ReverbNation Pays Musicians To Release Free Music Downloads

ReverbNation announced today that 1000 of its 400,000 artist members will be able to participate in a new revenue generating Sponsored Songs program, reports Hypebot. The program will pay participating musicians $0.50 per free download. In essence, they will be paying musicians to release their music for free.

ReverbNation’s plan is to embed small advertisements within the digital cover art that is displayed every time a given song is played, and thus, spread ads virally, like the music itself, over file sharing platforms and social networks. Continue reading...

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Stream Wilco (The Album) For Free!

Wilco are streaming Wilco (The Album) for free at Wilcoworld. The album won’t be out on Nonesuch until June 30, but you can stream one huge track of Wilco’s newest release in low 128k or high 256k quality. Continue reading...

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Spotify Adds Another 120,000 Tracks

Spotify has added 11,280 albums and singles to their catalogue, to a total of 127,578 new songs available, after signing a deal with indie digital distributor Zebralution. For a full listing of the additions check out these Google Docs: sorted by artist and by label. According to the Spotify blog:

"Today’s update is most likely the biggest update we’ve had since we launched last year."

New releases include The Spinning Top by Graham Coxon, She’s In Control from Chromeo, and material from Bill Evans, Café Sputnik and Kutiman. I especially appreciated the addition of the classic Allotria Jazz Band and the Balkan/ska Amsterdam Klezmer Band. Read more...

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Top 5 Free Music Sites

Are you having trouble finding free legal music available on the Internet? To help you get the music you want, quickly and without having to jump through legal hoops, we’ve compiled our top five favorite online destinations for your free music needs.

Popular sites like Myspace, Last.fm and Pandora are lagging behind when it comes to innovation in navigating the thousands of bands available online. Our top five sites promise new ways of finding and sharing music, so check out the list below, and tell us what you think: Read more...

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Deerhoof Releases Free Studio Recordings

New, Improved, LIVE is a multimedia series launched by New, Improved Recording and TheBayBridged.com. Every month, they invite a popular indie band to their studio in Oakland, California, and record an exclusive live session. Then they release all recorded material online for free in high-quality mp3s, videos, photos, and interviews.

The first edition features Bay Area indie group Deerhoof, which recorded a cover of “Let’s Dance The Jet” from the 1967 film The Day the Fish Came Out, along with three other songs from past albums Milk Man, and Holdypaws. The studio is top notch, so the sound is of the highest quality. View footage...

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Hypetape Searches Blogs for Music, Streams For Free

The new music site Hypetape, takes the search and indexing capability of Hype Machine, and adds it to the playlist creation and interface of Muxtape. The result: an engine that searches through thousands blogs for songs and commentary of the artists you search for, lets you add the tracks to a playlist associated to a Google account, and stream them for free. Read more...

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Justice Remixes Lenny Kravitz, Free Download

After Justice was hired to remix U2’s Get On Your Boots, Lenny Kravitz has done exactly the same thing with the track Let Love Rule from his upcoming album of the same name.

The French duo is quickly becoming the go-to remixers for popular bands. Besides U2, they have, in the past, given the Justice treatment to other songs from pop artists like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. They take the original Kravitz song and speed it up, while adding their customary funk beat and bassline. Listen to the track and compare it to the original after the jump: Read more...

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Just Hear It Streams Legal Music For Free

The newest music search engine Just Hear It! searches the web for any song, and lets you stream audio or video for free. To top it off, the company pays for licenses from all the major performing-rights organizations, so there’s no reason to worry about recent copyright lawsuits.

Just Hear It turns up complete and sometimes surprising results. Less known covers, remixes, and live performances are culled from YouTube and the web, and there’s always the option to either view the video, or continue searching while you listen. In fact, the core search function seems to consistently find music on YouTube; most likely because parent company Google is so friendly with the recording industry. Continue reading...

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The Free Music Debate

The ongoing battle over music licensing and revenue sharing has been producing new ideas, business models and even some contradictory statistics. Free music seems to be on the rise, as major labels supported Google’s free music download service in China last week. But PRS for Music, which criticized Google for trying to pay artists unfairly, reported that UK musicians are doing better than ever, and earned $30 million more from licensing and tours in 2008 than the year before. Continue reading...

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