12 places to download free, legal MP3s

Believe it or not, you can download free music from the internet without breaking the law. While a vast preponderance of music download sites are illegal, there are plenty that offer free, legal MP3s. In most cases, free MP3s are limited to indie and small-time bands, but occasionally — if you know where to look — you can score some free music from big-name artists, too.


Again, to put your mind at ease: The MP3s that you can download from these sites are completely free and legal. You can play them on your computer or transfer them to your iPod or smartphone. You can even send downloaded MP3s to your friends via email or instant messenger, and they'll still work just fine.


1. Stereogum


One of the oldest (and best) sources of indie MP3s is Stereogum. Download the latest freebies, the most popular tracks, or simply listen to the Gum Mix and download the songs you like.


2. iLike



iLike is both a social network and a music recommendation service. iLike learns your taste in music, factors in whatever your friends are listening to, and then recommends what you should listen to next. It offers plenty of free MP3 downloads — but there's no way to simply pull up a list of all the free music and start downloading. Instead, you'll have to wait for iLike to recommend a song that just happens to be a free download.


3. The Internet Archive


While the term "MP3" is often synonymous with "music," there are a lot of audiobook MP3s on the web, too. The Internet Archive has a vast collection of every kind of music, but it also has over 1,200 spoken word audiobooks for your delectation.



4. SXSW Music


The annual South by Southwest music conference is one of the largest music festivals in the United States. Every year, SXSW releases free-to-download MP3s for the artists that are featured at the festival — and in 2011, more than 1,100 free MP3s were made available to download. You can download every SXSW Music MP3 from 2005 through 2010 from the same site.

5. Epitonic


With a mission statement of "helping fans to discover the best in cutting edge music," Epitonic is one of the best places to find free, downloadable MP3s from new and upcoming artists. The site itself is a joy to surf around and use, too.


6, 7, and 8. Stereokiller, Fat Wreck Chords, and Sub Pop


Good punk music is hard to find, but between Stereokiller, Fat Wreck Chords, and Sub Pop, you have a few thousand free MP3s from the latest and greatest punk bands to choose from.


9. Jamendo



If world music from places like Brazil, Russia, Italy, and Spain is more your kind of thing, check out Jamendo. It has hundreds of thousands of songs of every genre that you can either stream or download.


10. MP3.com


Since launching in 1996, MP3.com has always been one of the best sources of free music on the web. At the time of writing, you can download free songs by Maroon 5, Weezer, and The Smashing Pumpkins — but that's just a small taste of the thousands of artists with free downloads on MP3.com.


11. Spinner


For the last few years, Spinner has been giving away one free MP3 every day — which means there are now well over 1,000 free songs just waiting to be downloaded! Spinner has a good variety of music, but it's mostly indie and up-and-coming bands, rather than superstar A-listers.


12. Blentwell


Finally, one for the fans of "blended music": Blentwell has an excellent collection of DJ-mixed music, including thousands of house, techno, and electro mixes, and hundreds of other genres, including hip-hop, dubstep, funk, and more.