• Second Time Around — Sa-Ra
• Restored — Ecoplan
• Track 06 — Warbler
• Could’ve Been — Phillip Eno
• Violaine — Cocteau Twins
• Willie the Chimney Sweeper — Ernest Rodgers
• Daddy’s Soul Doughnut — The Hells
• Stay in the Shade — Jose Gonzalez

Full details and MP3 download Acecast #009.

Initial post, Wed 30 Nov 2005.

Bard Marc Gunn has put together a list of Celtic music sites with free music. I used to get a free catalogue from Green Linnet in the pre-web days and have CDs from the likes of Sileas and Ingrid Karklins. Seems like Marc is not too impressed with Green Linnet tough, I list them way down, because their accounting practices and lack of payment to artists make me a bit unhappy with them.

Chivalry looks to be another interesting site in Marc’s list, with traditional songs like Spencer the Rover and Mattie Groves.

Marc’s site is “to be investigated”.

Cylinder recordings … are a snapshot of musical and popular culture in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. They have long held the fascination of collectors and have presented challenges for playback and preservation by archives and collectors alike.

… a digital collection of over 5,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections. In an effort to bring these recordings to a wider audience, they can be freely downloaded or streamed online.

… find out more about the cylinder format, listen to thousands of musical and spoken selections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and discover a little-known era of recorded sound.

The site carries a CC-licence and a short rundown on state vs common-law copyrights. Fresh site. Over 5000 tracks converted from cylinder to digital so far (not all to MP3 yet). Via Creative Commons weblog.

Radio Plus features

free and legal mp3 downloads of songs that John Peel has featured on his Radio 1 show recently. All these tracks have been made available by the bands or record labels themselves, they don’t involve Kazaa or anonymous postings to alt.binaries.sounds or anything like that. The idea is that if you like the track, you’ll buy some of their records, which seems pretty sound to me.

Seems pretty sound to me as well, I call it fair podcasting.

I have played a few of these acts (Laura Cantrell, Noxagt, Mogwai) and have given Cornelius’s (matadorrecords) Point of View a four star rating for later inclusion on an Acecast. Marvin beat me to it though; Cornelius is on his playlist for Marvin Suicide’s show number 42.

Sub Pop Records has a few dozen free&legal MP3s available in their download section.

Sub Pop is one of the few labels to mention podcasting on their site; this is from the Sub Pop FAQ,

While we’re unable to give you blanket permission to use any ole song you want from our catalog, you may incorporate any of the songs that are freely available as MP3s in the multimedia section of this website into your podcasts. HOWEVER, we do reserve the right to change our mind about the availability of any song for any reason at any time. Fickle, no?

The Sub Pop site is on my backburner. I’ve already played Low’s Monkey and had plans for Sleater-Kinney’s Entertain (both available from Download.com as well).

Via this ole post from Podcastingnews.

The Bates Motel blog is tracking Norwegian music. The motel is looked after by Sindre Ness. Sindre writes in the dying “new-Norwegian” written language. General news, links to MP3s, streams and videos. Sindre seems to be more of a reporter than a critic. Not that it matters — I normally use something like Free Download Manager or LeechGet to scan these sites anyway.

A recent addition to my arsenal of sites, so no tracks checked out from the Bates Motel yet. But do download Hurra Torpedo’s version of Total eclipse of the Heart (video). Hurra Torpedo use white goods like cookers and freezers as their instruments. Nice.

Berlin based MP3 music magazine tonspion.de rates itself as

one of the finest sources for free and legal mp3 downloads on the net for high quality music.

There are hundreds of thousands free MP3 files on the Internet! Most are published legally by artists and labels, with the aim of promoting new albums.

Tonspion reviews the best free mp3 tracks on the net, linking to the source of the download (the artist or the label) and thereby offering access to thousands of mp3s.

Even if you don’t understand our reviews, you can download the music, just by giving it a try. Klick on “Download MP3” at the end of each review and check out the MP3 on the label or artist websites.

A couple of tracks found through Tonspion will be coming up here at Acecast.

