Free Music Archive Update 2022 Sept

The Free Music Archive has made a lot of progress since our 2019 update. It is back to being a wonderful resource for artists to share and users to find free Creative Commons licensed works. Well done, FMA!

:: Looks much better, featuring a new LAYOUT with minimalist stylesheets.

:: All playable selections are dark until hover-over, which seems backwards.

:: Finally, the FMA is RESPONSIVE to your screen size! Looks great on all our devices.

:: MONETIZATION system in place for tipping artists!

:: The excellent AUDIO PLAYER is far superior to the original FMA player.

:: CHARTS seem to be active again. Not sure they are meaningful after years of not being tracked.

:: MIXES have returned, but are not playable for public from the mix pages, only for signed-in members.

:: FOLLOWERS (favorites) have been erased, so users need to re-follow (re-favorite) artists they like.

:: CURATORS and LABELS profiles have returned. LABELS has now been changed to NETLABELS, despite many not being netlabels, such as physical labels like Bloodshot Records

:: Cannot view profiles of USERS to see their favorites and mixes unless you are a signed in member

:: ARTIST SHUFFLE is a cool feature that loads the profile of a random artist

:: FEATURED MIXES and BLOG POSTS are only FMA staff at this time

:: White women shopping in record stores (for Elvis and Depeche Mode) are the default images for CURATORS, LABELS, and USERS regardless of sexual identity, race, or musical preference. Odd choice for defaults.

 :: No FORUMS or community feature, but COMMENTS seem to be active on recordings

Overall, the latest Free Music Archive looks great, functions very well, and is back on track for providing free Creative Commons licensed works to the public.  Go check it out!

FMA Update

Things are looking up for the Free Music Archive. In September, the FMA was purchased by Netherlands company Tribe of Noise, a privately owned business that handles music licensing for musicians and media producers. ToN are big supporters of the Creative Commons and seem to be a cool group.

The code of the original site was complicated, making it difficult for the last owners to do much with it, but drop ads on it and lock everyone out of the community. While the community is still not in play, Tribe of Noise has been undertaking the daunting task for the last two months of creating static HTML pages for all the recordings.

FMA was supplied with music by unpaid artists, built and maintained by predominantly volunteers. It is tricky to reconcile a formerly non-profit project with a for-profit company, but it costs a lot of money to host all that music. The original FMA paid Amazon to host the mp3s. That service alone cost $80,000 a year per 2016 fund drive information.

It is unclear what will eventually happen to the recordings holding stricter licenses (CC No Derivatives, FMA Limited License, etc.), but most of the music that was available when WFMU sold the FMA is now available again for free to the public. That is all thanks to the hard work of Tribe of Noise.

To keep up with their efforts to incorporate the FMA into ToN, you can follow the new FMA on Twitter and the development timeline at the bottom of the FMA official site.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes and getting back to work on what was a great project.

State of the FMA

Hi there. Katya here again with some updates about the FMA.

The good news is it seems that the Free Music Archive will continue; however, it seems unlikely that it will continue to operate as a non-profit.

The Free Music Archive has been sold by WFMU to the company KitSplit. The FMA proved to be too expensive for the ever struggling WFMU radio station to continue to operate. I have not seen a statement from WFMU regarding the sale of the FMA.

Rather than let the beloved project built over a decade by the volunteer efforts of 1000s of musicians, curators, radio DJs, and staffers fall into obscurity, a few worked diligently behind the scenes to find a new host.

KitSplit is a commercial entity with a good cause, providing those on small budgets with audio and video equipment rentals at discount rates. KitSplit gives opportunities to those whom might otherwise be kept from creating their work. It looks like the company is especially supportive of groups who are already underrepresented in audio and film.

KitSplit posted their first statement on the FMA this week, a month after the transaction. They report that they have spent that time trying to learn the workings of the system. It is their hope that ad revenue will help to keep the project afloat.

As this is now to be predominantly a resource for filmmakers to find Creative Commons licensed music, it is unclear whether works released with more restrictive licenses (such as the WFMU license and Creative Commons No Derivatives varieties) will be accepted or even retained.

The future of the Free Music Archive is still unclear, but it looks like it may live on thanks to the 11th hour rescue purchase by KitSplit, a company with good intentions.

Lost in Limbo

What happened to [the FMA]?

It disappeared. I can't get it back, 

but if I could, I'd give it to you again. 

I'd give it to you again.... 

When you look back at the path , 

you wonder how you got where you are. 

Where things end, they seldom begin. 

I'm hoping on a better day.... 

Everything I've done, 

doesn't mean anything to anyone, to anyone.... 

