They reckon it’s all legit, so I don’t feel bad about pointing to French-based Deezer: free music without download. It’s a bit like the iTunes store, in fact it’s very like the iTunes store… but without any nasty payment business. A Flash-based music player, with Ajax searching so the playback isn’t interrupted.
I guess they’re paying royalties out of advertising revenue, but I’ve been using it for a day or two now, and haven’t clicked a single advert. It doesn’t have every song you might search for (especially if you’re the wrong side of 30), and quality can be variable, but it hits more often than it misses. All bad news for legit music sellers – especially since it isn’t exactly difficult to find software to save any streaming audio to local MP3.
Any idea what the bit rate of the stream is?
The bitrate varies from ~64kbps to 256kbps vbr (maybe even higher).
I think I’ll check out Deezer later. Thanks for posting this informative article.