Electromancer is a

community of unsigned electronic musicians and a resource where they can make their music available to visitors and other musicians. It provides a friendly and easy-to-use place on the world wide web where visitors, fans of electronic music and musicians alike can come to knowing that all the music will be electronic.

The site is run by Marvey Mills who wants to provide a good quality site for as little cost to the artist as possible.

I haven’t downloaded any tracks from Electromancer so far, so no recommendations yet. Via Podcastingnews.

The Fingertips Site Guide is another metasite listing free and legal music sites.

Several of these sites I knew about (like download.com and the German Tonspion), the rest is “to be investigated”.

Dave Holmes lists dozens of both obscure and well-known podsafe music resources at Dave’s Imaginary Sound Space.

Unfortunately it becomes extremely time consuming for podcasters to source available music and listen to it.

…

The sites I refer to here represent a tiny fraction but even so it’s clear to see the potential pool of music podcasters can draw from. It shows there’s a strong cultural movement that is rapidly taking advantage of new media technologies and confirms podcasting’s role as an important music delivery component.

Time consuming? Yeah — you could say that. I have been through over 4000 tracks over the last year. Around ten percent I have kept and only two percent have been given a 4+ rating in iTunes. Via the Creative Commons blog.

Download podcast MP3 file.

Acecast #008 Oct 2005 (MP3, 112Kbps, 24.2MB, 30m:11s). You can download the MP3 file by clicking the podcast icon or link above. You can also use a podcasting application to subscribe to the Acecast RSS-feed. To subscribe to Acecast podcasts in iTunes (4.9 or later) use “Advanced/Subscribe to Podcast” and enter http://www.acecast.com/index.rss20 in the pop-up window.

Show contains discographical error and phonography.

Mathhead removing getting Skyjacker ready.

Dance, bluegrass, dubstep, electronic and acoustic music — yes it is Acecast number eighth.

The electronics are provided by a couple of tunes from the nice Ghostbox label and by a dubstep track from Mathhead (picked up via the excellent Gutterbreakz FM).

The Scandinavian quota is filled by Annie, there’s some Canadian British-sounding slick rock from The Dears and some rough blues-punk from The Black Keys. The acoustics are made up by the late bluegrass artist Jimmy Martin and newer act Po’ Girl.

I also use a field recording (phonography) for this show, as does Po’ Girl on their City Song (the rain at the end).

One mistake to correct: No Cities Left is not the first album from The Dears as I say on the podcast, End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story was their debut.

The Annie track is via Eardrums mixtape #7.

Production notes.

Kit: MXL V67 condenser microphone, Behringer UB802 mixer, Hercules DJ Console sound card. Applications: Audacity, iTunes, MP3Gain, MP3tag.

All tracks played are free and legal downloads. All tracks are copyright the artists and their record labels/music publishers.

Extended tracklisting for Acecast #008, 10 October 2005.

• Wildspot — Belbury Poly. The Acecast signature tune
• Wedding (Big Edit) (mp3) (k7.com) — Annie
• Ocean Of Diamonds (mp3) (download.com) — Jimmy Martin
• Threshold (mp3) — Eric Zann (Ghostbox)
• Nuclear Substation (Public Information Film) (mp3) — The Advisory Circle (Ghostbox)
• Lost in the Plot (mp3) (download.com) — The Dears
• Skyjacker(mp3) — Mathhead
• Set You Free (mp3) (epitaph.com) — The Black Keys
• City Song (mp3) — Po Girl
• Virgina Beach (mp3) (used as ambience) (archive.org) — Raphael Lyon (Webbed Hand 055)

Brief playlist for Acecast #008.

Previous Acecast podcasts.

Initial post: Mon, 31 Oct 2005.

• Wedding (Big Edit) — Annie
• Ocean of Diamonds — Jimmy Martin
• Threshold — Eric Zann
• Nuclear Substation (Public Information Film) — The Advisory Circle
• Lost in the Plot — The Dears
• Skyjacker — Mathhead
• Set You Free — The Black Keys
• City Song — Po’ Girl

Full details and MP3 download Acecast #008.

Initial post: Mon, 31 Oct 2005.