Look no further!

After spending over a month hunting for the best pieces of (legally free) music online, I have now compiled a top-100 with the best of the best promotional tracks for you! I sampled over 4,000 songs from official label sites, band sites, promotional & serious music magazines sites. I ended up downloading 500 songs, and below I present you my top-100 (in my own music taste, of course). To save you the trouble, 95% of the music below can be classified as “alternative”. I wish more bands would offer 1-2 free mp3s per album for promotional purposes, as the idea totally works (and an editorial on the subject).

Disclaimer: No songs are stored on this server, and no copyright infringement is intended. The sole purpose of this article is informational. I did my best possible to make sure that the songs linked are legal, stored on official sites or on music/promotional sites that have the required distribution rights. If you represent one of the labels or artists found below and would like me to stop linking to your songs for some reason, please contact me.

Now, back to the meat. Have a careful listen on my No 1 song. You will either “get it” and fall in love with it, or you will outright loathe it (since it’s pretty experimental). The rest of the songs are much more conventional, and definitely “catchy”. If you like some of the artists below, don’t forget to support them by buying their music. Anyways, happy listening!

1. Cloud Cult – The Tornado Lessons
2. Fleet Foxes – Mykonos
3. Cloud Cult – Everybody here is a Cloud
4. Blitzen Trapper – Gold for Bread
5. Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer
6. Band Of Horses – The Funeral
7. Jane Vain and the Dark Matter – C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang
8. Tokyo Police Club – Nature of the experiment
9. Loquat – Swingset Chain
10. Midlake – Roscoe
11. Wiretree – Big Coat
12. Matti Paalanen – Here comes the rain
13. Blitzen Trapper – Furr
14. MGMT – Time to pretend
15. Malbec – Pictures In Magazines
16. People in Planes – If You Talk Too Much
17. Seabird – Rescue
18. Peter Bjorn & John – Let’s Call it Off
19. The New Frontiers – Black Lungs
20. Sin Fang Bous – Catch The Light
21. The Coral Sea – More Than You Know
22. Rock Kills Kid – Paralyzed
23. Blitzen Trapper – Wild Mountain Nation
24. The Verve – Lucky Man
25. Great Northern – Houses
26. Longwave – No Direction
27. Ag Silver – Can’t You See
28. The Hives – Hate to Say I Told You So
29. Ratatat – Wildcat
30. Paper Route – Empty house
31. The Postal Service – Such Great Heights
32. The Strokes – Last Nite
33. Aberdeen City – God Is Going To Get Sick Of Me
34. Ag Silver – Now Or Never
35. Blitzen Trapper – Crushing the Wheat
36. Alibi Tom – Fire
37. Anberlin – A day late
38. Anna Ternheim – To Be Gone
39. Aqualung – Brighter Than Sunshine
40. Band Of Horses – No One’s Gonna Love You
41. Barcelona – It’s About Time
42. Beat & Path – Goodbye beautiful day
43. Malbec – Home
44. The Sounds – Painted By Numbers
45. Early Day Miners – All Harm
46. Blind Divine – Something Magical
47. Seabird – Let Me Go On
48. Bloc Party – Signs (Armand Van Helden Remix)
49. Bowerbirds – In Our Talons
50. Cage the Elephant – Tiny Little Robots
51. Calexico – History of lovers
52. Chad VanGaalen – City of Electric Light
53. Chance – Independent
54. Cloud Cult – When Water Comes to Life
55. Bat For Lashes – Horse and I
56. Blonde Redhead – 23
57. La Rocca – This Life
58. 13ghosts – Beyond Door
59. The Whip – Trash
60. Art In Manila – Set The Woods on Fire
61. Asobi Seksu – Thursday
62. Malbec – World Cup
63. The Coral Sea – In This Moment’s Time
64. El Goodo – Feel So Fine
65. Elk City – Los Cruzados
66. Faunts – Memories of places we’ve never been
67. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
68. Living Things – Let It Rain
69. Longwave – There’s a Fire
70. The Starlight Mints – Inside of me
71. Orenda Fink – Bloodline
72. Panic at the disco – The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide
73. Malbec – Story Of A Broken Heart
74. Cold War Kids – Hang me up to dry
75. Morning State – Oh Yeah
76. My Robot Friend – Robot High School
77. Halomobilo – Shallow
78. Band Of Horses – Is There a Ghost
79. The Rosebuds – Get Up Get Out
80. Station Victoria – All In Your Head
81. The A-Sides – Diamonds
82. The Raveonettes – Dead sound
83. Ben Skoglund – I Won’t Tell
84. The Cloud Room – Hey now now
85. The Comas – Come my sunshine
86. We Are Wolves – Fight and Kiss
87. Woodhands – I Wasnt Made For Fighting
88. Peter Bjorn & John – Young Folks
89. The Rantings of EVA – Infrared
90. Danger Is My Middle Name – Heroes and Underdogs
91. David Vandervelde – Jacket
92. The Republic Tigers – Buildings & Mountains
93. The Rosebuds – Leaves do fall
94. Quiet Company – Seal My Fate
95. The Voyeurs – Things People Say
96. Portugal. The Man – People Say
97. Vanderveen – Weekend Full of Weekends
98. We Are Scientists – Inaction
99. The Submarines – You Me and the Bourgeoisie
100. The Rosebuds – Life Like

And a last one for the road: Transplant’s “Diamonds and Guns“.

Updated January 2010 with new (and legal to the best of my knowledge) findings!

1. Arcade fire – Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
2. Blitzen Trapper – Sci-fi Kid
3. Phoenix – 1901
4. Portugal. The Man – Shades
5. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home
6. Paper Route – Empty House
7. Living Things – Mercedes Marxist
8. Low vs Diamond – Heart Attack
9. Metric – Gold Guns Girls
10. The Dark Romantics – Another Song for Another Night
11. Dead Man’s Bones – Pa Pa Power
12. Portugal. The Man – And I
13. Run The Red Light – Brave New World
14. Scissors for Lefty – Nickels & Dimes
15. The Decemberists – Engine Driver
16. El Perro Del Mar – God Knows
17. TV on the Radio – Staring At The Sun
18. Great Northern – The Middle
19. Laura Veirs – Wide Eyed, Legless
20. Scissors for Lefty – Ghetto Ways
21. Friendly Fires – Jump in the Pool
22. Denison Witmer – Life Before Aesthetics
23. TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me
24. Vampire Weekend – Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
25. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

And one more for the road: Fever Ray – Keep The Streets Empty For Me

The following “garbage” bug happens once every 20 alerts or so from AT&T after I hang up on a phone call (the bug could totally be AT&T’s of course, but I smell it’s the iPhone’s). It happens both with firmware 2.x and 3.x. I don’t remember it happening with firmware 1.x. English, French and Greek are enabled in the keyboard layouts — if that helps.