A month or so ago, I caught wind of a little project called Free All Music. At the time I thought it was a cool concept. Remove DRM? Sure. Free downloads of songs I actually listen to? Even better. So I signed up for the beta hoping that support for the project could make those magical promises come true. Well I just received my invite and I must say, I’m impressed.
So let’s start from the beginning. Free All Music set out with one goal in mind. To bring you popular music free to download and use in your favorite programs like iTunes. They are able to maintain business through an advertising. But we are not just talking adsense here, but rather a full video ad that you are required to watch before you allowed to download your tune. However they do soften the cruelty by allowing you to choose which ad you would like to watch. Naturally, I stay away from the annoying repetitive ads that I see constantly.
Of course there are rules that come along with this service. For one you are only allowed 5 downloads a week. While this might seem a little tight, it is $5 less you have to spend in iTunes or $20 less if you include the entire month.
When I first set up my account with FreeAllMusic, I was a little skeptical about the music choice. However, I was pleasantly surprised when the first song that I searched for successfully led to me downloading it for free. The process then repeated itself for the second, third, and even fourth songs I chose. So you could say I was satisfied.
As you can imagine, the quality is not what I would recommend for an audiophile as good as what you would see on the majority of the online retailers of music. Free All Music distributes their songs at 256kbps and many at 320kbps (thanks for the update). However, when the songs are free, so I am far from dissatisfied with the quality of the mp3s.
If you are someone who constantly shoves dollars into Apple’s wallet, I would recommend trying of FreeAllMusic. You can save a couple bucks and participate in a cool movement that I hope will take hold.
Hello, I'm part of the team at FreeAllMusic.com, I just want to point out that our songs are provided by the labels at mostly 256kbps, and with a large portion at 320kbps. Short of offering FLAC, we are providing the highest quality downloadable recordings being offered by the record labels for retail mp3s.
Hello,
I want to also mention that unlike other formats (WMA, FLAC etc.), MP3 files can't be encoded higher than 320kbps – there's no "lossless MP3", this is as high as these files can go. Mind you, most consumers buying iTunes music started at a 120kbps AAC, and even tho that's a better-sounding format than MP3, 120kbps AAC could be compared to 192kbps MP3 – but here's you're getting 256kbps and 320kbps, not bad.