Here's the challenge. Take one music enabled smartphone (the model required isn't that specific), head out onto the internet, and fill it up with music. With only two caveats... the first is that the music must be obtained at no cost; and the second is that the music obtained must be obtained legally.
Because of how the music business works, the large music labels are always looking to take their share of revenue, although in most cases they'll ask the web sites to guarantee a fixed income per track, and provide a large down-payment to the label to prove they can pay. This means that accessing 'big name' bands and artists for free is a pretty tough challenge, and something that hasn't really been solved yet.
You could argue that Nokia's Comes With Music program (and the similar program from Sony Ericsson) do solve this, but you're going to need to buy a specific phone, which will probably come with an increased price tag compared to the baseline model, so I don't think that counts. What does count on our quest for free tunes is Nokia's Music Store. Each week there is a free track you can download (direct from your phone if you like), although this is more a promotional item than a way to build up your collection.
Most music stores will have these promotional tracks, so if your stores are 'DRM Free' then there's every chance you'll be able to grab these tracks and drop them onto your handset. US-based readers will want to check out Amazon's MP3-based musical store for one such offer.
At this point I want to point out a music service that could well be the answer for many of you. We7, a UK-based start-up, has the weight of music visionary Peter Gabriel behind it, but it also has a viable business model that lets you download your music in MP3 format. It was a matter of a few clicks for me to find named bands such as Cab Calloway (ask Rafe), Megadeath (ask Ewan), Uriah Heap (ask Steve), and a lot more.
We7 has agreements in place with SonyBMG, Warner and EMI (so three of the four majors) plus a number of independents, which gives them access to these tracks. How does it all work? Rather simply, the MP3 you download for free has a ten second audio advert placed in front of it. After a month, you can re-download the track without the advert, for your long-term collection. In a sense you are still paying, but I think We7 have found the right balance here between users, advertisers and the labels (if you're in a hurry you can buy the MP3 without the advert, for around 70p per track). Not every track is available for this ad-supported download model, so there may be times when all you are offered is a live stream of the track, or a link to another music store such as Apple's iTunes.
[Aside: I'm not sure streaming counts as free music on your phone, mainly because it requires an active internet connection, and unless you are in a sensible Wi-Fi region, that could end up costing quite a bit. Your battery life also takes a very large hit, and it's not something you can do if you're on a plane or travelling the London underground. But if you're looking for a little personal radio on your desk at work, I'd recommend using the Last.FM client Mobbler (read my review here). Last.FM will take a look at all the music you play on your computer and phone, work out what sort of music you like, and create a personal radio station for you. Unfortunately you'll never quite be sure what music is coming up.]
Right, back to getting downloadable music, and as we've seen, mainstream music is an almost busted flush. You'll have a lot more luck looking towards up and coming artists who want you to listen to your music. The greatest challenge in the 21st century media market is not piracy, but obscurity.
With hundreds of thousands of bands out there, all with broadband, there's an almost infinite supply of music over every single genre possible. Bands with any sense are going to have MP3 files available for download from their web sites, but finding them is a little tricky. The obvious port of call is MySpace - I think every decent band on the planet (and S Club 7) has a MySpace page - and in their Flash-based music player you'll see the download link to any playing MP3 (assuming the band have this feature turned on).
Another similar site, which has a lot more focus on the bands as opposed to the MySpace friend culture is Pure Volume. Again, bands have profile pages, and the Flash player has download links for the music playing, but I find Pure Volume to be a much nicer site on the eye, and a lot easier to browse by the location of the bands or the genres they play in.
Finally, on the big web sites where indie bands host their own music, is the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/ ) which offers free hosting space to bands if their music is available under a creative commons license. It's not as easy to navigate or search through, but there is also a huge range of older music, and fans of classical music will probably want to browse here in the first instance before looking at other sites.
Finding legal and free music is possible, and as large as the internet is, the sites mentioned here are only a small sampling of those on offer. I'm sure people have their own personal favourites and it would be great if you could add them in the comments so we can all try them out.
(The Road To Online Music (Click Through for the Full Map)
In the near future, I don't see much changing in terms of obtaining music. Sites with new and innovative business ideas have to play by rules designed many years ago in an environment that just doesn't match up to what is on offer today. If you want to know what it is like, this account of the life (and mercy killing) of Muxtape is worth reading. While the music industry makes it difficult to find music and play it on our own devices without having to resort to hacks, the dark corners of the internet will continue to serve people's needs without asking too many questions.
I am glad that the online music scene does allow those of us who want to play fair to be able to do so, and that there are resources out there that don't require mortgaging your vinyl collection. Hopefully the next few years will see more innovation in the business models to push sites such as We7; more tools and better searching and recommendation engines to help independent bands on the social network sites; and major labels working together on projects such as Comes with Music.
For now though, there's more than enough resources to keep your music phone filled with ever changing content without emptying your wallet.
-- Ewan Spence, Sept 2008