Quick Fixes

Free Software, Writing and other Stuff

Music

“It’s not just Free Music; …

Paul

… It’s Good Music” is the Free Music Archive’s tagline, and quite right they are too: Free Music contains nearly 80,000 carefully curated and classified music tracks of all kinds of genres and moods.

The Search engine is powerful and straightforward.
The Search engine is powerful and straightforward.

The Free Music Archive is an excellent source of music, both just for listening, or that you can use and remix in your own work. It is also probably one of the best and most usable free music sites I have tried. Apart from having a very efficient search engine, the site has all tracks (nearly 80,000) classified by genre into 15 clear cut categories.

Every track has a clear, no-nonsense, no bullshit download link next to it, in the shape of an arrow pointing downward. Clicking on the + symbol will add the track to an online play list you can listen to while on the site. When visiting an artist’s page, you will get the whole list of all their tracks divided into albums. Click on a track itself brings up its information, such as the artist, album, date it was uploaded, stars users have awarded it, the number of listens, genre and, very importantly, the license it is distributed under.

You can tip the artists directly in their track pages.
You can tip the artists directly in their track pages.

Visit the charts page and you can see this week’s, this month’s or all the tracks ever uploaded and sort them by artist, number of downloads or listens, and filter them by genre. You can also hear tracks right there, in the list. On the search page you have even more options. You can filter by license, for example, removing tracks you are not allowed to use commercially, or selecting tracks with a certain BPM (beats per minute) or mood.

Once you have found what you are looking for, click on the track title to visit its page. If you really like the artist’s music, you can tip them directly by clicking on the button with a dollar sign at the top of the page. You can also donate to the site itself and contribute to keeping the Free Music Archive alive.

Do you compose and record music and put it on the Internet for everybody to enjoy for free? Join Pling and tell us about your experience. Let us help you fund your work and build up your fanbase.