The Free Album Master List

[Mike McC]

Everybody knows them. Everyone's listened to them. We might as well share them! Sometimes some musicians and artists are hit by a spur of great generosity and release thier music, in convenient album format, in awesome DRM-free and financially free formats! That's right, free music to shove in your ears and jam to, completely legal, completely guilt-free. And quite a bit of it is pretty jamming. So, come out, and share your finds, share what some of your favorite artists are releasing, and give everyone new aural experiences!

I'm going to break it up into two categories: Artists who independently release albums and EPs for free, and netlabels whose catalogs are mostly/entirely free. Here's some guidelines to follow:

• Try to include a short description of the genre or type of music that you might expect to find, if at all possible.
• No pirated music, only music released by the artists for free.
• Provide links to it, as proof that it really exists.
• Torrents are allowed, so long as they are put out by the artists themselves, as a means of distributing their music (bandwidth CAN be expensive, after all). If an actual webpage exists for it, though, link that instead.
• NO PIRATED MUSIC
• Don't be afraid to mention if an album on the list is no longer available (We'll miss you, Life's a Bitch and I'm Her Pimp ;_; ).

I will, of course, update the OP to reflect new additions you guys post.

-=/ Free Albums \=-

-= A =-

• Add - Good stuff, your basic indie/rock fare.
• Audiobytes for Autobots - They have graciously released thier album, 2.0, for free.

-= B =-

• Blues Traveler - They released an EP called Decisions of the Sky: A Traveler's Tale of Sun & Storm for free in 2000. It is part of what was supposed to be a full studio concept album, but it fell through when the band went through a series of problems and tragedies.
• Bomb the Music Industry - A Band dedicated to bringing you free music, all four of their albums are free. Expect Punk with some Ska flavoring here. Also expect a new album in late January.

-= D =-

• Doctor Octoroc - Has released the delightful 8-Bit Jesus, a fun little Christmas album where classic Christmas tunes are done in the style of chiptunes from NES classics.

-= G =-

• Girl Talk - Girl Talk has released his newest album, Feed the Animals under a Pay-What-You-Want scheme, which includes $0 if you a truly cheap bastard (which you probably are, coming here).
• The Grammar Club - If it was possible to have a Nerdcore Hiphop supergroup, The Grammar Club is it. Expect some quirky geeky Rock/Hip-Hop tunes coming your way with their album, Bremelanotide.
• Grape Digging Sharon Fruits - Another band that decided to throw off the shackles of profit and donate all of thier albums to the masses for free. You'll get some experimental power pop from this one, folks.

-= L =-

• Lemon Demon - Neil Cicierega's band, Lemon Demon, has a substatial selection of free mp3's for your dining pleasure. Good ol' straight forward Novelty Power Pop.

-= M =-

• Moon Mission Death Squad - self-described as "a lo-fi, indie rock mother fucker of a slacker bike rock band."

-= N =-

• Nine Inch Nails - Trent Reznor currently has two albums for legal download. Ghosts I, the first nine tracks of the instrumental album Ghosts I-IV, is available for download, with the full 36 track album availible for US$5. The other album is The Slip, which brings more of the Industrial Rock we love NIN for.
• nockFORCE - New internet video sensation! Also actually records and releasees music, for free! Browse over to the Music section to pick up some good, quirky, funny Hip-hop, and stick around and watch the videos they put up (updated weekly).

-= R =-

• Shael Riley - Perhaps best known for singing about his groin set to music from The Legend of Zelda, Shael Riley has released a full album of material called Toybox. Enjoy some nice silly poppy tunes by giving it a download.

-= Y =-

• YTCracker - One of the better known Nerdcore artists, he has a few free albums up, be it Nerdrap Entertainment System, or the two Spamtec albums, there's a bit to be listened to. Nerdcore Rap for this one.

-=/ Netlabels \=-

• 20kbps Rec. - A netlabel with an interesting hook: All of it's releases are music files encoded at 20kbps, creating a nice, warm, scratchy sound/feel. While not restricted to any particular genre, you'll most often find things under the big umbrella of electronic. Over 280 album/EP releases.
• 8-bit Peoples - If you don't already know of this fine site, then allow me to fill you in: everything is chiptunes. That's right. Everything uses chiptunes as a core, and in most cases, sole element. Needless to say, it's all pretty awesome stuff.

If a mod thinks this'd make a good sticky, by all means.

EDIT 12/16/08 10:14 PM CST - Added Auddiobytes for Autobots and Girl Talk. Find that it is rather hard to make quirky write-ups for stuff I've yet to listen to.
EDIT 01/21/09 01:46 AM CST - Added Add and Moon Mission Death Squad.
EDIT 01/22/09 12:23 AM CST - Added Doctor Octoroc's 8-Bit Jesus