Most people will go out and purchase and audio CD or use an online music store to purchase a song or album they like but more casual music listeners, who aren't too worried about audio quality, will use music download sites to obtain the majority of their music. Unfortunately most file sharing sites are littered with users sharing poorly compressed or recorded audio files, all of which do no justice to original audio recordings. However, if you do want to listen to a track online, is there any way of legally obtaining free audio files using the web?

Songbeat 3.1 is an interesting application that enables you to search for, listen to and download audio files for free, well, kind of. It uses search engines to locate audio files rather than relying on users to share files from their drives, the audio is streamed but can also be downloaded but you only get twenty-five free downloads, after this you are required to upgrade, which costs of course.

Songbeat 3.1 link.

03 Dec 2008