Launch of Legal Music Download Sites

Several years back, illegal music downloading was a widely debated topic in the music industry. Most record companies and artists believed that they were losing a lot of money as all the latest music was downloaded for free. This debate resulted in the launch of websites that allowed free music downloads legally. You must be wondering about the music types that you will be able to download from these legal sites. Rest assured, these sites will allow you to download virtually all kinds of music.

How to Download Music from Free Music Download Sites?

Most legal free music sites store thousands of songs from more than 100 artists. Some free music websites may require you to become their registered user for downloading music for free. You will need to enter personal information like your name, address and contact number for getting yourself registered on these sites. Once you have an account on these websites, you will be able to access the websites’ music library.

Usually, it does not take more than a few seconds to download a song from the free legal music download sites. However, the download time may vary depending on your connection speed. Websites that allow free legal music downloads generally do not set any limit for the number of songs a user can download. This means you can download as many songs as you like whenever you get some time off from your busy schedule. Fresh songs are added to these sites’ music libraries at regular intervals. So, expect to find something new to download every time you visit these sites.

What Are the Best Options?

Jamendo: Jamendo began its journey in 2005. Although the site is based in the Western European country Luxembourg, it is multilingual and allows people from all corners of the globe to download music from it. The music files downloaded from Jamendo for free are all licensed by Free Art License and Creative Commons. The users will get to download more than 32,000 albums from this site. To make the process of finding music easier, Jamendo has reviews and tags incorporated in all its pages. To make the deal profitable for artists this free music site offers every participating artist 50% of its advertising revenues.

Dogmazic: This site is a popular free music download website based in France. This website was launched in 2004 by Association Musique Libre. Association Musique Libre’s headquarters is located in Bordeaux, a port city located in the Southwestern territory of France. Dogmazic’s amazing database contains works of around 2000 artists (associated with different music genres). Although the site is managed primarily by French people, its database includes albums of artists from different parts of the world. Like Jamendo, every music file downloaded from Dogmazic is also licensed by Free Art License and Creative Commons.

Free Music Archive: This website started to serve the music lovers from April 2009. Freemusicarchive.org was planned and created by WFMU, an independent community radio station based in Jersey City, NY. However, this site’s music database is often managed by people from several other labels and radio stations. Currently, the site stores more than 22,000 songs. Freemusicarchive.org will also allow you to donate for compensating participating artists, which makes the format quite lucrative even for the artists.

Internet Archive: The Internet Archive’s primary goal is allowing universal access to every knowledge type. As a result, this website also ensures that interested individuals gather enough knowledge about music through its subproject, the Audio Archive. The Audio Archive stores everything from recorded radio shows, news broadcasts to audio books and of course music. The site’s music section will allow you to download more than 50,000 recordings, all for free. The Audio Archive treasures quite a few live concert recordings. The most prominent ones among them include performances of music industry rulers like Smashing Pumpkins, Warren Zevon and Grateful dead.

CC Mixter: CC Mixter will give you the opportunity of testing your music skills. This social music website is primarily meant for individuals interested in making music. The site will allow you to remix and create fresh musical content. CC Mixter boasts a music library, where you will get more than 10,000 samples. Download these samples for free and create new tunes by using the remixing tools available on the CC Mixter.

Amazon: Amazon.com also comes with options for free legal music downloads. Visit the site and go to its main menu, take the mouse cursor on the ‘MP3 & Cloud Player’ option and click ‘MP3 Music Store’. Now, find the ‘Free Music’ banner and click it. This will give you access to hundreds and thousands of music files that are available for free download. For free legal MP3 downloads click the ‘Download’ link (located next to your favorite track’s title). Other than free MP3 downloads, you can also download iTunes files from Amazon.com, absolutely free of cost.

Other free music download sites: Most popular bands allow music lovers to download their old creations from their official website and they don’t charge a single penny for that. Most band websites will allow you to download music files directly from their website. However, there are some bands that will require you to join their website’s mailing list. The files you wanted will be sent to you as email attachments.