We love music. When we were younger and the majority of our money was disposable, it was easy to spend countless dollars on tapes, LPs and CDs. Now there are kids, and rent, and car repair bills. It’s hard to justify spending $20 a week on records. Yet we still boast an enviable iTunes collection, due mostly to our collection of reliable sources of free music.
There is a ton of free music on the internet for download. But which sites are legal? Which sites are safe from viruses? There are a lot of traps on the internet, so let me offer a few pointers as well as some reliable sources.
We avoid any site with ‘free’ in the title: Freemp3, freemusic- anything like that. We like our sites to work easily, reliably and virus free. One of the best collections of free music out there is a site you probably use for other things: Amazon.
Log into Amazon and head for the MP3 Store. On the left side column, scroll down and you’ll see, “Free Music From Rising Artists.” There you go—hundreds of songs all free, legal downloads! You can also type “Free Mp3” into the search field and get taken to a different sorting of music. A great thing to pick up is music samplers. Many smaller record companies put out sampler collections to get you hooked on their artists. You’ll find artists you recognize, as well as new undiscovered loves this way.
Enjoy your free music! If it is simply terrible, you can always throw it away. But we usually save everything in case kids or friends enjoy it. Then we can use it to make mix CD’s and playlists for them!