The Complete FREEGALMUSIC.COM Index For those of you who are unaware of it, and that would be most everyone, FREEGALMUSIC.COM is a new resource for downloading "free and legal" MP3 songs. This is not meant to be a primer on FREEGAL, but rather tips on how to maximize your potential benefits from the service. For basic information, read the FAQ's or use the HELP feature on the home page of the site. For more details, you can also find both a basic explanation on how to use it, and quite thorough details on trouble shooting problems at the addresses below: 1) http://www.madl.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=27&Itemid=186 2) https://www.auroragov.org/AuroraGov/Departments/LibraryAndCulturalServices/LibraryServices/ FindBooksAndMore/OnlineDatabases/449611?ssSourceNodeId=1961&ssSourceSiteId=621 This report can also be reached from www.http://www.earlyoldies.net . The information provided here has been obtained through my own personal experience in efforts to optimize the time spent and the results obtained. Still, none of that will do you any good unless you can find a library that offers FREEGAL near you. As an alternative, maybe you know somebody who doesn't use a computer but has a card at one that subscribes to the service, and will let you "borrow" their card number. Otherwise, there is no point in bothering to read this report. When they say "free," they mean with no monetary cost to the users. To my knowledge, the only way to gain direct access to this service is through library websites. How they got public libraries to loosen their purse strings in this economic downturn when they are all cutting back is beyond me, but more power to them for it. That is the main reason why I don't think that this will last, because it just doesn't make sense to me for local governments to pay for me to have free music. However, while it is there, I won't complain and will grab whatever I can get, and I strongly suggest that you do the same. When you buy albums, it's generally been my experience that, if you're lucky, you may get four or five songs you want, several you already have somewhere else, and the rest are just fillers you either never heard before or covers of other people's music. If you're really lucky, a couple of those extras may turn out to be ones you actually like, but you can't count on that always being the case. When you can get brand new undamaged music that consists of only things you really want with none of the waste, that seems to me to be a better investment than the other way. This is especially true if the total expense is $0, so I think this is an opportunity well worth utilizing. Just don't put it off until you miss out on it altogether if you can access it. As they say, "Make hay while the sun shines," because when it's gone, it's gone and, unlike the sun, it probably won't be coming back again. In the meantime though, while FREEGAL plans to expand this service around the world, for now it's mostly only people who live in large metropolitan areas who are going to even know about it. This is not intended to be a promo for the company, but rather something meant to ease the painful cost of using the service. Yes, that's what I said, "cost," because even though there is no charge to library patrons for it, it can be quite time consuming. For most people, time is the same as money, more or less. Although you will have to use your library website to access this music, you may find it beneficial to do your actual downloads somewhere other than on the library's own public computers. This is because most library systems seem to be set up to discourage people from doing downloads, and in some cases to bar them altogether. I guess they presume that would probably only be done illegally, and they do not wish to condone breaking laws. Therefore, it creates some kind of a crisis of conscience, or at least a conflict of interest, for them to be both endorsing and the source of providing such a service. The first time I tried to get my pittance of three songs per week doled out to me, it took most of my daily allotment of Internet access on their computer, and I was only successful in getting one song onto my flash drive. I had to come back a second time to get my next one, and then didn't get my third one until the next week. That meant that I had to use part of my second week's allotment to get all three songs from the first week. The computer kept telling me it was downloading the item, but then it only gave me a few seconds of it or nothing at all. At least FREEGAL tries to allow for such occurrences by giving you a second shot at getting the same song without charging you for it again, but that's not always enough. These problems occurred at both local libraries, but I've never had as much of a problem with this when accessing the service using computers anywhere else All of the MP3's are made at a high quality level of 256 KBPS, although some of the source recordings fail to measure up to that quality, especially in the live performances. Of course, that high level means that they take up more room to store on your media. For the average
The Complete Index of All Artists on FREEGALMUSIC.COM as of 11/24/11. Only the two page report has been updated on 4/4/12. The next update will eliminate the links within the listing as they cannot be used by most people anyway. That will make the size considerably smaller.
