Guide to Free Music Online

Free online music used to be like the Wild West of the Internet with services like Napster dominating the field during the bubble. Now, as the Internet has matured, new models for distributing music are coming together.

But who's going to pay for all this free, legal music? A common answer to this pesky question is advertising, but some justify it as a marketing cost and some are still silent on how exactly they'll make this "new" business model work.

But the important part is that you can take advantage of their generosity right now by downloading or listening to as much music as you can handle.

The Complete(?) Guide to Free Online Music

1. We7: Free downloads with a 10 second advertisement inserted at the beginning of every track. Restrictions: None.

2. Lala: Listen to unlimited free music on-demand. Restrictions: Dead for now.

3. SpiralFrog: Free, ad-supported music downloads. Restrictions: DRM, Canada-only.

4. Ruckus: Free unlimited music downloads. 2.5 million tracks in library. Restrictions: DRM, college students only.

5. Slacker: Play music on-demand along with music recommendations. Restrictions: US only. Review.

6. Pandora: Streaming music recommendation service. Restrictions: US only, not on-demand.

7. Last.fm: Streaming music recommendation service. Restrictions: Not on-demand.

8. eMusic: Limited to 25 MP3 downloads during free trial period. 2 million song library. Restrictions: Limited downloads.

9. Qtrax: Unlimited downloads and song plays with contextual ads. P2P-based client forthcoming. Restrictions: DRM(?).

10. Playble: A free music download service from The Pirate Bay. Forthcoming. Restrictions: None. Review.

11. Broadclip: Like TiVo for Internet radio stations. Schedule recordings of your favorite music and download them later as MP3s. Free software download required. Restrictions: None.

12. iLike: Discover new music through your friends. Share your music library. Download free MP3s of new artists. Restrictions: None.

13. MyStrands: Downloadable application to tag, share, manage, and discover new music. Restrictions: None.

14. iJigg: Digg for music. Rate, stream, and download free music. Restrictions: None.

15. SoundPedia: Listen to free streaming music. Create and share playlists. Restrictions: None.

16. Haystack: Social network for sharing and discovering new music. Restrictions: None.

17. Deezer: Free streaming online music. On-demand. Formerly called BlogMusik. Restrictions: None..

New!

18. Seeqpod: MP3 search engine that lets you play music that you find in your browser. Restrictions: None.

19. Jango: Free site that lets you play streaming music on-demand along with related artists. Sticks to more popular music selections than Pandora. Restrictions: None.

20. Jamendo: Features free downloadable music from independent artists released under the Creative Commons. Feel free to tip the artists if you like their music. Restrictions: None.

21. The Hype Machine: Listen to music gathered from blogs around the world. Restrictions: None.