An entire “virtual album” of solo piano music from a single artist. Available to all, but presented especially with the intent of being freely distributed to those who are grieving or convalescing…

The November 2004 issue of Wired magazine included a copy of a CD with 16 songs produced under the Creative Commons License. If you did not pick up a newsstand copy of the magazine with the CD featuring artists like: The Beastie Boys, David Byrne (radio), Zap Mama, Gilberto Gil and others… Rip, mix, burn. Swap till you drop. Copyrighted for the 21st century. The music cops can’t do a thing – it’s 100 percent legal, licensed by the bands.

Use these bookmarklets to play web pages of mp3’s in your browser or preferred media player. Generated playlists are added to the database, which now contains hundreds of links to pages with music files.[‘Update’: actually this is way cool, check it out! Red]

Free sheet music for download. Over 300 pieces and growing. A sort of hugely laudable Project Gutenberg for sheet music.

Weed music distributor offering large collection of legal music downloads.

Huge FTP based mailing list for exchanging live concert & show recordings from willing bands. No mp3’s, music is downloaded via the ‘Shorten’ format then has to be converted to WAV before being burned to CD. Includes an extensive wiki with information about how to convert those shorten files and set up the FTP transfers. Slower than downloading mp3’s, but within reason with a broadband connection. Very cool if you’re into jam sessions and other live stuff from artists like…

They post a title, the community writes the song, people download or stream the mp3 tracks and vote for favourites. Quirky, cool and fun. Quality is variable, but better than you might expect.

A sort of UK promo, marketing type site, with a ‘radio’ section which offers free downloads of a small eclectic mix of bands.

A cool list of mp3 blogs, which post links to tracks in various music categories. Well worth a visit if you’re starting off. See also Thom:Blog for another selection.

Free electronic music downloads, daily. Techno, electronica, house, drum n bass, IDM, glitch, trance, breakbeat, hardcore, downtempo, minimal, 2-step, garage, even the occasional chip. All legal.

The legendary 365 Days Project, in which an mp3 a day — of mostly outsider, novelty, and oddball recordings — was made available for the public to download over the course of 2003. It has been archived in its entirety, complete with images and vast commentary on each selection on UBUWEB.

Amusing blog with various free and hard-to-find indie mp3s.

An excellent, up to date and frozen summary of the major info on this page.

Web site listing links to web sites with free legal music and mp3 downloads.

Great – i.e. comprehensive and growing – list of free music downloads currently available on the iTunes store. Delivered by the good folk on the MacRumors forums. Good on yer!