

Ask HN: Cheaply and legally filling 40 mp3 players for good cause - juiceandjuice

My best friend works at a residential treatment center for troubled youth across an entire spectrum of problems, ages 13-17. She asked me what is the best cheap and legal way to put music on 40 mp3 players today. I told her to just buy a bunch of mp3s once and load them on all the devices (maybe $300?). Is there any other options or ideas? She says they are not iPods, for what it's worth.
======
qohen
Might be time-consuming, but it shouldn't be too hard to find enough material
to fill up an MP3 player, assuming you don't need the music to be top-40/name-
brand/etc.

Some ideas:

* Amazon has free MP3 samplers (and a few free albums even) and gives away free MP3 songs -- this link should get most of them:

[http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A318774...](http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A318774011%2Cp_n_feature_browse-
bin%3A625150011)

* There are bands that give away free albums (and songs) -- a couple of good ones that I like (indie rock):

\-- The Jane Anchor's "The Second Wave" (and an EP also) is available here:

<http://larklanerecords.bandcamp.com/>

\-- Canterbury's "Thank You" is available here:

<http://www.canterburythankyou.com/>

\-- Harvey Danger (whom you may remember from their hit, "Flagpole Sitta")
released their 3rd album for free--it's well done:

<http://harveydanger.com/downloads/>

(Sadly, Coldplay stopped giving away the concert album they'd been giving away
for 3 years...but perhaps there are other popular bands who have things like
that.)

* There are lists curated by others:

\-- Forbes had a list of Best Free Albums last year, might be worth getting
some of those:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/leorgalil/2011/12/13/the-best-
fr...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/leorgalil/2011/12/13/the-best-free-albums-
of-2011/)

\-- And there are things like this:

[http://goodbadunknown.blogspot.com/2009/02/11-best-free-
albu...](http://goodbadunknown.blogspot.com/2009/02/11-best-free-albums-on-
internet.html)

* There's also the Internet Archive which has all sorts of stuff, from a truckload of Grateful Dead concert recordings to stuff in many, many genres, which can be searched for.

<http://archive.org>

For example, this indie rock is in French--I barely understand a word of it--
but it's such ear candy:

<http://archive.org/details/HappyHouse_Archives2002_2004>

Or -- here -- have a 400 minute compilation of House music:

<http://archive.org/details/Frosty2007Housebesuch>

* There are loads of "net labels" that give away their catalogs -- lots of electronic music and other stuff--this seems like a good place to check into that:

<http://netlabels.org/>

* There's Jamendo, which has 55K free albums in a variety of genres:

<http://www.jamendo.com/>

* There used to be a great blog tracking stuff like this called Free Albums Galore which disappeared suddenly.

Thankfully it's available in pieces on archive.org.

First of all, the list of albums from A-Z is available, which isn't super
helpful if you don't know what you're looking for, but the classical and jazz
stuff will stand out and some of the artists, genres etc. may be identifiable:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110724125302/http://freealbums....](http://web.archive.org/web/20110724125302/http://freealbums.blogsome.com/album-
directory-a-z/)

(Also helpful for finding stuff I once found previously but forgot the name
of).

But the commentary is on the albums is what made it -- so it might be worth
checking out the blog itself (in monthly pieces) in archive.org.

Bit of a pain to have to go after each month individually (and then to
translate the album links into non-archive.org links, and not all the links
will prove to be active, but whatever).

Not that everything will be to one's taste or great, but there are some gems
in there if one is willing to look (like that Happy House stuff listed above):

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110724124826/http://freealbums....](http://web.archive.org/web/20110724124826/http://freealbums.blogsome.com/)

Tack on YYYY/MM to see each month going back to 2005/07, e.g.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110724124826/http://freealbums....](http://web.archive.org/web/20110724124826/http://freealbums.blogsome.com/2010/05)

* Still active is the Free Music Archive:

<http://freemusicarchive.org>

* What's that? You want some classical too? Sure:

\- <http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=1>

\- <http://www.blockmrecords.org/bach/> \-- this guy's recording all of Bach's
organ works and making them available for free.

And, as always, the Internet Archive is your friend -- search by composer,
piece, type of piece, etc.: e.g.

<http://archive.org/details/Mozart_Symphony_40>

And, you know, it wouldn't kill the kids to actually learn something, would
it? Lots of podcasts out there, free for the taking, like this stuff -- just
load up Firefox w/DownloadThemAll and go to town (or scrape the MP3's w/cURL
or whatever):

\-- <http://12byzantinerulers.com/>

\-- <http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/>

Probably helpful in this regard:

\-- <http://www.podcastdirectory.com/>

\-- <http://www.openculture.com/freelanguagelessons>

That should be enough, though, of course, no doubt there's loads more out
there...

------
jgeorge
If it's for a charity, maybe contact websites like BandCamp and see if they
have a way for artists to "donate" music for your cause? There are a couple of
those sorts of "pay what you think it's worth" sites out there, for charitable
work I would think you could swing some kind of permission to buy music
cheaply (or have the artist donate it) and allow you to put it on those
players. It's not like you're going to be sharing it outside of this program
or otherwise redistributing it...

------
jnar
I doubt any record or distribution company will ever sue your friend for
downloading music and using it with troubled kids. Sorry, i know you expect
smart replies on HN but i'd just go with Torrents copy music on mp3s. The
whole legal thing regarding mp3 is so wrong and this is the perfect example

~~~
jgeorge
I actually don't doubt that one bit. I don't think they would think twice
about suing if they found out.

------
thirdstation
SXSW Distributes hundreds of mp3's every year before the festival. Not all are
great and not all are PG-13 but they are free and legal to download.

Torrents here: <http://www.sxswtorrent.com/>

