Where to Download Free iPod Videos
Free and Legal Places to Get iPod, iPod nano Videos
- Channel Frederator offers up some of the best short animations anywhere.
- PodGuide.tv
- Channel 101 and Channel 102 offer up some brilliant downloadable shows.
- The iTunes Music Store's podcast section is loaded with free videos.
- The Chronic..What?..cles of Narnia. Need I say more?
- The Internet Archive is great when you are fond of old videos and films like Santa Claus (versus the devil). But unfortunately, the Archive's 256Kb MPEG4 Downloads are not iPod-ready as previously thought providing compatible format but unplayable audio (new iPods included). You're probably better off downloading the MPEG2 videos anyway. The 265Kb files were pretty low-res and it's a snap to re-encode the MPEG2 files for your iPod with Video Converter for Mac.
- Channel Frederator is like The Cartoon Network without commercials.
Illegal Places to Get iPod Videos
You're probably familiar with most of these options, but if you aren't then they're new to you!
- Search the BitTorrent network for iPod.
- Check Podtropolis
- The Pirate Bay!
- Seriously, you should probably stick to LEGAL sources for iPod videos.
Downloading Free Music Without Fear
3hive.com: A great blog-style site with free iPod-compatible songs offered by record artists and labels aiming to entice full-album purchases. The songs in this site are in saved in MP3 generally ranging between 128kbps and 192kbps in bit-rates .
Epitonic.com: Provides highly professional, artist-focused presentation of free digital music downloads in MP3 format, with biographical details and short previews for songs across a narrow collection of genres.
Freekidsmusic.com: Offers a large amount of free songs in MP3 for young listeners. So does its sister site Freechildrensmusic.com,
Garageband.com: Not to be confused with Apple's music creation application of the same name, Garageband.com collects and provides popularity charts of independent music, featuring over 125,000 bands.
MFiles.co.uk: Provides free downloads of well-known classical music in MP3 format.
MP34U.com: Provide individual free songs sorted by genre with a clean, professionally designed interface - great user experience. It's available to pick and post only music one like by selecting by site "sources".
Music.download.com: The music-dedicated expansion of popular software download site Download.com gives free full-length MP3 songs with all major genres, even including Spoken Word, Children's, Comedy, Folk and Religious tracks. Most tracks are indie.
PureVolume: Fans can download more than 100,000 free songs here.
RCRDLBL: an exclusively-online record label providing free exclusive music in MP3 from emerging artists.
And if you can't find the song on these free sites mentioned above, you can pay to get it on Apple's iTunes Store or Amazon's MP3 Store. Though these aren't as cheap as some of the questionable international sites listed in the prior section, they are an entirely safe and legal way to get access to over a million songs.
Free Music with a Catch: Ad-supported Sites
Years ago, the most common source of free music for your listening enjoyment was the radio. Radio stations used to broadcast music from various artists in a wide range and listeners needn't to pay for it but advertisers did.
Recently, some web sites have begun to offer a similar business model: You can download free music, but this is either provided by clients or web sites with proactive advertising which is opposed to the standard advertising on a great amount of current web sites, or the music tracks themselves contain brief advertising spots placed at the beginning of each track.
Unfortunately, most of the sites that offer these types of services, such as SpiralFrog (for U.S. college students) only offer their downloads in a Windows Media Audio DRM-protected format that is incompatible with iTunes or the iPod (or ironically, even the Microsoft Zune). Further, these tracks may not be burned to a CD. These sites are therefore generally of no value to iPod owners.
A notable exception is We7, a UK-based ad-supported site whose founders include Peter Gabriel. We7 provides downloads in a DRM-free 192kbps MP3 format, with the catch being that each track has a 6-12 second advertisement grafted onto the front-end. Ad-free tracks may be purchased outright, and We7 also offers a credit system whereby you can convert some of your tracks to ad-free versions once they have been in your library for 28 days or more. Since these tracks are in an open MP3 format, they can be played on just about any digital media player available.
Although primarily a paid subscription music service, eMusic.com provides a free ad-supported music service as well. In this case, the advertising is directed at the user via the ALOT toolbar which is installed in your web browser (compatible with IE6, IE7 and FireFox 2 only).
Downloading Free Podcasts: Radio for your iPod, iPod nano.
In addition to free music for your iPod (iPod touch 4G, new iPod nano, new iPod shuffle, iPod classic etc.) , you can also download "Podcasts," short radio-style programs produced by individuals and companies around the world. Many of these podcasts include music selections, and some are even dedicate to showcasing independent artists and providing music commentary and review.
While podcasts used to be organized in several independent podcast directories out on the Internet, the Apple iTunes Store now provides a catalog of podcasts available to subscribe directly for free. There are both audio and video podcasts covering a wide range of topics. Basically, anybody can create his own prodcast and make it "on the air" via iTunes, whenever he wanna say anything on a regular basis.
A selection of music-specific podcasts can be found right in iTunes in the Music Podcasts Directory, which offers a comprehensive podcasts selection of music-related from traditional radio stations, music reviewers, and even directly from both small independent and more mainstream artists.
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