AT TIPPERARY INSTITUTE, we use resources from the Podsafe Music Network because several of our students use the network to promote their own music. However, there are many other podsafe music resources online. Here are some we have seen in the OurMedia resource listing compiled by Dave Holmes. This is a totally excellent listing that we will annotate as part of a Media Studies course in October.
12Rec uses Creative Commons licensed free music. They have an interesting selection of bands in a variety of musical styles.
15 Megs of Fame is a community where artists and bands post mp3 files of their music. Listeners can leave comments and rate the music which is free to share under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License.
AGNULA Libre Music is a database of music works which have been put by their authors under a license which allows free redistribution and usage. Artists may upload songs for free hosting in the database. Libre Music supports open content distribution.
Association of Music Podcasting (AMP) provides support for music podcasters wishing to deliver permission-based, legal music. Members have access to music that musicians have submitted to the AMP library for inclusion in individual podcasts. There's a good selection of member podcasts to choose from.
AudioFeeds.org indexes independent music that is freely and legally available online. Podcast feeds are shared using a Creative Commons - Music Sharing License which means you can download, copy, share, trade, distribute, and publicly perform (e.g. webcast) any of the availabe files. The service is designed help promote the use of XML Audio Feeds as a means of distribution in the Independent Music scene. All submitted content is strictly moderated and podsafe.
Big Contact offers tools to help you Find, Listen, Share, and Create Podcasts, MP3 Blogs, and Online Radio. Users can also add a streaming media player to their existing sites. The community is based around sharing music with Creative Commons licenses.
Big Sonic Recordings artists offer their music for free under Creative Commons licenses. Every artist has an online store full of merchandise that you can purchase if you wish to support them.
Black Sweater White Cat is an over-the-air radio show heard on WBCR-LP, 97.7 FM in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The show is all about copyleft music from across the internet and across the world. Music for the people, by the people, distributed by the people. This link searches for playlists hosted at the Internet Archive.
Camomille is a free music net label created by Genshi Media to promote the distribution of high quality, professional music through the use of the internet. Features idm electronics mixed with new age and emotional hip-hop and states a CC license in its terms.
CC:365 - Creative Commons Three Sixty Five a project/podcast created by Grant Robinson that highlights a CC licensed song every single day of the year.
CC Mixter is a community music sharing site featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
Comatronic is a netlabel focused on distributing quality electronic music for free under a creative commons license.
Comfort Stand is a netlabel and music community that allows sharing of tracks under Creative Commons Licenses.
Common Content is an open catalog of Creative Commons licensed content. The site has topic categories and a search engine for finding content.
CommonTunes is a community directory for freely available music. Musicians and bands can add links to their music to add it to the community. They can also upload music files for distribution via bittorrent. There's a site search engine and content can also be browsed using tags.
Copacetix Creative Commons Licensed Music provides original short pieces of music that that are suitable for use in podcasts. The pieces are created in various themed styles and distributed in MP3 format, royalty free.
Creative Collective is an artist's collective site, where you can interact with music in any way you want. Feel free to share your work, built upon other peoples work, express your opinions, make suggestions, and upload/download files according to a Creative Commons Licence.
Creative Commons Audio features artists, tools, netlabels, and works supporting CC music.
del.icio.us/tag/podsafe public shared bookmarks and RSS feed available at http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/podsafe
Dying Giraffe Recordings is a label releasing music under a Creative Commons license. Artists keep the rights to their music and get 50% of the profits from selling CDs. See the FAQ for details and philosophy.
ElectroBel is a Belgian underground electronic music community with thousands of copyleft songs released under a Creative Commons license. All works can be freely distributed and used for all non-commercial purposes.
Electromancer Podcast Arena showcases various styles of electronic music tracks which may be used in Podcasts under the terms set out in the Electromancer Podcast Terms & Conditions.
Epsilonlab is a Montreal-based audio-visual label dedicated to promotion of innovative electronic music and digital art. Releases include CDs, DVDs and a constantly-evolving repertoire of downloadable audio-visual files. Content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Experimedia is a net-label and online artists community with a diverse spectrum of quality electronic music. All works are are licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Fading Ways is a Canada & UK indie-label that distributes new releases and label samplers via a Creative Commons license. The Mission Statement makes good reading on the reasons for their copyleft releases.
Free Sample Zone is a netlabel published by Chenard Walcker with many albums worth of his material. His compositions are created using cut and paste sampling techniques and released under a CC licence. All the releases are free with complete artwork and liner notes.
FurtherNet is a peer-to-peer Network and community that shareslegal live music and video only.
GarageBand is afree mp3 and podcast host with thousands of indie music bands to discover. See this Google search, tip via Pierre Gorissen.
Gnomoradio is a freemusic player and peer to peer file sharing system that currently runs on GNU/Linux and other UNIX-compatible systems. Other platforms are in the pipeline. Artists can promote and share their music freely on the network. There are links to artists websites with podsafe music at the bottom of the page.
Hippocamp is a netlabel and community based in Manchester, UK. Music can be downloaded in standard mp3 format with no drm using a Creative Commons licence.
Icompetech has a growing collection of royalty-free music compositions in MP3 format. There are categories for Piano - Orchestral - Bach - Beethoven - Space Opera - Acid Jazz - Disco - Latin - Polka - Rap/RnB - Reggae - Rock/Pop - Experimental - Holiday/Christmas - Demo/Other. All music is available under a CC license and may be used for commercial and non-commercial projects.
