The Best Places to Get Free Mp3 Music Downloads

With the current economy and the latest price hikes for iTunes, everyone is looking for cheaper ways to get new music. For most people this means swapping CDs with friends or using a P2P client. However, there are limits to the number of CDs your friends have, and P2P clients have had legal issues in the past. Fortunately, there are many legal places on the web to get all the music you want for free.

Music Search Engines

If you have a specific song in mind, these search engines will quickly find what you are looking for.

• SkreemR – Simple interface and easy to use search.
• TunesDaily – Searches a large index, but it contains many fake files. You can preview the song before downloading to check if it is the song is correct.
• BeeMp3 – Good place to find popular songs.
• Mp3Realm – Similar to the others in the list, but it also allows you to browse music by genre.

Using Google

In addition to websites, Google can also find music, if you know the right search query. Use the following Google search to find a song.

-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "Song"

To customize the search, replace “Song” with the song title and “mp3” with the file type you want.

For more advanced queries, here are a few sites that make Google searches easier.

• Google Music Search – Uses the Google search API to customize the results.
• G2P – Uses some advanced search commands (Can also search by album name, and for ringtones)
• Musgle – Provides a simple search to Google.

Blogs

Music blogs are the best place to find the latest songs, and some songs that haven’t been released to the public. Blogs provide reviews for upcoming albums and and give away free mp3 files to preview the songs.

The best way to keeps track of most music blogs is to use The Hype Machine, which monitors hundreds of music blogs. A list of all the blogs it monitors can be found here.

Youtube

Most songs are already available on Youtube from artists, record companies, or music videos. You can convert the audio from the Youtube videos to mp3 with VidtoMp3. Just enter the URL of the Youtube video (Eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOZ6xFxJqg) and click the Download button.

Myspace

Sometimes new artists have not released any songs to the public yet, but they have their songs on their Myspace page. Use File2HD and enter the url of the Myspace page, select the Audio option and click the “Get Files” button. Sometimes it may work depending on your country, in which case use a proxy.

Music Archives

These sites have a large collection of music that is available to free download.

• Last.fm Free Music Downloads
• Amazon.com
• SXSW
• The Classical Archives
• GarageBand
• jamendo

File Sharing Sites
There are many popular file sharing sites that people use to send music. To find the right file, use the following tools.

Be careful when using these, as some files may contain viruses. Check the file type before you open the files.

• Rapidstack – Searches Rapidshare links in realtime.
• MegaDownload – Searches both Rapidshare and MegaUpload.
• FilesTube – File sharing site that allows you to search through all the files it contains.

Did we miss anything? If you use something else to get your music, tell us about it in the comments.