I enjoy classical music but I can’t afford most of the stuff I can buy here. Also, my appetite for music is a lot bigger than the non-free supply. So like any other free-culture proponent I shamelessly scour the net for free music, particularly classical, and here are some of my favorite sources.
- Download.com I have to admit, I have found some of the best music in any genre, free or other wise, here. Most artists have three or four tracks for download, some have more, and some have none.
- Wikimedia A decent collection of creative-commons music in Ogg format.
- Magnatune Podcasts Worry not the podcasts are also available as mp3 for download (that was for my non-pod-savvy readers).
- Karadar.com Not much info is given about the webmasters but this is quite a big collection of free mp3 and midi files sorted by style and composer. has a search able database.
- Jon Sayles Performances of classical lute and guitar pieces from the 14th to 17th century. This one unlike the above sites is not a collection of multiple artists.
- Jon Mitchell Music spanning many genre. relatively small collection.
- Dove song Free music of various kinds, featuring some Indian classical as well. ( have not listened to any of their stuff but have been recommended by a friend)
- Classic cat Links to free classical music. Not all work not all are easy to navigate, but those which do are good.
I know the title says 7 sites, so I am bad at counting, sue me.
Ciao
Schizo
2 responses so far ↓
1 Roger // Nov 10, 2006 at 9:13 am
Hi - these are really good links, and sure there is a lot of music out there. It is however a bit time consuming to find what you want, and you generally need to have time and be in a browsing frame of mind to find music, deal with all the issues of playing different formats.
It seems to me that streaming is so simple, because you can just click and listen on any computer. So there are sites like http://www.classical.com where you can hear samples of every track, and there are an enormous number of tracks - probably the largest on the web. What I like is ease of use, so that you spend time listening and exploring music rather than exploring websites and only sometimes finding what you want.
Also, I am a pianist, and it is not so easy to make money as a musician these days. Teaching is good, and playing concerts is wonderful, but only very few performers can achieve a great performance career. So the wonderful thing about a site that sells music is that it is not expensive for the listener, and a lot of the money goes to the musicians. Surely a good thing. Especially if the subscription price is pretty low, like $11.99 a month to listen to as much music as you want.
My view is that most people have enough money to pay something for the music, and the performer always deserves some of the money.
So… thanks for your listing of the free sites, and I hope you don’t mind me pointing out that a paid-for site can deliver as much or more enjoyment, and is well woth it!
2 nelsonnium // Nov 11, 2006 at 12:24 pm
change my site link name to ‘musings of a med student’ if possible?
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