Garageband and music.download.com are free legal music download services. It allows music downloads of unsigned and little heard of artists – and occasionally get a big name.

Garageband.com was a place a finalist of America’s spin-off of Pop Idol, American Idol, published his work. Bo Bice’s old band Purge also used Garageband.

(top left: How do these type of bands get exposure)

Garageband isn’t only about exposure but it’s about artists getting input on how they sound, and how they could improve. I would even go as far as calling Garageband not only a music site but an opinion site.

Garageband lets you either select the music you want to listen to, lets you choose a genre and listen or choose a genre and review. Reviewing earns you CDs (from Garageband artists only) through the post. You can also buy CDs.

Garageband has other great features such as free podcasting hosting. You can upload your own stuff for it, or easily add content from it’s catalogue to it. This makes having a podcast easy – and legal – it is what I for short period ran a podcast on!

Garageband streams all of the songs and offers downloadable MP3s for most. Bands can apply licenses on their music, I’ve seen a few under a CCL.

music.download.com is mainly a place for artists to get exposure, and share their music. It does have a review section, but it isn’t as widely used as Garageband’s.

music.download.com probably gets a lot of hits, due to the fact it’s linked by all c|net sites. It also happens to be better designed, and their seems to be a lot of tracks. Unlike Garageband though it’s far harder to discover bands which aren’t Editor’s Picks. You can get radio for a certain genre, but I still prefer Garageband due to the random allocation of tracks to be reviewed.

Garageband allows better communication between listener and artists, and has more of a community spirit. Garageband is a little crampt with far too much stuck on one page. I prefer Garageband, but music.download.com is also a nice site to use.

Tags: music, mp3, free download, free downloads, free mp3s, mp3s, download.com, cnet, c|net, garageband