Muzic

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Online resources for discovering and downloading new music appear to be endless. And once you have discovered one that has everything you want, it's gone. They come and go like the seasons. Some are legal, most are not.

The best way to keep up with the latest single or album releases, tour dates, and the hottest new bands are social music networks.

Here is a website that focuses entirely on what's hot right now and where to get cool new tunes for free.

We tune in and analyze this tidal wave of musical conversation to help you find songs, artists, and music bloggers that you want to know about. We want to help you discover new artists you'll support in the future.

Sound good? Let's have a look at how Muzic works.

Browsing for music...

When you're not logged in the start page shows a tag cloud of "artists happening now", i.e. artists that have a lot of free stuff out now. You can zoom over to "songs happening now" and "bloggers on our radar" by clicking the small buttons at the bottom of the tag cloud.

Muzic lets you search for artists, songs, or bloggers. But to discover new bands, "popular tags" or "songs by genre" are a better starting point.

The results page is a list of posts that match your query. Posts are created by the bloggers that provide the free MP3 downloads. Each post contains details about the song and a link back to the the site where it was posted originally.

Click on the song name to launch the song's card, which contains some more information, as well as lists of more songs from the same blog and all songs from that artist below the card.

Downloading mp3s...

Once you found an interesting song, click > Get Song in its bottom left. You will be redirected to the original source. Muzic will stay with you though, as it is minimized to a small bar at the top of the page.

Now you can either download the song from the respective blog or from Muzic's top navigation bar. If you decide for Muzic, > right-click the green > Download MP3 button and select > Save Link As... from the menu. Now select a destination and you're ready to save the song.

To return to Muzic, click the << back link in its navigation bar at the top.

In case an artist uploaded a song to Muzic, you can directly download the MP3 from the respective song card. Uploaded songs can also be "previewed", i.e. listened to in full through the Muzic player, which launches in a separate frame at the bottom of the page.

The community...

When you're logged in you can add songs to your faves, follow other listeners or artists that have uploaded songs, and update your profile.

In all honesty, the profile features and community aspects are a little underdeveloped. Unless I missed out on something important, there is no real exchange between users. You can see what others added as their faves and follow them, but that's about it. On the other hand that isn't too bad. After all, you're in for the latest free music and not for even more distractions.

Hungry for more free music?

What are you listening to these days?

Image credits: CMSeter