I've been spending a fair chunk of time looking for music for the soon-to-be-released The Where-Is-Your-God,-Now? Burger short film. Instead of being lazy and raping the Pitchfork front page for something cool, I've been sifting through a few of the of Creative Commons music websites. My two favorites are Opsound and Jamendo.
Opsound is the slicker of the two with a crisp, clean layout and focus on simplicity. They certainly keep it interesting however with genre links to esoteric offerings such as "circuit bending" and "psychogeography". It's really a simple aggregator of existing websites housing free music (last.fm, archive.org, geocities (?!) ) and makes it far easier to seek and click. Sadly, there is no forums or social aspect to site so you are really on your own in your explorations. However, if you are like me and can spend hours clicking on anything with no apparent direction or destination, Opsound will keep your ears filled with new, wild and bewildering sounds for a long time.
Jamendo is a purpose-built, destination property that bills itself as a community as much as it does a music resource. With over 366,000 members and a vibrant member forum, Jamendo feels alive and bustling. And, as it has a majority European user-base, the musical selection is more, well, foreign. (The French put out some awesome lounge music - Ed) Jamendo also allows you to download and/all tracks (MP3) directly, sports an on-deck player, offers widget code for your blog or website and allows you to create profiles and playlists.
Apart from being a great resource for finding music for your next student film/video art project, these sites are also worth a listen to simply find music that you may like. Lord knows that there are plenty of websites to help you find new music, but, c'mon...isn't half the fun had in trying to out-obscure someone?
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