Free music!

I found a great source of music the other day. Or rather, I knew about it for a while but the other day I discovered that they had a client embedded in the default music player of Ubuntu (Rhythmbox) it has, at this point, approximately 100000 free titles in all genres and languages. Though I did notice a certain bias towards french and german music, but that might just have been the store focusing on european music since thats where I'm from. All the music is free and distributed under a creative commons copyright license.

The quality of the music is surprisingly good. I immediately found a french artist called amandine that I really liked, though I still have no idea what she is actually singing. Any frenchspeakers that would like to download her album and try?

Jamendo survives mostly on donations but the user is not required to donate to be able to download. There are no DRM restrictions so the music can be listened to on any device. I know I'm sounding like an ad for Jamendo but I just feel that when someone in the music busyness finaly does the right thing they need support. And who knows, you might find some music by some artist that is absolutely amazing and that you would have never found otherwise. The address is http://www.jamendo.com/

If free things make you nervous and you want to pay for something then you might want to visit http://www.magnatune.com/. They have a very small catalogue of handpicked music of very high quality where you can pick your own price (but you do have to pay something.) Their artists get a good deal since they get half the money you pay (as opposed to 2-5% with the four big labels) Oh and did I mention they have it written in their license that you are allowed to share the music you bought with up to three people! And they are not involved with the RIAA, which alone should make the user experience that much more pleasant.

There you are. Two great sites for discovering fantastic music that is not being played on the radio or sold in the record stores.

Summer in the city

Wow, things change fast! Lately the weather has gone from dreary and wet early spring/late winter to almost full on summer. Taking the bus to work is becoming an increasingly unpleasant experience (since the city is too cheap to invest in some good AC) and walking in the streets no longer require several insular layers and an umbrella.
And as always in Sweden the sun brings out the good mood in everyone. The first few days of sunshine it seemed like the population of the city doubled or tripled. And it's more or less impossible to feel down or miffed about anything.
All this business with sunshine and happy people milling about has put me in the mood of getting some summer music. Most of what I had was purged from my collection about a year ago when I decided it was time to become more... legal... in that department. I do have a nice little collection of good music. But most of it fits better with fall and winter. Listening to Kent in the blazing sunshine becomes quite a contrast. I'll have to pick up some of the old goodies like Gyllene tider, Joe Cocker, etc.

Do you have any good ideas for summer music to add to my playlist? Especially 60's and 70's music suggestions are welcome. Just leave a suggestion in the comments here.