Frequently Asked Questions

What is Free Albums Galore?

Free Albums Galore is a full-album “mp3 blog” for listeners of eclectic music.

What makes Free Albums Galore special?

Four things, as I see it:
1. I post only complete albums, not individual or scattered tracks.
2. I post only albums with permanent off-site hosting, unlike "album of the week" blogs.
3. I post only legally free albums, instead of blindly hoping copyright owners won’t mind me distributing their music.
4. I post at least one complete album per day!

What about classical music?

For convenience, I qualify any work 15 minutes or longer by a classical or contemporary composer to be a "complete album," though there are a few exceptions for really awesome complete works like Mozart's 40th Symphony (8 minutes).

What do you consider a full album?

Any complete "long-play" album or any EP over 15 minutes. Occasionally I may present an EP slightly under 15 minutes if it is really special. Also, I will sometimes feature a live recording if it is presented in album format.

What won't you link to?

I won’t link to files that require site registration before downloading, or to files with restrictive DRM. I also won’t link to albums with seperate tracks hosted as a single, inseperable track.

Who are you?

Some guy named Luke started Free Albums Galore. Marvin took over on January 1st, 2006.

Why are you doing this?

Three reasons:
1. I love music.
2. I love to write.
3. I want to educate people about all the great independent music on the internet that may be overlooked otherwise.

Are you making any money off this site?

No. The ads you see (if you're not using Firefox and Adblock like me) support my free blog host, Blogsome.

Do you take recommendations?

Sure. Email me.

There's lots of tracks. How can I download them easily?

I recommend browsing with Firefox for a fast, secure, and flexible web experience. Firefox happens to support the DownThemAll extension, which makes downloading multiple files on a page very easy.

I want everything in MP3 format.

That's not a question, but I'll respond anyway. Because files are hosted off-site, I have no control over file formats. There are freeware programs like Audacity that can open a variety of formats and save to MP3. Foobar2000 is my audio player of choice and can open a much greater variety of files than Audacity and convert them to MP3. If you've got some money in your pocket, Fairstars Audio Converter has done an excellent job for me converting from and to just about any audio format.

You haven't posted in three days. I thought you said you would post an album a day.!

That's not a question either. I didn't say I would post every day. I do post an album a day but I will often feature several albums at a time for convenience's sake. If you check the monthly directory you will see that there is an album for every day of the month.

How come I never heard of the artists on this site?

That's a little unfair. Steve Earle, Wilco, Sun Ra, John Vanderslice, and the Brian Jonestown Massacre all have free online albums and are featured here. You have either heard of them or should have! But that isn't the point. There's lots of high quality independent music available on the internet if we only break away from the MTV/Clear Channel mentality that tell us the only good bands are the popular (and overhyped) ones.

I love this site!

Gee, thanks!

I hate this site! You suck!

Oh, Go to Itunes and don't bother me.