-from "Fractals" by Pinkle (now Brynn) on aaahh records

once hosted on the Free Music Archive

added to FMA by blocSonic in their collection

aptly named Goodbye, Hello

Goodbye, Free Music Archive

Katya Oddio here with sad news. The Free Music Archive is closing down after 10 wonderful years. We are all gutted. Be sure to save your mixes now. Here is today's announcement from our captain, FMA Director Cheyenne Hohman. 


Dear Friend of the FMA,

It is with great sadness that we send this message. We regret to inform you that due to a funding shortage, the FMA will be closing down later this month. The future of the archive is uncertain, but we have done everything we can to ensure that our files will not disappear from the web forever. The full audio collection will be backed up and available at https://archive.org/details/freemusicarchive (some of the collection is already there; feel free to go browse).

We are also partnering with Archive-It to preserve a current copy of the site's public pages in the Wayback Machine. FMA audio will also be added to the Creative Commons project CC Search, a search engine for the Commons, later in 2019.

The site may go down as early as November 9th, so now's the time to download your playlists, favorite songs, and do whatever personal archiving you need.

Want to help us preserve the FMA or make your own custom FMA collection? You have two good options:

1) Go to https://webrecorder.io/, make a free account and record some browsing sessions. You can save pages, search results, and much more using this tool (I've already done some serious browsing & recording - check out my collections here). If you want to share your sessions with us, we can compile a crowdsourced repository. The site may go down at the end of this week, so if you are going to do this, please do it soon.

2) Go to the Wayback Machine homepage and plug in the URLs you want to save. These are then archived for the public to use. There are browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that make this super-easy. Some pages are saved already, but many of them are outdated, so save away!

Share this information far and wide; we don't want our hard work (and amazing collection) to be forgotten. There is hope that we can find a new parent organization to help us continue the project, but for now, we must take a break and figure out the best course to proceed. We are interested in hearing from anyone who wants to offer web development help, funding, nonprofit status, or has other suggestions. There will be a comment form on the site for this purpose; please put your feedback there.

Thanks, most of all, to you - our amazing community! From the volunteers who helped us maintain the site and bring new artists on board, to the curators and bands whose contributions diversified our collections, to our funders, to the folks that used the site everyday and made it the legendary corner of the web that it truly was. It was an amazing nine years, and we are extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished together.

With gratitude,
Cheyenne Hohman
FMA Director

String Quartet Moment of Zen

Coming in under four minutes, these two contemporary string quartets by Maciej Żołnowski may serve as a moment of beauty in your day, or as John Stewart used to say at the end of The Daily Show, "your moment of zen."

MUSIC COPYRIGHTS: Creative Commons Attribution License
IMAGE: "Mount Fuji" by Mya Told
CLASSIFICATIONS: Contemporary Composition; Instrumental; String Quartet; Chamber Music
COMPOSERS: Maciej Żołnowski
FILED UNDER: Digital: Art: Recent (Post-Romantic)

Shake That Little Foot Sees 300K+ Downloads on FMA

B'Gosh and Begorrah! When an as yet unnamed band joined together in Liverpool in 1993 recording an unnamed album of traditional music, none present might have guessed how beloved that album would become around the world.

Eventually, the band became Shake That Little Foot. After getting their original tracks from the recording engineer, the band released the album online, and everywhere it is shared it becomes a favorite.

Since Oddio Overplay uploaded the album to the Free Music Archive, there have been more than 300,000 downloads there alone. That's a lot of new ears enjoying Shake That Little Foot!

Today, we are celebrating the success of an unnamed band's lovely unnamed album made for the joy of music and shared for free with the whole world. Hurray for Shake That Little Foot!

(Last promoted 20 May 2010)

MUSIC COPYRIGHTS: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
IMAGE: Painting on the cover is "The Dancing Couple" (1663) by Jan Steen housed in the National Gallery of Art (US)
NATIONALITY: Euro: UK: England: Liverpool
CLASSIFICATIONS: Folk; Americana; American Folk; England; English Folk; Banjo; Fiddle; Old-Time; Celtic; Mountain
FILED UNDER: Digital: Traditional: Multi Region

Happy Birthday, Mozart

Celebrating the 258th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 - 5 December 1791)

Various Artists - Mozart Birthday Party

[tracks: 23, total time: 7:26:37]

 

Music License: Various licenses; see individual tracks Image: tweaked photo of painting of little Wolfie circa 1763 by Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Artist Location: Germany, France, Austria

Uncle Neptune Returns

Our beloved Uncle Neptune has returned to the Internet with a reissue of his first album now on Happy Puppy Records.

Happy Puppy Records | FMA | CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) | Kazoomzoom | Archived Official Website

Music License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License
Artist Location: Canada

The Month's FMA Gold

Month: June 2013

Some of the albums that caught our attention this month at the Free Music Archive

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads.  The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.  Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era.  These uses vary and are determined by the rightsholders themselves who feel that allowing a degree of free cultural access is beneficial not only to their own pursuits, but to our society as a whole.  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.

