CNET launches free music downloads

[ladie_vennom]

quote:Online-technology company CNET Networks has launched a free digital music service, allowing users to search and download what it says are thousands of songs contributed by independent and unsigned artists.

The service, based on CNET's Download.com Web site (http://music.download.com), has been collecting music for the past few weeks, encouraging musicians to register on the site and upload their songs.

The music download service will be separate from the MP3.com Web site, which CNET has said it will relaunch soon as a music-information site.

The former MP3.com, which CNET acquired late last year, offered similar functions to those in the new music download platform. Many artists and fans of the site complained when CNET closed it down, fearing that hundreds of thousands of songs would be lost permanently.

CNET said it plans to add new technology and community features to its download service, which it intends to be the largest free music download platform, over the course of the year.

Pay-for-download services have become the hottest trend in digital music, with one, Apple's iTunes music store, having sold 50 million downloads in less than a year.

News Source: ZDnet News

[shifter]

You beat me to it! [] I am going to try this out tonight and upload some songs from my old band. I'll post back with more info.

[Someguy03]

Don't get too excited about finding permanent music here though. I downloaded about 5 songs from diffrent bands in diffrent Genres and they were all horrible. I think if people find good bands on it they should list them here.

[detn8r]

I got an email from them about two weeks ago. I was actually going to post it too... BUT I ended up deleting the email.

[shifter]

The system is comprised of independant and unsigned musicians. Its not all going to be solid gold. Anyway, they require artists to upload mp3 files encoded exactly at 192Kbps and 44khz. So they should be of decent sound quality at least. I encoded my former band's CD to this and proceded through the process of creating an Artist account. They ask for alot of information for each song, including title, release year, Explicit lyrics, Song description, and Genre. It took me about an hour to fill in and upload my 9 songs. It's now under review before it will be posted live in the service for downloading. I'll put up a link when its ready.

[shifter]

Two weeks later, my songs are approved! They must have a fairly large backlog of approvals to go through. Well, Apida Dafu is now listed. anyway. Seems like a great free music service, even if the approval times are pretty slow.