It’s been a while. I’m currently writing my master’s thesis and don’t have much time to look for new music or even concentrate on making it.
But yesterday I skimmed through my feeds of netlabel releases and found something very cool. Emerald Park. The guys are from Malmö, Sweden. The album “For Tomorrow” was originally released by afmusic in 2008 as free download and on CD. The CD seems to be only available in Sweden and Germany. But it’s definitely worth the 4,99 EUR at Amazon.de!
About a year ago the album was re-published by the netlabel 23 SECONDS under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license, meaning that you can—among other things—download and share it for free. The 2010 Edition includes two bonus tracks making it a total of 14 wonderful songs.
Only six weeks ago Emerald Park released a new single on afmusic. I really like it too. Sadly it’s not free, but you can have a listen to it on the band’s MySpace page. Links for buying can be found on the here.
I’m currently listening to n0theen. It’s a netaudio stream, meaning that it’s like radio over the internet but without moderation. Just one song after another.
They say that they are only playing “opensource audio”. I’m not sure if it’s the correct term, because there is only very few open-source audio on the web. Open-source in the sense, that you can actually get the sources of the song, like stems, samples or project files. I guess what they mean is music published by netlabels which you can normally get as free downloads.
There is music from lots of genres. Most of the songs are instrumental and kind of electronic: Minimal, IDM, etc., but there’s also Rock. It’s great for just playing in the background while you’re doing other stuff. Like me writing this post.
On the website you can find a playlist with the last 20 tracks which were played. In case you liked a song really much, go to the website, look it up and search for it on the internet. Chances are that you’ll find a free and perfectly legal download.
I haven’t heard them playing any annoying music so far, so maybe you’d like to give it a try.
Evgeny Grinko is a Russian musician who plays drums for several Moskau-based bands. In autumn 2009 he released his “Cinematic Melodies EP” which can be downloaded from freemusicarchive.org, well, for free of course.
On the 1st of January his “Winter Sunshine EP” was released, which contains five piano pieces. It is also available from freemusicarchive.org.
This is the new song “i don’t care” by “i am poet.“. 19-year-old musician Maximilian Hohenstatt released his self produced EP “phonological.” earlier this year under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. He describes himself as an “electronic, melancholic singer/songwriter”.
Trent Reznor, the front man and leader behind the Nine Inch Nails, started a new project called “How To Destroy Angels” together with his wife Mariqueen Maandig. The third man is Atticus Ross, who was credited as a producer and programmer for the last four NIN albums.
How To Destroy Angels released a self-titled 6-track EP in June 2010. Like the last two NIN albums it was released under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded from the website.
The music style is not too different from what Nine Inch Nails were doing the last years. If you like them you’ll probably like HTDA.
Besides the free 320 kbps MP3 version, you can choose to buy a lossless (FLAC/ALAC) version vor $2.00 USD. Included is the music video for “The Space In Between” in 1080p and 480p video quality.
U.S.-based 24 year old Professor Kliq produces music somewhere between Readiohead, Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy. He is currently studying music at the Columbia College in Chicago and describes his style as something between Big-Beat, Ambient and Trip-Hop. All his music is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.
You can pre-listen and download all his music from his website.
Listen to my favorite track “Ode To Charles” from the album “Guns Blazin'”:
[audio:https://www.professorkliq.com/music/guns/10.mp3|title=Ode To Charles|artist=Professor Kliq]
Here’s another cool band releasing their music under Creative Commons licenses.
The Kyoto Connection is based in Argentina and released their sixth album “No Headphones Required” in July 2010. It contains eleven songs in 80s style synthpop. Each of their albums is available under CC-BY-NC-ND from the Internet Archive which hosts a lot of CC licensed music. The album is pretty awesome. You should check it out. I really can’t stop listening to it.
Here are my two favorite tracks:
The Kyoto Connection – Glorious Love Song
[audio:https://www.archive.org/download/TheKyotoConnection-noHeadphonesRequired/08GloriousLoveSong.mp3|title=Glorious Love Song|artist=The Kyoto Connection]
The Kyoto Connection – H.E.A.T.
[audio:https://www.archive.org/download/TheKyotoConnection-noHeadphonesRequired/05H.e.a.t.mp3|title=H.E.A.T.|artist=The Kyoto Connection]
All albums can be downloaded from the band’s website.
In search of Creative Commons music on the internet I came across rec72 which is a netlabel focusing on electronic music and visuals to be spread on the internet and being downloadable for free.
