I worked on the FMA back in the early days when it was still run out of the WFMU office.
There's some really killer stuff buried in there alongside some solid netlabel output from the teens. It was very actively curated in the beginning but it quickly became hard to find the good stuff and after a couple years of emphasis on promoting royalty-free music for film it kind of drifted away from its original mantra of "It's not just free music; it's good music".
Honestly kind of bummed with where the project landed, presumably sold for peanuts to a for-profit so they can use it for lead gen.
Thanks so much for what you did here! I love that site so much, because yes it had good music! And playlists and curators. I remember exactly where I was when I found out it would be shutting down.
Agreed it's all lead gen but they haven't ruined it too much yet at least and its still on
I run a soundscape/white noise website (https://ambiph.one) and used FMA to find some really great music for the radio stations, though I did have to do a lot of virtual crate-digging to find it - I found the discovery features very limited.
I had a bit more luck on Bandcamp, which lets artists use Creative Commons licences but strangely doesn't surface that at all as a search filter. I had to resort to searching for "some rights reserved" via Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Abandcamp.com+lofi+%2...
I was the lead software engineer on this project when it was conceived, designed, and built. The people at WFMU were so great to work with and absolutely dedicated to getting it right.
I don't know much about its current incantation, but I appreciate that the owning company kept the original "About" page with my name and the team I worked with to make it happen.
It's one of the projects I'm most proud of. Also, sadly (in a personal legacy sense), one of the few projects I've worked on in the past quarter century that is still standing.
Awesome! Much of the (non-technical) WFMU team who worked on this ended up landing in product and eng roles later in their careers... and I suspect working on this project was an influential experience for many of them (it certainly was for me). Thanks for your help in making it happen!
I could not agree more! Some of my very-most-favorite tracks ever, ultimately got to me via https://www.pouet.net and by being a demo soundtrack!! Demo music utterly rules!!!!
Especially so if you're into electronic styles, and even occasionally on a far less tech-y vibe too!
Some examples of less tech-y: "Number One Another One" by Fairlight & CNCD. "Ix" and "Assembly 2004 Invitation" by Moppi from a long time ago - these both have just such utterly-brilliant but very-chill music! And "Track One" by Fairlight too, and there are really loads of other things like these!
Demoscene tunes are not exclusively about bangin' techno, nor tracker-mod-arpeggios ('chiptune-sound') nor synth-leads a-la PM/Future Crew! In my opinion I think demoscene totally does make some of the best tracks in those areas though! (even basically defines the genres!).
I have a whole 'demoscene chill' playlist that I sometimes listen to while I go to sleep! There's loads of 'ambient' tunes out there in the demoscene amongst all the techno!
Another great resource is the ODGProd catalog. As I gather, everything they publish is free to download for personal consumption. It's a specific niche of music, so you won't just find anything on there, but if someone likes modern dub, reggae and closely related genres, they can be a goldmine. While the tunes are downloadable, they also publish on major music streaming sites too, and have a live stream on YouTube as well, so it's easy to get into.
Great website. I discovered a lot of incredible artists and since they have generous creative commons licences, I was able to use them in some games I made. Finding music that ties the experience together is really satisfying.
Not all, there is some CC-BY and CC-BY-SA in there. I think you can search by license type, at least you used to be able to. Not aware of any bulk download.
I worked on the FMA back in the early days when it was still run out of the WFMU office.
There's some really killer stuff buried in there alongside some solid netlabel output from the teens. It was very actively curated in the beginning but it quickly became hard to find the good stuff and after a couple years of emphasis on promoting royalty-free music for film it kind of drifted away from its original mantra of "It's not just free music; it's good music".
Honestly kind of bummed with where the project landed, presumably sold for peanuts to a for-profit so they can use it for lead gen.
Thanks so much for what you did here! I love that site so much, because yes it had good music! And playlists and curators. I remember exactly where I was when I found out it would be shutting down.
