Best Legal and Free Music Downloads to Fill Your iPod

Music streaming services are great to use on your ipod when you have an internet connection, yet for those times when you are not connected to the internet its hard to beat mp3 downloads. Having the music stored locally on your ipod is great, yet the costs of downloading a song from itunes can easy run a dollar or more per song. In this article I will review some websites where you can get legal, free, mp3 downloads.

Internet Archive

The internet archive is one of my favorite locations to download free legal audio content for my ipod. It is amazing the varierty that is availabe on this site, in a large number of file formats including mp3. The best thing on this site, to me, is the live music archive. The live music archive has hundreds of recorded live music from bands and concerts. It is incredible the amount of content available for download in just this section alone. Also availabe on this site is; audio books & poetry, computers and technology, a greatful dead music archive, music and arts, netlabels (independant artists albums), news and public affairs, non-english audio, open source audio (which you can remix and use as you wish for your own projects), podcasts, radio programs, and spirituality and religion. It is a site that is well worth your time to check out.

PureVolume

Purevolume is a great site to find new music and emerging artists. Artists on the site can have the option of making their songs available for free download. The site is highly polished and really is easy to browse and check out. Not every song is availabe for download, and not all artists participate, but it can still be a way to get some free music for your ipod.

Salon.com’s Audiofile

While this site isnt actively being updated any more – they have graceously decided to leave their archive of free Mp3 downloads up. The site is well organzied and is worth browsing though – you never know when you might find a gem or two worthy of loading onto your ipod.

Unsignedbandweb

Unsignedbandweb.com’s site slogan is “more free music than you know what to do with” and that basically describes the site very well. There are tons and tons of free music available on this site, all from bands who are hopeing to make the big time. While the quality of the music varies, you can occasionally find some good things to listen to on this site. If nothing else it will give you alot of new music to fill your ipod. I tend to get tired listening to the same songs over and over, so its refreshing to have a site that can provide me a constant stream of new music. One other thing which is worth mentioning about this site is that you dont even have to sign up with an account to download the songs. You can sign up, of course, if you like as the account is free – but it is nice not to have to.