2004 / September 10^th/ Free music. No, really.

Now, I don’t know how many of you are aware of this, but there is free music all over the net. Legitimately free. You see, while there is the open source community for computers, there’s a taping community for music.

Taping concerts has been around for a very long time. Ever see those guys at concerts with mics sticking up in the air? Well those mics happen to cost more than your car. Ouch. For years, taping was always just that - tape. People traded cassettes and eventually CDs of different concerts around.

The good news is that technology and great ideas have come together in a wonderful fashion the past few years. With the ease of taping from a soundboard, recordings have gotten drastically better. Damn near studio quality in fact. And then the lovely folks over at the archive came in with the resources to pull something great together. I give you: The Live Music Archive.

Here you can find recordings of dozens of great bands. All for free, on fast servers. The shows are generally recorded through mics in the crowd or SBD feeds. The shows are categorized by band and show date. You even read reviews on the shows! It’s a great way to follow your favorite band. Click “Browse Bands in the Live Music Archive” and start your obsession today! All the music is 100% legal and free. Plus you get to hear songs you might not otherwise hear unless you went to a show. Bonus!

There’s always a catch. Always.

Unfortunately the shows are big. Really big. We’re talking nearly a gig a show. Why is this? Well the people in the tape-trading community are really big on loseless audio, meaning no audible compression. So you have to download the shows in .shn or .flac (loseless compression formats) and then decode them to .wav, and the convert them to MP3.

Lucky for you I’ve come up with a small guide to help you on your way.

Get the show

Go over, and browse the archive to find a band you like, or might like. Click on their name.

You’ll be presented with a page that gives you a few options. You have the most recent show uploaded to the archive, the most popular show and an assortment of years to choose from. I chose Guster a recent favorite. I wanted to download their most popular show, which happens to be August 16th, 2003 at Radio City Music Hall in New York, NY.

Now you come to a page that can be quite daunting at first, but after time becomes more usable. On the left you have some basic stats for the show along with the links to download. If you click “Loseless” you’ll start downloading immediately through your browser. Generally, I prefer FTP. It’s easier to resume paused transfers - you choose. Sometimes shows will be offered in MP3 or OGG format. If that is the case there will be “Hi-Fi” or “Lo-Fi” links below Loseless, although loseless will almost always be offered. Oh, and for the record .shnf stands for .shn folder. Took me a while to figure that one out.

I’ve got the show - but I can’t play it!

So you just spent the past decade (if you’re on dialup) downloading this show and it wont even play in WinAmp. Lame.

Head over to eTree for all the tools you’ll need to decode this .shn. Go to the software section and get the mkw Audio Compression tool. Yes, it decompresses .shn. Follow the instructions on that page to install the program.

Now we’re in business! Open up the mkw Audio Tool and it will present you with a nice little window to drop things in. Drag those .shn’s into the window and they should be automatically converted to .wav (this may take a few minutes). Awesome!

Now all you have to do is convert the .wav into .mp3. I generally like to use cdex for this. Just use your favorite program. Now you’ve got a whole show full of MP3’s!

Some Recommendations

Those of you with a thirst for music and a never-ending hard drive might want some recommendations, so here are mine.

• Guster - 8/16/03
• Superjam - 6/23/02
• O.A.R. - 8/30/04
• Any Garage-a-Trois

There are so many more, but honestly I just don’t have the time to look through them. So many great bands on there. And what are you to loose? The time it takes to listen to the show? It’s way worth it.

Happy downloading folks! (Legally)

1. 

   Benjamin

   September 12^th | #

   This is along the lines of the sites out there that provide free indie music to download. It’s refreshing to hear obscure, talented artists among a mash of mainstream and common bands.

   For instance, today, I downloaded DJ Dangermouse’s The Grey Album, a mix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatle’s self-titled, but colloquially named The White Album. Though I’m not a big hiphop fan (mainstream hiphop sucks), this sounds promising.

2. 

   carnell

   August 2^nd | #

   i love b5 music

3. 

   Tonya Brown

   November 28^th | #

   I would like to listen to all sorts of music.

4. 

   Alicson

   December 10^th | #

   Really awesome. Thank you.

Name

Email (will not be published)

Website (optional)