Not a lot grabbed us in the June lineup, so we didn't put together a playlist this month.

Chuck Johnson - Live On WFMU, May 2013 [Acoustic Folk]	Silence Is Sexy - This Ain't Hollywood [Pop, Rock]	Ian Sutherland - Missing Time [Dance, Electro]
Radio 421 - Seven [Electro Punk, Garage Rock]	Burstbot - Demiurge [Experi Electro]	Various Artists [KBOO] - 2002 Cathedral Park Jazz Festival [Jazz, Vocal Jazz]
Bliss Blood And Al Street - Live On WFMU, February 2013 [Classic Pop Formats, Vocal Jazz]

Promoted This Month on Blogio
now appearing on the FMA
(sadly, without label profiles or good cover art)

• Natalia Skvortsova - Summer Time
• "Gorgeous Jazz Combo Album"  5 June 2013
• GeeNerve - Suspense Dance Delights
• "Film Noir Spy Themes from GeeNerve" 12 June 2013
• Various Artists - Wild About You! Tales from the Australian Rock Underground 1963-68 
• "Australian '60s Rock Undergound" 14 June 2013

Lilian Hak, Torchy and Bluesy

Lilian Hak recorded a beautiful session as a stripped down two-piece outfit with loops at WFMU that aired on This Is the Modern World with DJ Trouble. Lilian's music is not easily pegged. Think torchy k.d. lang, classic soul, early blues rock, and vocal jazz. Check her out and fall in love. This session is one of our favorites at the FMA.

Official Website | SoundCloud | YouTube | Facebook | myspace | last.fm | FMA | Store

Music License: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Image: detail of cover of Old Powder, New Guns album
Artist Location: The Netherlands

The Month's FMA Gold

Month: May 2013

Some of the albums that caught our attention this month at the Free Music Archive

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads.  The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.  Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era.  These uses vary and are determined by the rightsholders themselves who feel that allowing a degree of free cultural access is beneficial not only to their own pursuits, but to our society as a whole.  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.

[Download Highlights Mix]

Stealing Orchestra - Deliverance [Experimental]	Various Artists - Consciousness Dr. [Electronic, Ambient]	The Wonderful and the Obscure Volume 1: Rodd Keith [Song-Poem, Early Rock]
Eleni Mandell - Live on WFMU, May 2013 [Singer-Songwriter]	PK Jazz Collective - Pearls Of Our Life [Nu-Jazz]	Telegraphy - Life Without [Ambient, Experi]
Kosta - Metro Is Breathing [Experi]	HighWay17 - The Grain Box [Drone, Noise]	Duas Semicolcheias Invertidas - I [Fusion Jazz Rock]
16 Squares G - Tempus Fugit [Synth Pop]	Sara Minkovic - Nowhere Near [Ambient, Electro]	Impossibulls - 1 Nation... [Hip Hop, Rap]
Various - Between Two Waves [Pop]	Lee Rosevere - Time-Lapse, Vol 2 [Ambient]	The Womb - Sex Club [Pop, Synth Pop, Rock]
Johnny Haway - Musurgia Volucris [Experi, Field Recordings]	Mudhoney - Live On WFMU, May 2013 [Rock, Hard Rock]	Spiedkiks - Take Off Your Make Up [Big Beat, Electro, Funk]
Wooden Ambulance - River Sand [Indie Rock, Folk]	No Joy - Live On WFMU, May 2013 [Rock, Shoegazer]	Face The Music - [Modern Composition, Classical]

Singles and Album Previews:

Oskar Schuster ft. Possimiste - Stjernen [Lullaby, Electro]	Steve Mackay (The Stooges) w Iggy Pop, Mike Watt, Henry Barnes, Randy Scarbery, and Kamilsky - The Prisoner from Sometime Like This I Talk [Alt Rock]
Marty Ehrlich's Dark Woods Ensemble - Emergency Peace [Modern Composition]	Pete Lund - Back from 1991 [Singer-Songwriter]

Previously Promoted by Oddio Overplay:

The Impossebulls - Enemy Among Us [Hip Hop, rap]

Brutal Whiskers - Fallen World [Metal]

Making a Better World by Sharing

Artists + Creative Commons + Free Music Archive + Nonprofits = Better World  

Creative Commons licensing has opened a new world for collaboration. Most artists with works in the Free Music Archive share their copyrighted work with some rights reserved. Depending on the chosen license for the work, this often allows others to incorporate the work into something new without the use of lawyers and other middle men.

An avenue of collaboration that the Free Music Archive has actively promoted is the reuse of recordings in film and video. The FMA Tracks To Sync and Music for Video selections offer filmmakers a sampling of the variety of music available for reuse. The FMA also has a partnership with Vimeo, the video host, helping filmmakers find just the right music to fit the setting of the film.

