Not every song on SoundCloud and BandCamp can be downloaded for free. Oftentimes, new releases will have a limited number of free downloads available before you have to purchase the track. PureVolume offers many free downloads. When you select an album, click the Free MP3 link to download the songs. NoiseTrade is a music community where artists upload music for fans to download for free. All of the music is completely legal to download. Last. fm offers lots of free music from a variety of artists.

Many artists are starting to release singles and early tracks on sites such as these for free.

The largest site for directly downloading free mixtapes is DatPiff, which features mostly underground hip-hop and up-and-coming DJs. Other popular sites include That Mixtape, LiveMixtapes, and MonsterMixtapes.

These sites make a lot of their money from advertising, and will probably try to get you to sign up for advertising offers during the registration process. Always look for the link that says “no thanks” or something similar to skip these. (On DatPiff. com, it’s typically red text in the lower right corner. )

Some mixtape communities set a limit on daily downloads (which you can lift by paying money), but will offer other mixtapes for “free” (which means they don’t count against your limit). Browse these first to ensure that you can get as much new music as you want each day.

Do a web search for your favorite artists to find all the different social platforms that they have a presence on. This will ensure that you have the most comprehensive coverage of the artist.

The vast majority of these sites operate in a legal gray area. For truly legal, free music, look for sites that release music under the Creative Commons license, or host music in the public domain.

Don’t click any of the advertisements. These ads tend to be misleading and can lead to dangerous or intrusive software downloads. Very rarely do they lead to more free music.

Bitrate reflects the audio quality of the file. Generally speaking, mp3 files range from 60 to 320 Kbps, with higher numbers meaning higher quality. CD quality sound is 256 Kbps, radio quality is 192 Kbps. Lower bitrates will lead to smaller file sizes. This is useful for users that don’t have a lot of storage space on their computer or MP3 player, but want to have as much music as possible.

Some sites will link you to download services instead of downloading directly from the website.

Converting YouTube videos violates the site’s Terms of Service. Downloading too often may cause YouTube to ban your IP from accessing any further YouTube content.

This software runs torrent files and helps you manage your torrents. Torrent is a small, fast, and reliable free torrenting program. You can download it at the official website. While searching for torrents and downloading the torrent file are not illegal, standard copyright laws apply to any content that is transferred through torrents. This means that if you do not legally own a copy of the song you are downloading, that material is considered pirated.

Find a torrent. There are many sites that aggregate and list torrents for you to search, since torrent files by themselves aren’t illegal. When you get torrent results, check for user comments or star ratings. Go with the files that have positive comments and ratings – others may be misleading or dangerous.

Some private torrenting communities actually require that you maintain a certain ratio of downloading-to-seeding in order to remain a part of the site.

Sharing music through a forum is no more legal than sharing through torrents. The appeal of using a forum is that they are much less likely to be taken down or pursued by authorities due to the members-only nature of forums.

Copy the link and paste it into a new tab. When prompted, click to download the file.

As with all file sharing programs, be careful downloading files from unknown sources. Programs such as soulseek do not scan for viruses or prevent users from sharing malicious files. It is up to the user to download safely. Sharing music through a file-sharing program is illegal if you do not own a copy of the music you are downloading. Providing music for others to download also increases potential charges against you. These programs are typically safe because they are community patrolled, but be aware that there is a legal risk in sharing music you do not own.

Click the Options tab. Click the File Sharing tab on the Options page. Click the Share Folder button at the very top of the window. Navigate to the folder you’d like to share and click “Share. ” You can do this as many times as you want, if you’d like to share multiple folders.

You can sort the list by Transfer Speed to download from users with a fast connection. To download an entire album at once, double-click the directory above the track listing. You’ll download everything in that directory (that is, everything you see in the album folder). Some users do not sort their songs by album, so be careful that you don’t set an entire directory of thousands of songs to download by accident. Search results update continuously for as long as you leave them open. Each new search you make opens up a new tab under the search bar. You can close these when you’re done with them.

Light blue text means you’re still waiting to download that file. If your entire album list stays light blue for too long, try right-clicking and choosing Retry Download to kick-start it. Most users have a set number of downloads they allow at a time. This means that there is often a line to get the file you want. Dark blue text indicates the file is currently being downloaded. You’ll see a progress bar on the right, as well as a bitrate indicator for the transfer. Higher numbers mean faster downloads. Green text means the file was successfully downloaded. There will also be a full progress bar next to the file name. Red text means your download was canceled or aborted. This can happen for many different reasons. Wait until the rest of the songs have finished downloading, and then retry any red downloads before searching for them elsewhere. You can right-click the file and select Retry.