It all started with Lars Ulrich. Before he sued Napster back in 2000 and won, illegal downloading wasn't even illegal. No one really knew what it was. But after that case, hundreds of aggrieved musicians, record labels, and countries tried to stop people like me downloading Limp Bizkit's back catalog for free. Just yesterday Isohunt, a pirate website that didn't actually host any MP3s itself but just had a directory for websites where you could download them, was ordered to pay about $50 million to a music-industry group called "Music Canada." The UK government is planning on putting the maximum sentence for online piracy up to ten years inside for the most serious offenses, according the Office of Intellectual Property.

Of course, when Napster launched, places like Virgin Megastores and Tower Records were charging in excess of $20 for an album and often more for a film or box set. The entertainment industry generally treated the public with disregard, and people felt ripped off. So there was a fair amount of delight in sticking it to them and downloading terabytes worth of free songs. If you need a comparison for this day and age, imagine if someone built another railway line right next to every Amtrak train track and then ran the service for nothing, and then Amtrak came out and said, "Yes we know the free track is there, but the moral thing to do is support us."


Top Free Music Downloading Sites 2012


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Eventually the music industry worked out that it couldn't just bash people with the proverbial stick, and it created the carrot of way cheaper legal downloading and streaming services, while also going around closing down the websites that had almost destroyed its business.

That tactic pretty much worked, and today I, like everyone else, am more than happy to wrestle with the extensive catalogs of YouTube and Spotify rather than endangering my computer with dodgy software. But I do wonder what happened to those old pirate websites, whether they still exist in some kind of internet graveyard or whether they have all been expunged.

This is what you get when you get on to the Napster website these days: some generic looking music-streaming site in the guise of Apple Music or Spotify. Apparently after getting chinned by years of high-profile lawsuits, Napster decided to shut down its original pirate incarnation. But after getting bought out by US electronic retailers Best Buy, and later merging with Rhapsody, it has since rebranded itself as a paid for streaming service (a.k.a. sold out to the fucking system, man). I won't be finding a free copy of a classic folk ballad here.

I clicked on some of the sexier sounding ones like "fastpiratebay.co.uk" and the more official sounding "thepiratebay.uk.net" but every time was met with a "site can't be reached" page. Turns out the Swedish site, after numerous raids on its offices, lawsuits, and arrests, has been blocked in a number of countries and also banned from being mentioned on social media sites like Facebook. I mean, I could easily circumvent these blocks using TOR or any other kind of dark-web browser, but dammit, I'm not Jonny Lee Miller in Hackers. I'm just in need of a quick fix of Garfunkel balm to ease my troubled mind, and so I moved on.

When I was growing up, the main bad boy of the downloading game was always Limewire. Sure, it had more viruses than you could shake a stick at and was horribly slow, but it was always user-friendly. So it was a massive shame when I tried to click on www.limewire.com only to be met with another "site can't be found" page. I started having a look at various downloadable options and almost went for the one below, but then thought about how many viruses used to fuck up my computers back in the day and had a little pause.

Finally then, to Soulseek, trusty old Soulseek. Soulseek was the worst-looking, least user-friendly of the big P2P networks. It was the illegal downloading site your older brother used. Perhaps for that reason people didn't seem that bothered about knocking it off the internet and whaddayaknow, it's still operational.

Yes! Finally, after a whole three hours or so of being rejected by various old pirate websites, I was let back in by the sweet and loving embrace of Soulseek. I was now free to enjoy the tender and heartbreaking sounds of the "Sound of Silence" at my leisure, just like I used to do with Limp Bizkit all those years ago.

So what do we know now? First, let me unreservedly apologize to Simon and Garfunkel. I have deleted the song off my computer and am now listening to it for free on YouTube instead, for which I'm sure you will receive 0.0003 cents. Second, the music industry has done a great job of making illegal downloading so hard and annoying and made streaming so easy that it doesn't even need to finish shutting down the remaining sites because who wants to spend three hours going through each one seeing which works. And third, this remains the greatest song ever written:

The YouTube Audio Library is where you'll find lots of aesthetic music you've mostly heard in vlogs. It's mainly aimed at people who need royalty-free music for YouTube videos. With a YouTube account, you can access the library via YouTube Studio and download as many songs as you wish.

