The Open Rights Group has an in-depth look at Magnatune, a pioneering record label that licenses its releases under Creative Commons licenses. This means that Magnatune’s music is: Shareable: Users are invited to share their purchased tracks with up to three friends, can listen to the entire catalogue for free via the website’s 128kbps streams, [...]

Apple confirmed the rumor we reported earlier, announcing that the iTunes Store had surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number one music retailer in the US. “We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in the world,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We [...]

Moby is offering a variety of unreleased tracks for you to use freely in your non-profit video projects at MobyGratis.com. this portion of moby.com, ‘film music’, is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short. to use the site you log [...]

Yesterday, when everybody was hyping the new ad-supported music service Qtrax, we said Qtrax was D.O.A. We noted that “Qtrax wants you to download software to watch ads to get DRM‚Äôd music that probably won‚Äôt work on your media player.” Not something that we really want to do. Others are starting to see through the [...]

The net is abuzz with talk today about Qtrax, another service that promises free ad-supported music. The Qtrax service offers to let you use an ad-supported program to search for and download DRM’d music that you can play on a PC and on some media players. Unfortunately, it looks like Qtrax will be as dead [...]

CNet has an interesting interview with Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor on his recent experiment with Saul Williams’ debut CD, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. Reznor and Williams made NiggyTardust available as a free download, but also let you purchase a higher-quality version for a nominal fee. In the interview, Reznor talks about [...]

Simon Iddol has put together a free download of the best mashups of the year. The 19 track collection includes Billy Idol vs Pink on Pink Wedding, Eric Clapton vs Depeche Mode on Strange Love Cocaine and Christina Aguilera vs Lionel Richie on Easy Hurt. It’s available as a .zip download from the site. Here [...]

Need something interesting to refill and refresh your iPod/Zune/portable media player. DJ Spooky has posted an very cool, socially conscious mix tape, Ghost World, that explores the idea of a digital Africa. You can preview it below and get the full scoop at Spooky‚Äôs site. Here’s what DJ Spooky has to say about the mix [...]

Remember Spiralfrog, the much-hyped free-music service that offers DRM-laden tracks incompatible with most people‚Äôs portable media players? Here’s our summary of Spiralfrog from when the service went live: The site lets you download tracks with Windows Media DRM. They can be used on some Windows computers and with compatible media players. Users need to register [...]

The New York Times’ Freakonomics has an interesting interview with musician & podcaster Jonathan Coulton, who became an Internet superstar as a result of his Thing A Week music podcast (podcast feed). Last week, we asked for your questions for singer/songwriter/Internet celeb Jonathan Coulton. Thanks to all of you (including John Hodgman, or at least [...]