig

xtrev

Hey Craig, if you don't get it working, let me know which browser you're using and I'll try to help.

TimMason

Craig - it works ok on my Mac (using Safari). But then I use a proper mouse. Right click and down it goes.

cafreema

I'm an idiot.

I haven't had the Mac all that long and when I saw "Save Link As" I didn't realize that meant the same as the PC "Save As". Ignore me!

(Thanks for the help though guys.)

Craig

brittleblood

i've been listening to the blind umizato found on blueshound's site - that first track is evocative + i recommend it to amclark2 + elwoodicious...mebbe xtrev.

rastamon

Thanks for the Lux & Ivy bump. Holy schmoly, what an amazing set of comps!

Freealbumsgalore

Hey! Glad you guys are digging Free Albums Galore!

Blues_Hound aka Freealbumsgalore but you can call me Free!

or better yet just Marvin.

eythian

Marvin, your blog combined with http://freemetalalbums.blogspot.com/ gets me large amounts of free music. Thanks

mommio

Classical music fans, weekly free albums at classical.com. The gold tab at the upper right of the home page points to this page. This was posted on the other board. You have to set up a free account to get the free downloads.


Edit: I went back to read more about this site. There's a lot to take in. Looks like there is a monthly fee, which includes unlimited streaming and 8 downloads per month. This is a U.K. company. Anyone have experience with it?

JFLL

Re classical.com. Just went back and logged in and found:

"Welcome back John, you have 0 free downloads available..."

Oh, well.....

mommio

Did you download an album? It says a free album every week. Did you get one? I did. The original poster, on the eMu board, said two per week, 104 per year. When I signed up, it appeared to be one free album per week.

Get a FREE album, every Tuesday - no catch, no hardsell, just free!

luddite

1028 free songs available at http://www.reverbnation.com/windows

I found out about this on Fatwallet.com. Don't know how long the offer will be up or if the lists of available songs will change over time.

>>>>
Click to download new music, completely free, brought to you by your music loving friends at Windows. You'll see (but not hear) some ads on your screen in addition to the album's cover art, which is how we keep your new tunes from costing you a cent.
>>>>

- Songs are available in both MP3 and M4A formats.
- There does not appear to be a limit to how many you can download (I just spent 30 minutes queueing up the whole list)
- This deal is sponsored by Microsoft: they would like you to add Windows as a friend on MySpace, but that is NOT required. The album cover image may include an ad - that's how the keep the downloads free.
- You can view songs by artists name or popularity or just artists falling into a certain genre. Genres include Alternative, Electronica/Dance, Hip Hop, Jazz, Latin, Pop & Rock.

mommio

John, I went back to classical.com -- as you noted, 0 free downloads available. I clicked on the free album tab anyway. I had downloaded the Debussy/Ravel album, so I did a test. I was able to download the Wagner, too. There is still the message at the bottom of the download page re two previous albums. I'm too tired to check it out tonight, but I will see if I can download one of them tomorrow.

mommio

John, I am able to download all 4 albums on the Free Albums page after I log in. Thus, I believe the "0 downloads" refers to the 8 downloads on the monthly streaming subscription, which I don't have. If you want all 4 free albums, I would guess the previous two at the bottom of the free albums page would need to be downloaded before Tuesday, when the next two free albums will be posted. The only issue I see is the need to tag each track on these freebies, but that's a small price if you like the music.

JFLL

Thanks, Mommio, you're obviously more persistent than me! I tried what you said and all four albums were downloadable. Looks well worth investigating every week. The label featured on these four albums, "Forlane CI" was new to me (any info, Nereffid?), and frankly doesn't seem to feature artists from the top drawer, except Van Dam ,but not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and it will be worth it to explore pieces you don't know, like Sibelius's Pelleas and Melisande in my case. I also like the fact that you can stream the whole work to try it out first.

Nereffid

I'd never heard of Forlane either, until I first looked at classical.com a few months ago. It does seem to be a second-level sort of label, but I did see a few albums from Felicity Lott and a few other names I recognize.
Have a look at classicaldigest.com - a few Forlane reviews show up there.

I see Sony's available on classical.com now, some prices not too bad. And the full streaming is very handy.

Btw, classical.com does have a presence on emu too.

mommio

Persistence is my middle name. Before I downloaded the first album, I did check on the label and artists. I also checked all the albums on eMu and found none of the freebies there. For free and the time of a download, I am just cheap enough to do the downloading and tagging. At this point (I don't have broadband), the downloading is far easier for me than the streaming.

JFLL

"Persistence is my middle name".

It certainly is, mommio, if you're on narrowband! You deserve a medal. I live half the time with a broadband connection and half the time without one, but don't dare try to download on narrowband. Hell, it takes about a minute just to download a normal page on Emusic with all the useless bells and whistles they've lumbered the site with.

amclark2

stumbled across this today - worldservice - looks to be an incredible source, although I haven't downloaded anything from it yet.

brittleblood

that worldservice is a bit suspect - i rambled through a few that look very interesting + went to grab one. an arsenal of spam followed. someone who is much more spamfiltery than me should give it a try.

martyna

Things electronic...
Having just posted this info on another thread I've realised that this might be a better place for it. Apologies for duplication, but here goes:

...It's a blog run by a friend of mine (purely for his own amusement) and stuffed full of dj mixes you can download. New mixes are added as and when he's in the mood and cover breaks/house/dubstep and various things electronic.
There are some superb mixes there - I'm listening to Fuzzbox Inc ~ R.T.E Pulse Radio Mix as I write (very funky breaks), but there are many more...
bass, beats & bleeps



enjoy!

cafreema

Today's eMusic freebie is by Mark Mallman (with a little vocal help from Craig Finn of The Hold Steady). If you like Mallman, he has a free "best of" on his website: Link.

Whenever I listen to him I feel like I'm listening to an edgier Elton John or Billy Joel. Good stuff.

Craig

dubdance

amclark2 - thanks for the worldservice link, there's some great stuff on there. So far I've downloaded and enjoyed music from Ali Farka Tour