According to its terms and conditions, you can use the tracks in any YouTube video you create, including monetized ones. Besides free music tracks, the YouTube Audio Library also includes sound effects.

The Free Music Archive has been around for many years but remains as popular as ever. Most of the free song downloads are from lesser-known artists, but occasionally, you will see a famous name pop up. Regardless, it's a great site that's similar to apps that help you discover new music.

As a free user, you have access to more than 80 copyright-safe tracks. The site is particularly suitable if you're looking for music for your social media videos. Just make sure you provide the attribution correctly.

Musopen has recordings from some of the most famous musicians of all time. You'll find everything from Bach and Beethoven to Tchaikovsky and Holst. You can search by composer, instrument, period, and mood to locate the content you want.

The best part of the site is the Live Music Archive. It was built in partnership with etree.org and features shows and concerts from a range of leading artists. All the bands in the collection are "trade-friendly," meaning they've granted fans the right to freely trade some of their music for non-commercial means.

If you're an up-and-coming band, ReverbNation is a great site to sell music online. Since the site is primarily aimed at new bands, you won't find tracks from the current chart-toppers. Don't let that put you off, though.

ReverbNation has launched the careers of many top bands, including the Alabama Shakes and Imagine Dragons. That means you can be the coolest kid at school by downloading music from tomorrow's hippest artists before they become famous.

To download an artist's music, you need to create an account on the site first, head to the artist's profile, and tap the Become A Fan button. The Download icon will then appear next to the selected songs available for users to download.

Owned by Paramount Global, Last.fm is a large music website that tracks your music and recommends new songs accordingly. The site also offers a list of free music downloads. Just tap the Download icon next to the track to save it.

Audio Library is a comprehensive website to download free music from, and you can use all the tracks you find on the website in various projects. You can also download these songs for free if you only want to listen to them privately. If you use the songs elsewhere, you just need to credit the author (you'll see a prompt to do this when you download a song).

Audio Library covers music across several genres, including cinematic, dance, hip-hop, and more. You can also browse based on mood and artists. The website is very user-friendly, and you can choose to either download from the artist's website or direct from Audio Library instead.

The sites above mostly specialize in helping you download music from unknown and upcoming artists rather than current stars. It's largely inevitable, as the biggest names in music generally don't distribute music for free. If a site offers a free download of Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift's latest album, it's probably illegal.

If you want to legally download the latest mainstream singles, you still need to use paid services like Spotify. But if your goal is to discover gems by independent artists or get free songs for your YouTube videos, these free music sites will meet your needs well.

Finding free music has been a thorn in the side of creators since the early days of YouTube. There are loads of different music libraries and resources for content creators out there, each one offering free tracks that are safe to use across YouTube and social media.

One of the OG royalty-free music sites! Bensound is the work of French musician Benjamin Tissot, who has spent the last decade creating tracks to share with the creator community through his basic music website.

Lots of artists get started on Soundcloud, but they could later be signed up by a label or register their music with Content ID at some point in the future. If this happens, you could end up receiving copyright claims on any of your videos that use their music.

Cons: NCS often only uploads one track per YouTube video, so browsing their music can be time consuming as you have to load each track one-by-one - not to mention having to sit through YouTube ads!

In a nutshell, copyright-free music is music that is not protected by copyright. But the term is more widely used in the creator space to describe tracks that can be used without the threat of copyright issues on YouTube.

So there you have it, our top nine free music websites for YouTube and creators. If you're a creator on the hunt for the very best background music for videos that you can download for free, start your search with Uppbeat. It's got the best selection of free music for YouTube videos, with great tracks guaranteed to give your next project a lift. 0852c4b9a8

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