According to the FMA:

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by outdated copyright law.

Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won’t put your audience to sleep?  A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist?

The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

If you’re interested in using or listening to music in podcasts, check them out:

AMP postings and news are now available via twitter. Go to

http://twitter.com/musicpodcasting to follow the latest information.

Checkout the hashtags.. #musicpodcasting and #amped

If you haven’t yet – follow us at @podcastmama & @podcasting_news, too!

IODA is a digital distributor of independent music of every genre, from thousands of different record labels, and promotes that music to retailers, distributors, bloggers, and podcasters through its Promonet service. Its monthly-ish podcast features a cross-section of the broad IODA catalog. Sometimes the podcast is a shuffled mix of styles and genres, and sometimes the podcast is topical (like this winter holiday one, the Halloween one, or even the Talk Like A Pirate Day episode).

The current holiday issue ranges widely, from “The Nutcracker” to jazz standards to the excellent gospel choir Sounds of Blackness (whose first Christmas album was fantastic).

The feed for IODA Promonet’s podcast is here.

The University of Utah’s Classical Guitar Podcast (iTunes link) features classical guitar audio and video podcasts.

The podcasts feature performances of works by Tárrega, Torroba, Berkeley and others, as well as original compositions by Tully Cathey, a classical and jazz guitarist who teaches at the College of Fine Arts.

Image: ycguitar814

The site’s still a work in progress, but you can download a free selection of music from the archive now:

WFMU presents Selected Sounds from the Free Music Archive vol. 1. This compilation previews 21 of the thousands of tracks that’ll be freely available under Creative Commons licenses when the fully interactive Free Music Archive website launches this November. We’re working with a group of fellow curators to fill the library with great music, and this sampler represents a piece of what WFMU brings to the table.

Download (.zip)

“I’m proud to announce our partnership with Jamendo, a premier archive of Creative Commons music from a network of independent musicians. You can now see Jamendo originated torrents highlighted by white tabs labeled “Jamendo Verified” in our search results, and here’s a list of their torrents indexed on isoHunt. Their torrent descriptions also come in full HTML glory, like this one. In return, Jamendo is choosing isoHunt as their search engine for global torrents beyond their music database.”

Because it’s distributed with Creative Commons licenses, you can copy the music and share it freely, and, in many cases, use the music to create new works, such as podcasts and video podcasts.

via TorrentFreak

Overall, NIN’s new release The Slip is an excellent release. It delivers all the things you expect from NIN, it builds on their last release, Ghosts I-IV, and it even has some a couple of tracks that are likely to burn up some air time.

The music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. It’s released with a Creative Commons license, so you can share it or use it in a podcast.

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options – all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

for those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

You can download free high-quality MP3s of The Slip via the NIN site. Email registration is required.

Even more interesting – The Slip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. That’s right – it’s podcast-legal music.

NIN says:

we encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

Nine Inch Nails continues to be the most progressive mainstream group at experimenting with new options for releasing and licensing their music. They have already released several hours of music that you can podcast and share legally, and they have an extensive lineup of free music podcasts, too.

Track list:

1. 999,999
2. 1,000,000
3. letting you
4. discipline
5. echoplex
6. head down
7. lights in the sky
8. corona radiata
9. the four of us are dying
10. demon seed

Scott at Bitnotic sent us word about their new generative ambient music application, chill.

The concept of generative music – popularized by Brian Eno – is that complex music can be created by setting relatively simple processes into motion.

You can think of chill as a royalty-free music generator. It uses generative music processes to create new music in an ambient/chill-out style.

Songs created by chill can be saved in AIFF, Wave, and MIDI formats. Songs are royalty-free and can be used in podcasts, video productions, and record albums without further licensing. You can also use chill MIDI files as the basis for compositions in digital audio workstations such as Apple’s Logic.

While each song is unique and random, you have several options for shaping the results. The “Mood” controls include Mellow and Swell. You also control the mix of the instrument parts and effects

Bitnotic is actively seeking feedback on the public beta. The company is holding a contest where the three best comments/suggestions/bug reports will win free licenses to the final product. Details are available on the Bitnotic web site.

You can preview an example of chill’s output below. Then download it and give it a try.

chill 1.0 will retail electronically for US $19.95.

Panelists include Personal Life Media’s Tim Bratton (formerly of the Rhapsody music service), podcaster and attorney Colette Vogele (co author of the Creative Commons’ Podcasting Legal Guide), Kevin Arnold (also formerly of Rhapsody, presently IODA/Promonet), and (Peermusic) Jonathan Kehl.

The discussion begins with a basic explanation of the four different types of music licensing rights (performance, mechanical, master use, synchronization rights) and defines copyright and legal terms podcasters should know and understand. Colette Vogele gives a sobering view of what can happen if you don’t “play” by the copyright rules. Podsafe and indie music alternatives are discussed, as well.

The audio of the session is available here.