KEXP delivers for all a wonderful podcast for the Song of the Day with links to all the previous days in case you missed the download. These are normal mp3s that can be automatically setup for itunes or viewed in Firefox for manual saving. A few days ago I found this and was pleasantly relieved to find a few things for my taste- a track from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, a great rocking instrumental from Pelican, and some other great ones that I unfortunately already had most of (but you may not) from when I was internetting on O.C.D. download binges.

There are no ads or weird podcasty hazards other than plugging in the xml file linked above and downloading. Obviously it requires a connection to download and some space to download it, but you’re bound to have it if you can view this page. Setting up through iTunes is just as easy as viewing the render in Firefox… just find “Advanced” in the menu, then “Subscribe to Podcast” and paste the link in there.

Edit: I don’t believe I spelled “music” wrong in the title (Nusic). I’ll leave it there for completeness and to document my mistake. Firefox spell check doesn’t work in single input lines apparently.

Podbop has rolled out with a new way of bringing music to you. They have a list of artists on tour with mostly full length samples of what they sound like. You can also see who is coming into your town and grab a free track or two before you decide to go to the show. Whether you are looking for local stuff or nationally known artists, you can find your way with other sources I’ve found, some good for the local Tucson music scene and others that are great for all the states.

Artnoc Repus offers an album length of demos for downloading via open source audio. Staying Here Forever draws from an arsenal of softer compositions as well as rompin’ selections that are pulled off well despite the lack of a complete backing band.

Heres a play by play with your songcaster, liquid parallax:
Track 1. “San Diego” is a great song that opens this demo release with style. Playable in any city really. The song’s passion grows to mighty proportions, almost as powerful as Hurricane, though more introspective and abstract than the socially expressive Dylan song. Being a fan of unrefined singers, I’ve learned to tolerate unorthodox singing and even poor singing and concentrate on the essence and intention. The vocals on all tracks are from no pop singer. But if you can hang with nasally Bob Dylan and scratchy Tom Waits like me, you can probably handle the acceptable melodies of Artnoc Repus. The singer hits some peaks of soulful glory that screams real emotion, comparable in a loose sense to the lift in Brandi Carlile’s “The Story” (like the one starting 0:50, and even greater after 2:50). The flamenco edge to the solo is a complimentary embellishment that you anticipate after multiple listens. Although there are a few slight moments where it seems like the lead guitarists is about to lose it completely, he seems to pick himself back out of the blazing whirlwind before the notes fall apart. Elsewhere the guitar adds a flare of Dire Straights.

Track 2. First thought: This guy can play some steady syncopated fingerpicking while singing. Since I know the artist well and happened to be sitting in during these sessions I know this is not the case. It seriously took me a minute to realize one guy was playing and the other is calmly singing, not a one man band. Talk about a bad memory! “Sunrise” is an aptly named title for this one. It is soothing and barren and all the sudden it becomes so twinkling. Simple, yet I can grasp the imagery of the barely complicated echoes layered over the guitar that stems from the lineage of Mississippi John Hurt. For no apparent reason, the twinkly additions remind me of something that could’ve come off of Miracle Legion’s Drenched, which I oddly enough reviewed last month.

Track 3. The melody sounds familiar to me, but I can’t name a song it comes from. Upon later reflection it resembles “4th Time Around” by Bob Dylan which stems from the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” Each song has unique aspects, but there is a strange tie that unites them with the most recent one (by Artnoc) being furthest removed in the trilogy veering into a semi-metaphorical driving song.

Track 4. Keep Reading the Rest…

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.

From my previous post I found “Miserlou” played by the Air Force. I managed to find some others that are pretty interesting. Some for the Christmas season, some patriotic songs, and a few hymns and ceremonials. Usually everything produced by the government is public domain, but things become tricky if they borrowed or used copyright or published material. The liner notes mention permissions from Warner Brothers, BMI, ASCAP, and other companies. It also states the CD is approved for use in public service broadcasting and Air Force activities such as recruiting, troop morale, and retention. They are certainly free, but there may be some restrictions I am not aware of (Like selling them would be illegal, not sure about filesharing).

The United States Air Force has kindly offered some mp3s from physical releases they’ve made. The link divides things into Patriotic, Ceremonial, Marches, Popular & Show Songs, Rock / Pop / Country / R&B, Holiday, Choral, Classical, Jazz, and Traditional / Celtic / Folk.

There are a total of 41 browsable selections.
Clicking “Next” will send you to the next album of theirs. Almost all releases have a few downloadable goodies. They all have mandatory preview as they start playing before you get a chance to download them.

Most people know the guitar driven riff of “Misirlou” from Pulp Fiction, and others know it as being a song played by all the hot surf bands with Dick Dale being the first in the wave of ’60s bands. The truth is it goes way back at least to the 1920s. Michalis Patrinos is said to have performed the rebetiko in 1927, and a recording exists from around 1930. Richard Spotwood’s Ethnic Music on Records, Volume 3: Eastern Europe lists a recording by Tetos Demetriades for Victor in 1927. [source]

Across wikipedia and other sites are several versions of the song:

Tetos Dimitriadis unknown date, possibly 1927.
Michalis Patrinos about 1930.
Other later recorded mp3s at the end of this post. (same as above source link)
US Air Force Band The Strolling Strings, 2004. (other unrelated mp3s to check out too)

Instead of wasting time downloading things by hand, page by page, clicking links generated from javascript, right clicking to save or waiting for each save dialog box, you could be using a download manager to automatically grab certain files from links off of a page. DownThemAll is my choice for Firefox.

Let’s say you want to download all mp3 links listed here. After DownThemAll is installed, go to this page and right click in the black area of the layout to avoid clicking a link. Once you right-click, you should select the DownThemAll button. Add the below code to “Additional Filters,” and make sure “Reg. Exp.” (to the right) is checked. Better yet, save the code as a permanent filter in your preferences.

Filter Code: /\/[^\\]+\.(aac|m4a|ogg|wma|mp3)$/ or if you are having troubles “.mp3” (without quotes) should be accurate enough as a filter. A last solution would be to alter/copy an existing filter replaced with an “mp3″ filetype.

Now for the good part. Instead of navigating threw hundreds of pages, how about going straight to the mp3s? Some Last.fm folks made an epitonic m3u of all songs (no longer working), then another commentor crafted an .m3u list of Artists beginning with A–M from betterPropaganda.com. I went ahead and converted the m3u list into a clickable link fest with a bit of elbow grease plus my new-found regexp skills to do a little cleanup. I take no liability for how you use this. I intend this to be an educational example and only derived this from someone else’s compiling of such “fair use” links. The mp3s are totally free and legal, and in no way is it my goal to compete with them or scrape copyrighted content. I enjoy and support bP’s site so please be nice to them. Most likely you don’t want every mp3 here, so browsing the list and saving by hand is a good practice (and gentler on betterPropaganda).

The monster list of mp3 (A-M):
Keep Reading the Rest…

I never would have thought of such a link, but it exists! The Greedies, as they were called, had a Merry Christmas in 1979 and it featured drums and guitar from Sex Pistols members and all of Thin Lizzy. It’s a rocking little number anticipating the New Year nice and early.

Now we all know what English punk added to rough and tough Irish rock sounds like… “HEY!”