Dave Holmes lists dozens of both obscure and well-known podsafe music resources at Dave’s Imaginary Sound Space.

Unfortunately it becomes extremely time consuming for podcasters to source available music and listen to it.

…

The sites I refer to here represent a tiny fraction but even so it’s clear to see the potential pool of music podcasters can draw from. It shows there’s a strong cultural movement that is rapidly taking advantage of new media technologies and confirms podcasting’s role as an important music delivery component.

Time consuming? Yeah — you could say that. I have been through over 4000 tracks over the last year. Around ten percent I have kept and only two percent have been given a 4+ rating in iTunes. Via the Creative Commons blog.

Not just MP3s at Disquiet, but also audiostreams and videos. I will probably track down their recommendations at one stage. Free ambient/electronica is not exactly hard to find, one for the backlog.

Dragnet Records

Dragnet Records is the home of the A-Frames (now signed to Sub Pop), The Dipers, The Vulvettes and a handful of other bands. Seven MP3 files are available. Dragnet Records is not a “real” label. All that means is we don’t want to release your demo. Although I came for the A-Frames, I fell for

• I’m A Man — Double Fudge. 60s garage rock (Kinks/Who) with handclapping, clocking in at under one minute! The opener for my next podcast.

© NRK.no.

DJ Friendly occasionally plays electronica shows based purely on free and legal mp3s (Norwegian Broadcasting). I discovered him today and will give him a listen (he just played tracks from the Chemical Brothers’ new album). There’s bound to be some gems on his playlists (electronic music being one of Norway’s strongholds; Røyksopp and Biosphere the top of our iceberg).

His show-page is in Norwegian only (advantage me), but DJ Friendly’s top-25 electronica legal MP3s for 2004 is understandable in any language.

The NRK.no radio player does not find DJ Friendly when I search for “friendly” (but I find the archives when searching for “DJ”). The playlists are a month out of date. A bit unfriendly, so a resource for hardcore electronica fans with lots of time on their hands.

This is where I hit my first taxonomy problem: where do I put DJ Friendly’s page? Is he an artist? He probably is (as a DJ), but this programme does not fall in the artist category. Is this an “mp3 site”? Not really. But to avoid navigation nigthmare I’ll stick to just “artists” and “mp3sites” for mp3 links. DJ Friendly goes into “mp3sites”.

Update 20050219: DJ Friendly’s February 2005 mp3 playlist. Some of the music seems to be in that grey legal area though; mashups and unauthorised remixes are included.

Initial post: Tue, 11 Jan 2005.

Download Punk — as it says on the tin. Albums containing free MP3s are clearly marked and so are the tracks themselves. No streaming preview (prelisten?). Find minor and major American punk bands (NOFX, Rancid) here.

© CNET.com.

Download.com has a huge selection of pointers to legal MP3s, and their staff have chosen their picks for 2004. I will go through the tracks to see if I find anything I like for a later podcast (even if one guy mentions Queen; open ears, open ears).

Download breaks the genre-puzzle into real fine pieces, so there are 28 genres just in “Metal”, some of them with several sub-genres (“Metal/Stoner Metal/Symphonic Black Metal” anyone?). A good resource, but no prelisten.