Agreed it's all lead gen but they haven't ruined it too much yet at least and its still on
I run a soundscape/white noise website (https://ambiph.one) and used FMA to find some really great music for the radio stations, though I did have to do a lot of virtual crate-digging to find it - I found the discovery features very limited.
I had a bit more luck on Bandcamp, which lets artists use Creative Commons licences but strangely doesn't surface that at all as a search filter. I had to resort to searching for "some rights reserved" via Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Abandcamp.com+lofi+%2...
Wow this is really awesome. Nice job!
Hey, love your site. Thanks.
Your website is amazing, great job
I was the lead software engineer on this project when it was conceived, designed, and built. The people at WFMU were so great to work with and absolutely dedicated to getting it right.
I don't know much about its current incantation, but I appreciate that the owning company kept the original "About" page with my name and the team I worked with to make it happen.
It's one of the projects I'm most proud of. Also, sadly (in a personal legacy sense), one of the few projects I've worked on in the past quarter century that is still standing.
Awesome! Much of the (non-technical) WFMU team who worked on this ended up landing in product and eng roles later in their careers... and I suspect working on this project was an influential experience for many of them (it certainly was for me). Thanks for your help in making it happen!
Some months ago I gathered a sizable, mighty fine offline music collection from https://netlabels.org/electronic-music/ and https://files.scene.org/browse/music/ — plenty of "duds" in both too, but that's just called subjective taste preferences and personal collection curation =)
Related to scene.org, https://www.pouet.net/ is also a nice resource for good music.
I could not agree more! Some of my very-most-favorite tracks ever, ultimately got to me via https://www.pouet.net and by being a demo soundtrack!! Demo music utterly rules!!!!
Especially so if you're into electronic styles, and even occasionally on a far less tech-y vibe too!
Some examples of less tech-y: "Number One Another One" by Fairlight & CNCD. "Ix" and "Assembly 2004 Invitation" by Moppi from a long time ago - these both have just such utterly-brilliant but very-chill music! And "Track One" by Fairlight too, and there are really loads of other things like these!
Demoscene tunes are not exclusively about bangin' techno, nor tracker-mod-arpeggios ('chiptune-sound') nor synth-leads a-la PM/Future Crew! In my opinion I think demoscene totally does make some of the best tracks in those areas though! (even basically defines the genres!).
I have a whole 'demoscene chill' playlist that I sometimes listen to while I go to sleep! There's loads of 'ambient' tunes out there in the demoscene amongst all the techno!
People from Fairlight were at the demoparty where I met my wife for the second time. They're nice.
Here's an old favourite demo of mine that ought to be easy listening to most:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50131
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_H68hQvkcY
Jamendo.com used to be a great place to find free music.
There's still music,but the site design has sucked too much for me to use it for about 10 years now.
In the past, I used this one too: https://musopen.org/
They got some rockin' tunes there. +1
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Seawolf/Seawolf__Sex_Demo...
Nargaroth is fash, here's a good one without that taint: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Mutilation_Rites/Live_on_...
Wow, that is better. Nice find.
Very nice indeed
That delivers on demonic sounding
Another great resource is the ODGProd catalog. As I gather, everything they publish is free to download for personal consumption. It's a specific niche of music, so you won't just find anything on there, but if someone likes modern dub, reggae and closely related genres, they can be a goldmine. While the tunes are downloadable, they also publish on major music streaming sites too, and have a live stream on YouTube as well, so it's easy to get into.
Great website. I discovered a lot of incredible artists and since they have generous creative commons licences, I was able to use them in some games I made. Finding music that ties the experience together is really satisfying.
Is this in any way connected to the archive.org netlabel branch?
I believe theyre mirrored there now. Browsing and discovery is much nicer on FMA in my opinion
It's good to see this! All CC-BY-NC, apparently. Is there a bulk download?
The Internet Archive mirrors a subset of the collection here: https://archive.org/details/freemusicarchive
IIRC this is a point in time snapshot from some years back, but likely sanitized of any tracks that may have more restrictive licenses.
Not all, there is some CC-BY and CC-BY-SA in there. I think you can search by license type, at least you used to be able to. Not aware of any bulk download.