Free Music Downloads And Streaming.

Music makes the world go round and free music..well, that will be heavenly. Music that is free to download without copyright infringements or illegal file sharing is great way to access good music, support the artists that contribute their music and at the same time, networking with like-minded music fans. Besides, it also provides an alternative to the music industry practices of forcing the customer to buy copy protected and overpriced music cds which are sometimes, rookit infested. The Web offers a treasure trove of free music and the following are popular free music download sites :

Jamendo.com
Jamendo is a music sharing platform where artists distribute their music under Creative Commons licenses and allows you to download, remix and share their music freely. It uses peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent or eMule to legally distribute albums and users can freely download music from all genres, write reviews and participate in community forum discussions. Other features like their music recommendation system, iRATE, will help you find music to suit your tastes and also provides information of live concerts by local artists in your area.

MP3.com
A CNET Networks Entertainment property, MP3.com is a slick, all-inclusive music site that offers unlimited access to free audio and video streams of new releases from major artists and thousands of free mp3 music downloads from emerging independent artists. It's community of music fans fuels the site with user-generated content ranging from independent and major-label artist with songs, videos, photos and news. The site also offers artist information like bios, live sessions, exclusive interviews and weekly podcasts.

BetterPropaganda.com
Dedicated to new and independent music, the site is loaded with thousands of free, specially selected and fully legal MP3 music downloads. Offering music news and reviews, the site also hosts free previews of up-and-coming bands like Interpol, Modest Mouse and Guided by Voices, with each band getting its own page with links to reviews, articles and hosted MP3s.

Etree.org
Focusing on live concert recordings, etree.org is an award-winning leader in lossless digital audio distribution on the Internet and provides live concert recordings in a losslessly-compressed and downloadable format. All of the music on etree.org is free and 100% legal to download, trade and burn. Etree promotes and shares these shows through FTP and BitTorrent which helps you to download faster.

Garageband.com
Garageband features free and downloadable music by unsigned and independent artists and allows users to contact the bands, meet other music lovers, create your own podcast and most importantly, hear works by new artists before they become famous.

Magnatune.com
While not offering free music downloads, with only music streaming without charge, this site deserves a mention because of it's unique pricing system. Users are allow to stream music in MP3 format (no DRM) without any charge before choosing whether to download it or not. Buyers choose their own price, from US $5 to $8 per album, and may download music they have purchased in WAV, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC encoding formats. Music files sold by Magnatune do not use any form of Digital Rights Management, which prevent customers from making copies of music files they have purchased but Magnatune actually encourages buyers to share up to three copies with friends.

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Albums For Only $7.99!

Free Movies And Videos.

Notwithstanding lawsuits over copyrights infringements and illegal file sharing, there are still several legal repositories that let you download and watch movies that are completely free. Better still, some of these free movies and videos sites incorporates a networking element in their services, thus enhancing the movie experience. The following are sites where you can download and watch free and perfectly legal movies :

LycosCinema.com
Lycos Cinema tag line - "Watch, Chat and Connect" is a free, advertising-supported service that lets multiple people watch the same video simultaneously and chat about it in real time. Through it's "Screening Room", you can invite your friends by e-mail, to watch a particular video, with you setting the date and time and controlling the functions of pause, fast-forward or rewind. Coupled with it's large collection of genres from action, adventure, animation to indie films, it's just like getting together with your friends to watch a DVD except you're doing it online. To use Lycos Cinema, you need Windows or Mac OS, IE6/IE7 or Mozilla FireFox 2.x, and Adobe Flash player version 8.

AtomFilms.com
An online video pioneer, AtomFilms has evolved into a leading brand for independent entertainment.The free registration allows you access to one of the largest collections of short films on the Web with original comedy, drama, action, and music videos. The award-winning site is a daily source of original web shows, animation, and short films with hit viral comedies like Possum Death Spree to Oscar winning classics like Creature Comforts. Besides offering high resolution DVD quality videos, AtomFilms also allows users to create and share videos with friends through the "My Channel" function. In addtion, since May 07, users can upload and share their own videos through AtomUploads. The system requirements are Windows 2000/XP/Vista or Mac OSX+, Adobe Flash Player 8.0+ and IE 6, FireFox 1.5 or Safari 1.3 browsers.

MyDigitalShare.com
With over 130,000 members, MyDigitalShare allows free streaming of a large selection of new movies, even the latest ones and TV shows like Simpsons, LOST and Prison Break. Membership is free and it's impressive collection of up-to-date new movies and TV shows makes it an attractive site for free movies. To use MyDigitalShare, you will need Windows or Mac OS, Adobe Flash Player 8 and either IE 6 or FireFox 1.5.

UndergroundFilms.org
For fans of indie films, Undergroundfilms serves to showcase the works of indie filmmakers and has an extensive collection of videos by independent filmmakers. It is noted for the high quality of it's collection and making hard-to-find works available in the Web.

Related Post : Free Media Players

Albums For Only $7.99!

Free Media Players.

Other than Windows Media Player, there are many other free multi-format media players which are packed with nifty features and compatible with many commonly used Operating Systems. The following are the more popular free Media Players in recent years :

VLC Media Player
By VideoLan, VLC media player is a free and highly portable multimedia player, encoder and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats. It is one of the most platform-independent players available, with versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, Windows CE, Linux, and Solaris, and is widely used with almost 30 million downloads. VLC is popular for its ability to play the video content of incomplete or damaged video downloads before the files have been fully downloaded as it is a packet-based player.

Quintessential Player
Quintessential Player is a free, multi-format Media player developed by Paul Quinn in 1997 and plays virtually any kind of audio or video media file. It supports video playback using external codecs, MP3, Ogg, WAV, and CD playback. A wide range of plug-ins and skins are also available which allows for the customization of the player interface.

