With the music industry in disarray in the face of illegal downloads, musicians are finding their own ways to distribute their work. We all know about Radiohead giving their album away free, but what’s more exciting to me is growth of the Creative Commons licence. This goes one step further, and not only makes the music available free, but does away with copyright too.  That means you can use it in your own projects, remix it, and legally soundtrack your videos or podcasts with it. It’s a generous new approach to music, and something I’ve found very useful.

I mention it today because I’ve just stumbled across Nine Inch Nails’ 36-track instrumental album Ghosts I-IV, which they’re giving away under CC license. Moby has done something similar, with 76 tracks available on his mobygratis site, a mixture of unreleased tunes, b-sides, and album tracks from 18 and Hotel.

Other sites of note include Freesound for sound effects, Opsound for ambient music, and Kunstderfuge for Creative Commons classical music.