Sources of LEGAL free music

I love music, and I love finding new music, and I love it even more when that new music is free. Here are the reliable places I know for getting free music online. In all cases the sites promise themselves to be legal and safe, but I make no assurances that they live up to their promises.

Internet Audio Archive (This site has several parts):

• Live Music Archive: Here are fan recordings of a huge number of artists, many famous, many obscure, posted with authorisation from the artists themselves. The quality varies. Some are recorded with hand held audio recorders and capture more crowd noise than music. Others are recorded directly from the sound board and sound terrific. Spend some time browsing. (Some of the bands I like that are listed are: The John Butler Trio, Jack Johnson, Big Head Todd and The Monsters, Cowboy Junkies, Ben Lee, Mogwai, Gomez,
  State Radio, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tim Reynolds, G. Love & Special Sauce, Explosions in the Sky, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Michael Franti & Spearhead, ...)
• Open Source Audio: These are freely licensed tracks provided by the community. I haven't figured out the best way to find things there yet, but there is plenty available. Some record labels make demo compilations or samplers available (sometimes including artwork). I particularly enjoy the Clan Analogue Sampled Synthesis electronica compilations.

Sweet Smelling Surfaces

• This is an online electronica (ambient, minimal, and techno) label that has more than 50 electronica E.P.s available for free download, with high res album artwork. I don't know what they gain, but many of the artists have now become favourites of mine so I thought I'd spread the word.

Myuzyk

• Another online electronica label with some neat "inspired by..." compilations, among others, available as 320 kbps MP3 and FLAC audio files.
  

Last.fm

• Predominantly a streaming music site, many artists use it as a forum for posting free full-length demo tracks. For a recent listing of all such tracks visit Last.fm's free music chart or members' journals here or here.

South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW)

• Every year the massive SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas releases a bitTorrent containing >700 free mp3s showcasing the current year's performers. The music is voluntarily and freely supplied by the performers, and includes 1-2 tracks from many of the artists attending. The torrents are up to 2.5GB each, so you'll need some bandwidth, but there are many gems and your bound to find artists you know or like. You can get all the torrents from Greg Hewgill, or visit SXSW 2008, SXSW 2007, SXSW 2006. [via Lifehacker]
  

Using iTunes and Picasa with multiple users

Recently I got a new Vista laptop and needed to transfer Picasa photo albums and iTunes music libraries from an XP laptop to the Vista laptop. iTunes, easy. Picasa, nightmare.

(Tip: I won't go into detail, the memories are too painful, but here's an overview. Since Vista and XP use different Document folder locations, first copy the Picasa data folders from XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2Albums

to their new locations in Vista:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2Albums

Then use a global search and replace utility (such as
MB-Search&Replace) to replace all occurrences of C:\the directory of your photos on XP machine\ with C:\the directory of your photos on Vista machine\ in all files in those two directories. Then open Picasa and hope for the best!)

But once they were moved I took the opportunity to follow some advice to set up Picasa up to allow multiple users access to the same set of photos, albums and tags. It worked a treat! The instructions are super easy to follow and we've had no troubles since.

In case you are feeling inspired, Paraesthesia also provides instructions on how to set up iTunes for multiple users, but I haven't tried it.

Free apps I like

Here are some of the most useful FREE applications I use. I'll update this as I find good ones.

General Utilities

• CD/DVD burning, including ISO images: ImgBurn & InfraRecorder
  
• Hard drive visual analyser: WinDirStat
• Open a command prompt in any directory: Command window here @ MS XP Powertoys
• Copy paths, names, and UNC from right click context menu: Ninotech Path Copy
  
• Provide a shortcut key to switch windows between multiple monitors: JumpWin (although I hear UltraMon is good too it is not free; the free JumpWin does all I need. Don't forget to chuck it in your startup folder.)
• File compression (including ZIP): IZarc
  
• Multiple file rename with wildcard search and replace: Rename Master
• Duplicate file finder and remover: DupKiller
  

Music

• Online music (including streaming): Last.fm (but the client is unreliable for scrobbling played tracks off iPods)
• iPod audio scrobbling for Last.fm: LastPod
  

Photos/image/video software

• Photo stitching - awesome, automatic, free, and developed at UBC: AutoStitch
• Embed and edit tags in photos (including IPTC/XMP editing): iTag
• Painting program: Paint.NET
• Screen video capture: CamStudio
• Photo editing: IrfanView
• Convert any video to iPod format video: Videora
• Play DVDs: Media Player Classic or VLC Media Player
  

Online apps

• Online backups: Moxy
• Desktop search: Google Desktop (without any gadgets thank you!)
  
• Photo management: Google Picasa (please fix caption creation and editing, and make Albums more stable)
• Online file conversion, including images, audio, video, documents and compressed files: Zamzar
• Online secure and public file sharing/collaboration and syncing (replaces FTP transfers, file emailing, version control, and cumbersome manual syncing with memory sticks): Dropbox
  

Connectivity

• Secure FTP Client: FileZilla
• Telnet/SSH Client: PuTTy
• Remote Unix virtual desktop: NoMachine NX Free Edition
  

Data tools

• Data digitiser (for extracting data from printed graphs): Engauge Digitizer
  

Geophysics

• Potential field FFT processing, including upward continuation: FourPot (by Markku Pirttijärvi at the University of Oulu, Finland)
  
• Paleomagnetic analysis, including plotting NRM components: Paleomagnetic Analysis Program
• 2D gravity modelling and inversion: GravCadW
• Hammer gravity terrain corrections: Hamxyz2
• UBC-GIF inversion model builder and viewer: Meshtools3D
  

Programming

• C/C++ development: Bloodshed Dev-C++

GIS

• Google Earth (and don't forget the built in flight sim [Lifehacker]!)
• Display ArcView shapefiles in Google Earth from ArcView with a click of a button: Do Google (an Avenue script)