Music you can hear free — and legally

Music is the easiest media to enjoy legally for nothing. Between free tiers and genuinely open archives, you'll never run out.

Free listening

• Ad-supported free tiers — Spotify, YouTube and others let you play enormous catalogues free, funded by ads.
• Bandcamp — huge amounts of pay-what-you-want and name-your-price music straight from artists; discovering new acts here directly supports them.
• Free Music Archive & netlabels — Creative-Commons tracks you can legally stream and download, great for anything you want to reuse too.

Deeper cuts for the curious

• The Internet Archive's Live Music Archive — tens of thousands of legally shared concert recordings (the Grateful Dead alone run to thousands of shows).
• Public-domain and archival recordings — early jazz, classical and historical audio, free to download.
• Internet radio — endless curated stations by genre and mood, no account.

If you want to own it: buying from Bandcamp or the major stores, or directly from the artist, supports them most and is yours to keep.