Wilson and Alroy’s Record Reviews. Don’t let the site’s simple appearance fool you. This site is a wealth of thousands of album reviews encompassing popular music from today back to the 1950s. Wilson & Alroy, a pair of self proclaimed “rock ‘n’ roll super dweebs” go into a huge amount of depth and precision in picking apart some of the best (and worst) albums, and best of all, back up their opinions. An excellent and engrossing site.
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3hive.com
Six different authors scour the web for the best free and legal music and write a brief review. A new band is posted every day. [Update: Nice design, nice selection of songs, blog format. Well worth a look! Red.]
Read MoreAltsounds
Community site that hosts alternative (or independent) artist content. Tracks provided free streams and/or downloads, but with a brutally up front user rating system which filters good from bad. Great place fo find new music.
Read MoreSoundlift
Independent music portal, nice design, lots of cool music, which can be streamed or downloaded. Play full album is a nice touch. Definitely worth a visit.
Read MorePurevolume
Tens of thousand of tracks available for free download and streaming. Run by self-proclaimed indie fans to fill the hole left by mp3.com. Lovely design, great selection, awesome site all round. A fabulous resource.
Read MoreNetlabels
Massive selection of free albums (and thousands of tracks) from various ‘net labels’, all gathered under the one roof courtesy of the Internet Archive. Worth a look indeed!
Read MoreArtistopia
Artistopia offers music artists and songwriters a platform to collaborate on musical projects with industry professionals. [Update: Not actually that impressive nowadays in terms of music content though.]
Read MoreGarageband
Massive selection of indie and unsigned music to play and download. You won’t find major label stuff here, but there’s some great music available anyway. Part of the iLike/MySpace empire.
Read MoreMP3.COM Free Music
Great grand-daddy of all music sites, subsequently ruined by CNET. But BIG NEWS folks, it’s back! The site has been completely revamped and now offers real genuine stream and downloadable tracks across a wide range of genres. Mostly indie label type stuff, with the occasional major label artist thrown in as a teaser. Powered by Last.fm.
Read MoreJamendo
33,000 albums for free streaming and download, across a wide range of genres. Creative Commons licenses, available in 7 languages, very cool indeed.
Read MoreLast FM Downloads
Last FM, as well as providing streaming music, also offer free MP3 downloads galore. A massive selection of major name tracks are on offer, so go grab some.
Read Morercrdlbl
Site features around 25,000 free tracks for streaming and download, almost all from ’emerging artists’ and suchlike. The site also features the occasional mainstream artist like Moby and Massive Attack, but pitches itself strictly as a talent spotter. Worth a look!
Read MoreAmazon
Yep Amazon! Few people realise that Amazon has offered free MP3 downloads for a long while. Since the advent of their new iTunes rival however, they’ve made it harder to find the free stuff in one place, so it’s buried under the deep link we supply here. Sort by Price to bring all the free stuff to the top of the pile. Great selection of free tracks.
Read MoreSoundclick
We’re talking 3.79 million songs, from over 400,000 artists, all available to stream or buy. There’s also a huge selection of free download tracks too. Arranged tastefully in chart format. Comes with some naff pop up ads though!)
Read MoreMySpace
No wait, come back! Really it’s a NEW IMPROVED MySpace like you’ve never seen before. A huge selection of streaming tracks, although unfortunately no free downloads only purchase. The radio feature is cool though.
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