Indy is a free Windows application for discovering and promoting new independent music. Artists and fans can submit details of websites and tracks for inclusion to the Indy database. On launching, Indy downloads new media which you give a star rating as it plays. As you rate each song it uses collaborative filtering to track your musical tastes relative to other Indy users. This feedback is used to deliver music more closely matched to what you like.
IndieFeed Podcasts provides single-song podcasts by independent artists in genres ranging from hip-hop to blues. Artists are encouraged to use CC licenses.
iRATEradio is a collaborative filtering system for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X that downloads and plays music. As you rate music it automatically finds more free music that you'll like by finding people with similar music tastes.
Jamendo is a new model for music artists to promote, publish, and be financially rewarded for their works. Artists distribute their music under the Creative Commons licensing agreements. The public can freely download, listen, copy and redistribute any music from Jamendo in accordance to the licensing agreement chosen by the artists.
Khavi Collective releases electronic music in OGG format. See the links page for a nice collection of electronic music artists, netlabels and websites.
Knobtweakers is an all-legal mp3 blog aimed at the electronic music audience focusing on club tracks, experimental, or moody electronica, techno, house, electro pop, drum and bass, etc.
Legal Torrents is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved files, from electronic/indie music to movies and books, available via BitTorrent. This is a good source of netlabel compilations especially electronic/indie music.
Loca Records is releasing music under a CC license that enables music writers to develop music collaboratively and equitably and then release it into the commons.
Machine Has No Agenda features bands with music made available under this Creative Commons license and encoded in the open-source Ogg Vorbis format. Each band has a podcast feed.
Magnatune considers podcasting of their music to fall within their Creative Commons license. Select an album, select the “license” link and then go to “Non-commercial use" to download 128kbps MP3s.
Microtonal Podcasts makes available music by contemporary composers from around the world, with a focus on Microtonalists.
Musique-libre.org is a portal and community for free music downloads and artist information. All music is published by community members using various copyleft licenses which means the tracks can be downloaded and shared legally. Music podcasters will find the combination of clear licensing information and music streaming very useful when looking for show material. Free membership offers a range of community features designed to facilitate music discovery, promotion and distribution.
MyVirtualBand.com is a collaborative music community committed to the idea of open source music. You can download "completed songs" (currently in the form of Podcasts on MVB Radio and on the Featured Songs page) and distribute, display, or perform them.
Netlabel Catalogue is a list, index, directory of music labels which offer you free downloads from their pages.
Netlabel Charts tracks and publishes a list of music releases on a monthly basis.
NINJAM AutoSong Archive of online jam sessions available to stream and download using Creative Commons licenses. Derivative works may be created from the lengthy improvisations making this a useful source of fresh musical ideas and content. The audio files are in MP3 format.
Oddio Overplay showcases a network of legal music sharing sites. Provides links to online music hosts with alternative musical styles and artists. The Blog features lots of good music.
Opsound Pool features a pool of sound files released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license(a copyleft license similar to those used in the free and open source software communities) -- a few works are placed in the public domain.
This means you are free (and encouraged) to download works, make copies, share them, include them in other works, remix and rearrange them, and even sell them.
The Attribution-ShareAlike license requires that you attribute the works to their original authors/musicians (attribution), and that any derivative works (anything you make using the sound files) be licensed under the same license (share alike).
Podnova is a podcast search engine with podsafe music categories for Alternative - Covers - Demo's - Funk - Garageband - Jazz - Mash Up's - Pop - Misc.
Podsafesound.com is an initiative by Fluox, a Dutch independent musician and podcaster. It's a blog with pointers to great music, put online by other independent artists or labels, for you to listen to and enjoy.
Podsafe Music Network is a comprehensive source for podsafe music. Founded in the summer of 2005, PMN brings a large group of podcasters together with a wide variety of all-podsafe music and the artists who produce it.
Pod Safe Audio provides a location where musicians can upload music under the Creative Commons license for use in Podcasts, Mashups, Shoutcasts, Webcasts and every other kind of 'casting' that exists on the 'net.
Polymorphic Music is a free netlabel interested in all types of music. The site has a Flash jukebox to listen to artists and you are free to distribute the original musical content as you wish.
Positron! Records is a Net label where artists have the option of releasing their works under a Creative Commons license.
Remix Reading is an artistic project based in Reading, UK. Its aim is to get artists (working with music, video, images and text) to come together and share their work, be inspired by each others' work, and ultimately to create "remixes". All material on the web site is released under a Creative Commons license.
So Healthy Music is a Cologne based label releasing music under CC licenses.
SoundClick CC License the music community website that features both signed and unsigned bands. This link takes you to the CC music genre that boasts over 200.000 CC licenses. All tracks can be streamed from the page with links to the artists webpage. You can search SoundClick for CC music using the following links: Google - Yahoo! or type site:soundclick.com into this Creative Commons Search Engine.
Technorati tag:podsafe music links come from blog posts and web-based bookmark services Delicious and Furl.
Thinner/Autoplate is a German net label distributing dub inspired electronic music in the form of mp3 files under a Creative Commons License.
uhort.no has a list of music that is cleared by the artists on uhort.no for use in Podcasts. The terms for use are that the Podcast mentions the artist and that the music was obtained at uhort.no. You also have to inform uhort.no ([email protected]) and the artist where to obtain the finished Podcast.
V-fib Recordings offers free CC-licensed compilations of underexposed music, from both the past and present.
Image of Steffen Coonan shot inside Studio Six by Debbie Ryan.
