The Spokesman Review’s Spokane 7 site has a large MP3 directory of local artists (local being Spokane, USA). Slim pickings for me, but do try The Side Project and Ramon 140 for some good electronica.

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.

All links point to the 2005 SXSW Showcasing Artist page for the artist mentioned, except in the cases where I could not find a page (which probably means that the MP3 is located in the “add-on” batch of 20 songs).

The music ranges from bluegrass (Runaway Planet), dub (Sub Oslo), Americana, pure pop, punk and loads of decent acoustic tracks. There are also a small handful of bands seeking to revive the glam-punk of The Boys (Ends, Bones, Real Heroes) and some good electronica tracks. If you have been listening to my podcasts you will have already have heard a third of these tracks; I recommend you get the rest as well while you can (this batch of MP3s will probably be taken offline when the 2006 festival comes along).

A dozen or so artists are not listed simply because I already had the songs. So no Jawbone or Kings of Convenience in the list.

Sturgeons Law applies; this is the top 5%.

I listened to every one of the 750+ tracks and brought the list down to those below. Should you prefer to download all 750 tracks there is a couple of torrent feeds at SXSW’s Fest4Pod.

I’ll see if I can get time later to include direct links for the MP3s; but for now you will have to go each SXSW artist page to get the MP3s.

• S2SG2 — Aero Wave
• The Littlest Birds — Be Good Tanyas
• 3 Sheets to the Wind — The Black Halos
• Do You Wanna — The Bones
• Blah, Blah, Blah — Cartel de Santa
• Where You Are — Clare Burson
• Erotik Platonik — Cubiky
• Handful Savants — Cue
• New Hope Cemetery — The Damnations
• Ohh La La — Ditty Bops
• Just As Well — Emily Sparks
• Pucker Up — The Ends
• Kanon — Enon
• Trampoline — The Grates
• Pass and Fail — Heartless Bastards
• The Hustler — Jeff Klein
• Not Going Anywhere — Keren Ann
• Metal on a Gun — L-D Section I
• Too Late for Tonight — Laura Cantrell
• Ablaze — Liz Durrett
• I’ll Be Yr Bird — M. Ward
• Mercy Now — Mary Gauthier
• Nutopia — Meg Lee Chin
• Workshy Wunderkind — Nightingales
• Tonight, the Night — Bonnie Pink
• Move That Strut — The Real Heroes
• How Shall I Love Thee? — Rose Polenzani
• Rocking This Disaster — Roue
• Burn the Clutch Out — Runaway Planet
• List of Demands(Reparations) — Saul Williams
• Some Girls Have All The Fuck — Some Girls
• Afghan/Forlift — Stan Ridgway
• Sub Oslo Vs. Bookshelf Speakers — Sub Oslo
• Lucky Lipstick — Surferosa
• Walking With a Ghost — Tegan & Sara
• Happiness and Misery — Tywanna Jo Baskette
• The Ghost of the Girl — Willard Grant Conspiracy
• Glee Foundation — Xcella

I should have listed this resource ages ago, as it was one of the first podcasts using legit MP3s only. Matt May is using mostly Creative Commons licensed music in his Staccato podcasts. Matt’s track listings have been a little bit sparse lately, but do download

• Language of My Reality a CC-licensed track remixed by Click.

The South by Southwest Music festival is in Austin, Texas every March. “Fest4Pod” is a massive 2.6GB/750+ tracks of free and legal SXSW 2005 tracks made available as a BitTorrent feed (or individual tracks). I am in the process of listening through it all.

I have made a fairly complete SXSW 2005 tracklisting available over at Halvorsen. If you like pop, listen to Bonnie Pink (sxsw) or try the latino-funk-hop of Cartel de Santa (sxsw) (as you can tell I have just made it to “D” in the alphabet).

*6ize

You all probably already know about Sixeyes (one half of the legit resources on iPodlounge). A fine site promoting what seems to be (mostly) legal MP3s. No streaming prelisten, and I would have liked alphabetical archives. But the site is frequently updated and the content is clearly written.