Free Music - Legal Ways to Download

Free music usually brings questions of legal issues to mind. That’s because several years ago, the RIAA launched a legal challenge to music sharing sites and the people that downloaded music without paying for it. The claim was copyright infringement, and record producers pushed the cases as far as legally possible in order to stop the practice.

So can you still download free music without all the legal hassles? The answer is yes. But you have to be sure that the songs are made available for free download by the artists.

Music blogs are a good source for legal free music downloads. You can read about an artist and probably be able to download a couple of free MP3s. There are a lot of these blogs out there.  

People tend to think about no-name artists and unsigned bands when someone mentions free music downloads. But this isn’t always true. With a little work, you can find top name stars that release songs for download in order to create a little buzz about their latest work. Although some of these are just 30-second teasers, there are also quite a few that are full-length. Sometimes they are packaged as a music video.

Some of the online music download sites will provide songs and albums for free but there is a catch - you have to listen to an advertisement before downloading your song. But who cares? It’s worth it to save a buck per song.

Then there are sites that provide free music downloads with no ads at all. But there is still a catch (isn’t there always?). You have to be a college student with an edu email address.

Another type of site lets you stream music on-demand. Of course, you cannot actually download the songs like you can with MP3 based sites. But you can listen all day long for free. Some will even let you select the songs you want to hear and setup a playlist.

Another possibility to download free music is from oldies archives. These sites catalog songs that were recorded many years ago and have been made available in the public domain. If you are into oldies type music, these sites could be for you.