Free Music   

Perhaps I've been living under a rock, but I've just now discovered AOL's Full CD Listening Parties.

Each week, they bring you a handful of new albums that you can listen to in their entirety. The best part is it's all free, all the time. You can even grab the Full CD Listening Party RSS feed so you'll always know what new CD's they've got on tap.

The Full CD Listening Party is a great way to discover new music for free and see if you like a new CD before you buy it.

Prefer to watch your music? Shop for concert DVDs right here on Jamtopia.

As the band's way of thanking their fans for their continued support, Trent Reznor announced via the NIN website that you can download the entire new Nine Inch Nails album “The Slip” for free.

Yes, you read that correctly. The entire album, almost 45 minutes of new music from Nine Inch Nails is free as in beer, yours to keep forever, 100% DRM free.

And this is no low-bitrate MP3. You can download the album in high-quality fully-tagged MP3 (~273kbps) as well as full CD quality FLAC or M4A for free. There's even a higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE, also free.

As if that's not progressive enough, they top it off by encouraging you to “remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.”

Kudos Trent. And thanks!

P.S. I've listened to the whole album and frankly it's not my cup of tea, but I was just so impressed by the offer that I had to write it up.

P.P.S. If NIN is your cup of tea, you might also want to shop for Nine Inch Nails concert DVDs right here on Jamtopia.

To help you sample the sound quality on their forthcoming album, Iron Maiden wants you to download Somewhere Back in Time for free starting on May 7th!

There are a few caveats... you'll only be able to listen to it three times, it's compressed audio (but still a respectable 320 kbps), and it's not compatible with Macs or iPods.

But caveats aside, you'll still get your hands on the album almost a week before it's officially released — at which point you'll be able to convert your trial version to a full DRM-free version.

Interested? Sign up now to get notified when the trial download goes live.

Don't miss Jamtopia's Somewhere Back in Time Capsule featuring 20+ years of great Iron Maiden videos.

I learned about the incredibly unique Take Away Shows from French music blog La Blogothèque in a recent issue of Wired Magazine and had to check it out.

You meet a band. You take them outside, in the streets, and ask them to play there, shoot the movie in one unique shot, whatever happens.

Each week they feature a live “concert” session with a band roaming through unusual urban environments, intermingling with passers-by and interacting with the incredible scenery.

Amazingly, they're always filmed as a single shot with no cuts, so of course spontaneity abounds.

Most of the sessions come from lesser-known bands (at least to me!) but I watched a few from familiar names like Andrew Bird, The Arcade Fired, The Shins, and Beirut.

If you want see live concert videos shot like you've never seen before, don't miss Take Away Shows. C'est fantastique! You can also get their podcast on iTunes and RSS for live music videos on the go.

With over 800 exclusive live concert videos from the Paradiso and Melkweg clubs in Amsterdam, Fabchannel is one of the largest concert archives on the web. Best of all, the entire collection is free and on-demand!

I've barely even scratched the surface, but having watched a few names I'm more familiar with like The Datsuns and Black Keys I can safely say this site rules face.

All the videos appear to have superb audio and video throughout, and even in full screen mode these streams really hold up.

And as if 800+ free high-quality live concert videos wasn't good enough, there's also the Fabchannel “vodcast” (link opens in iTunes) featuring free live concert videos for your iPod with a new track every work-day.

Hope you're not busy for like a month!

Find more live concert videos with Jamtopia's Concert DVD Finder.