The collaborative music+video results have been remarkable around the world. In fact, in some cases this collaboration even benefits the world. Nonprofit organizations, not typically known for having large promotional budgets, can benefit greatly by re-purposing Creative Commons recordings licensed for reuse.

One FMA success story is the union of a recording by American artist Aaron Ximm with a public service message for sustainability organization Redress. Ximm's track is used in a promo video for the EcoChic Design Award.

Redress is a Hong Kong based NGO with a mission to promote environmental sustainability in Asia's fashion industry by reducing textile waste, pollution, water and energy consumption. We achieve this via educational sustainable fashion shows, exhibitions, competitions, seminars, research and media outreach. Our unique profile allows us to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders. We work with multiple fashion designers, textile and garment manufacturers, retailers, schools and universities, multilateral organizations, governments, NGOs, financial institutions and media organizations.

The EcoChic Design Award is a sustainable fashion design competition inspiring emerging fashion designers and students to create mainstream clothing with minimal textile waste. Apply now.

Redress Website | YouTube | Facebook | EcoChic Design Award

photo: Forever Better with Miele fashion show organized by Redress

The Month's FMA Gold

April 2013

Some of the albums that caught our attention this month at the Free Music Archive

The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.

Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by copyright laws that were not designed for the digital era.  These uses vary and are determined by the rightsholders themselves who feel that allowing a degree of free cultural access is beneficial not only to their own pursuits, but to our society as a whole.  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.

[Download Highlights Mix]

Maya Solovéy - Forte [Folk, Pop, Chamber Pop]	Podington Bear - 22 new albums added this month [Instro, Electro]	Allah-Las - Live on WFMU Apr 2013 [Rock, '60s-style Pop, Psych]
Diotima_Quartet - Hugh Levick's Empire Inc. [Modern Composition]	Robin Grey - tracks from albums [Folk, Acoustic, Pop]	Roach Davies And The Fleas - Navigator [Psych, Folk, Rock]
Alan Driscoll - The Differences Between Men And Women [Standup Comedy]	Robyn Hitchcock - Live on WFMU Feb 2013 [Pop, Rock]	A Hawk and a Hacksaw - Live at WFMU with Irene Trudel - March 25, 2013 [Traditional Music, Folk, SE Europe]
Candlegravity - Junpei [Experi, Electro]	THF Drenching - Punishing Moral Code [Experi, Noise, Musique Concrete]	★ Various Artists - Revitalize Music Contest [Varied]
Avoidant - Birth In Carpathia [Dark Ambient, Drone]	Joe Marson - Someday Soon [Pop, Blues Rock]	Jahzzar - Sketches [Beats, Rhythm & Blues]
Spuntic - Between Green [Ambient, Drone, Space, Electro]	Daizy - The Daizy Factory [Beats, Electro]	Mice Parade - Live on WFMU Mar 2013 [Folk, Experi, Acoustic]
Plates Of Cake - Live on WFMU Mar 2013 [Pop, Power Pop, Indie Rock]	Эксперимент (Experiment) - Навсегда (Forever) [Russian Pop]	Various Artists - Retork (Enough Records) [Electro, Varied]
Anitek - Lily [hip hop beats, trip hop, funk]	Various Artists - Un|Herd Archive [experi, electro, radio]	Zelmershead - Imperfection [electro, trip hop]
Nasienie - Private Loops [electro, ambient]	Keaton Henson - Live on WFMU Apr 2013 [Folk, Acoustic Guitar]	Onyx Ashanti - Berlin [Dance, House]
Eaters - An Evening With Tuck Pendleton [Soul, Hip Hop, '60s Groove]	Underling - 2 new albums (hear live session!) [Hip Hop, Rock]	Asian Women on the Telephone - Ivan (Euro Edition) [Noise, Experi]
Vlasta Popić - Za Očnjake [Punk, New Wave]	Ховбай Хвекмеев and PK Jazz Collective: 1967-1976 The Best [Varied]	MC Cullah - Be Love Not Fear [Blues Rock, Experi, Electric Guitar]
Technology of Silence - The Squad [Industrial, Electro]	Nevada Base - Foresight [Synth Pop, Dance]

Some content added by Oddio Overplay:

Lee Maddeford et Roland Vouilloz - Cyclops [Modern Composition, Stage Music]

Various Artists - The Droplift Project [Collage, Varied, Experi]

Some content promoted elsewhere by Oddio Overplay:

Sergi Boal - Silenci [Traditional Music, Modern Composition]

The Impossebulls -Made by History (Decade One: 2000-2010) [Hip Hop, Rap]

Location: Jersey City, New Jersey, USA