Amazon.com has had free mp3s for a least a few years. I remember discovering they had a “free downloads” section and I was able to find some stuff that interested me. There was even recognizable stuff (I can’t remember all of them, but I do recall seeing Yo La Tengo, popular Christmas tunes, and some exciting indie). As you can still see, Amazon still has a Free Music Download section, with a search box for it and a link to the same page on the upper right. That’s as far as it goes though. The search function doesn’t yield any results and the page has no content (It used to have featured digital downloads and short write-ups and maybe reviews). What I did find was that at least some of the free mp3s are still hosted and the referring download links still function. The problem is accessing the URLs that can no longer be found because of Amazon’s lack of a working search engine and the empty page content. Using the wayback machine to get an archived version does nothing but redirect to a newer page. With some crafty search skills I found a few pages that mention these old downloads, and most of them are still downloadable for nada.

Secret #1- Old link still available, just hard to find.
Three Sides to Every Story on Tattoos And Alibis by Ricky Warwick

Raymond McLain “Place Of My Own, A” and “On The Road.”

King Without a Crown by Matisyahu

Code Blue by T.S.O.L. = Childish “shock rock” punk.

50 Cent – New York (a-Fam Remix) I do not condone this song or any use of the word “Niggas” unless quoting something, and “Niggas” is bountiful in this song.

Of all the free mp3s amazon.com had, there are some crummy ones that got archived. I couldn’t find the real treasures like Yo La Tengo and other surprising ones.

Here is an old list of someone’s favorite downloads. I couldn’t get all of these to work.

Secret #2 is that the new DRM-free Mp3 store has rolled out with some free mp3s using the new interface. Evidence is found through Amazon Earworm and right now Thrice has something for free. I’m sure they’ll offer something new every week and list it on this blog. Doing some smart browsing, it appears that a $0.00 Track 3 is available by Saves the Day. If gospel is your thing you can get 2 soulful gospel songs (I wish they offered “Oh Happy Day” on this instead though). There are several more that you can find on what customers also bought section, just see if it’s $0.00.