RealPlayer
A cross-platform media player by RealNetworks, RealPlayer plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats. It is also packed with additional features like a media browser based on Internet Explorer which allows web browsing while playing media, theater mode video playback, looping of multiple songs and shuffle play.

Winamp 5
Winamp 5 offers rich features including music ripping, CD burning, MP3 encoding and supports many formats like MIDI, MOD, MP1, MP2, MP3, AAC, M4A, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, WMA and Chiptunes. It is also an extendable and portable media player and offers device plug-ins for: Apple ipod, Creative NOMAD Jukebox and Microsoft PlaysForSure. It also allows access to many types of streaming media like Internet radio and television, AOL video and SHOUTcast, a podcast directory.

QuickTime
Developed by Apple, QuickTime is a multimedia framework capable of handling various formats of digital video, media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and several types of interactive panoramic images. Available for Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, it provides essential support for software packages including iTunes, QuickTime Player (which can also serve as a helper application for web browsers to play media files that might otherwise fail to open) and Safari.

iTunes
iTunes is a digital media player application by Apple for playing and organizing digital music and video files on your computer. The program is also an interface to manage the contents on Apple's popular iPod digital media players as well as the recently introduced iPhone. In addition, iTunes can connect to the iTunes Store in order to download purchased digital music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audiobooks, various podcasts, and feature length films. iTunes is available as a free download for Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000 from Apple's website. It's interface makes it a joy to use even if you never buy a 99-cent song.

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Free Web-Based E-Mail Services.

Due to it's ability to allow users to access their mails from any Internet-connected computer, web-based e-mail or Webmail are increasingly preferred over application-based email. Besides the accessibility, most of the popular e-mail services are free to use. The following is a roundup of free web-based e-mail services :

Yahoo!Mail
Yahoo!Mail is currently the largest and most popular Internet e-mail provider, serving millions of users. Yahoo!Mail provides free, customizable email including PhotoMail, an online picture sharing feature, spam protection, filtering, multiple email account management and offers limitless storage space for photos, attachments and messages. It also provides password protection and automatic scanning of incoming mails with Norton Anti-Virus.

Gmail
Gmail is a free web-based email and POP3 e-mail service provided by Google and offers more than 2,880 megabytes of free storage with a search-oriented interface and a unique 'conversation view'. With lots of nifty features like spam protection, automatic mail forwarding, integrated chat and mobile phone access, Gmail also supports 40 languages.

Windows Live Hotmail
Part of Microsoft, Windows Live Hotmail is a popular free webmail service and has 2 GB of storage, patented security measures, Ajax technology, and integration with Windows Live Messenger, Spaces, Calendar and Contacts. It is the Net's second largest free web-based e-mail provider with over 260 million users worldwide.

AIM Mail
AIM Mail is a free web-based email service provided by AOL and has unlimited storage, 16MB attachments, spam protection and virus protection. A new feature, AIM Panel, was introduced in Jul 2007 that featured a Buddy List with indicators to show the presence of buddies online.

Lycos Mail
A free e-mail account offers 3 GB of storage with no limit on the file sizes that you can send. Features include advanced spam filtering, virus checking and domain blocking.

Mail.com
Provided by Outblaze, a Hong Kong application service provider, Mail.com offers free and premium e-mail accounts and allows users to choose any email address from a choice of multiple domain names such as email.com, post.com, whatever.com and many others. The free version offers 100MB of space.

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Tips For Downloading Freebies - When "Free" Isn't Really Free.

As this blog attempts to find and collate all the free software, applications and web services in the Web, it is worth reminding that caution should be always be taken when downloading any freeware from the Web. Some so-called "free stuff" isn't really free but comes with trojans, spyware and viruses coming along for the ride into your PC.

While every effort have been made to ensure that the freeware mentioned in this blog are spyware & viruses free, including testing on my PC before endorsing the product, it is highly recommended that like-minded "freebies" follow these guidelines when downloading free stuff :

1. DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD.
Carry out a search for the product and vendor to determine it's popularity before you download or install a free application. Pay close attention to users reviews of the product. If there are hardly any mention other than at the publisher's own site, the program might not be widely used and that should be a major consideration. If the site makes you uncomfortable, skip the download if you think it's questionable.

Alias - Complete 1st Season

2. GET AN OPINION ABOUT THE PRODUCT.
Consult editorial or user ratings at reputable sites like PcWorld.com and look at the number of downloads to determine whether the product has negative reports and it's popularity with users. There is no necessity to take risks as there are plenty of alternatives.

3. LOOK OUT FOR TELL-TALE SIGNS IN GENERICALLY NAMED SITES OR PRODUCTS.
Scammers frequently choose product names or domains that look and sound similar to those of reputable applications and sites to confuse downloaders. Make sure you are getting the product you want and most importantly, downloading it at reputable sites like PcWorld.com or SourceForge.net.

4. CONSIDER THE RETURNS VERSUS REGISTRATION.
Registering is sometimes required for a piece of freeware but consider carefully the returns for the freebie versus registration. You could get spammed and tele-marketed to death in return for a lousy piece of software. Always read the small print in the "Terms & Conditions" to ascertain your obligations before you download.

5. REPUTABLE SITES FOR FREEWARE.
The following are some of the reputable and safe sites for freeware:

*PcWorld.com
*SouceForge.net
*MajorGeeks.com
*NoNags.com
*Download.com
*Freebyte.com

*Related Posts :
- The Top 10 Freebies Posts for 2007.
-Great articles about freebies in the Web.

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