Don't get the idea from the title that I'm a Dire Straits fan - especially since the song I plagiarized features the much-loathed Sting, and that's the only mention of him you'll get on these pages - but I've been overwhelmed lately by the amount of great, free music available on the web. As if my backlog of review CDs wasn't already big enough, here are some sites I've been downloading like crazy from lately:
amazon.com has a huge list of free MP3 albums and singles. Couple of favourites here are classic old reggae and dub from the Blood and Fire label, the Anti Records sampler featuring everyone from Neko Case to Booker T, and the crazy Jimi Tenor / Tony Allen collaboration. (Note also that Amazon MP3 albums are usually at least a dollar cheaper than on iTunes, and they have daily discounts on top albums too; follow amazonmp3 on Twitter for the latest).
nyctaper specializes in high quality live recordings of well and lesser known indie bands that play the NYC circuit; this guy must spend most of his life at shows ! Highlights for me were the complete set of recent Feelies reunion shows. Make sure you support the artists by going to see them or buying their stuff if you download from this site.
Wolfgang's Vault is a staggering archive of shows from longer ago, although they also have a good stack of newer stuff. This is the place I go for a fix of 70s Who, Cheap Trick or Graham Parker.
Finally, the big daddy of them all for live shows if you don't mind using BitTorrent - dimeadozen.org has pretty much any live show you could possibly want. My current favourite from here is Luna's last ever show from 2002; man, I wish those guys were still together. Don't be put off by the registration process at dimeadozen; they'll probably be full up when you first try, but keep going and you should get in after an hour or two.
Let me know if you have other free sites worth passing on !
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