There are two free classical music downloads sites worth looking into. One of them is totally free, both money and risk-wise, while the other has a money/risk free version of it.
One house-keeping rule: If you are looking for Josh Groban, go to the legal music downloads page and either subscribe for a free-trial or buy his music at Best Buy or your favorite music store. You won’t find popular classical artists like him on the sites recommended on this page offering free classical music. But you will find a mutlitude of music from composers on these, so let’s begin.
I will start with the totally free one.
The selection is quite massive in this one and the interface is cluttered with a lot of paraphernalia (including a vague introduction to classical music, tons of ads, featured artists), so navigating the site for certain free classical music is quite a bit complex and "untidy" without a guideline which unfortunately they don’t give you on that site...
Of course you know the site may be biased in one way or another, promoting some things in the site more than other things that may warrant at least as much if not more attention. That’s why we have designed this page for you as a guide.
1. Go to the site. You will now see the interface that I warned you about. Don’t worry, this is otherwise a highly reputable site – there’s no software or viruses. But you knew that already, right? By the way, if you get lost – that is out of the landing page for some reason – click the “Features” icon on top.
2. In the interface you will immediately see the “featured artist” at the bottom of the page, which I know you won’t be familiar with. I don’t know why they would even have this, since I have never heard of a best-selling classical music artist for free; I think it is probably just a “filler” space. But hey, everyone has to get promoted somehow - why not start with free classical music? If you’re an upcoming artist, now that actually would be a big bonus. In any case, you’ll probably within 1-3 seconds scroll down further until you see the heading “What is Classical” which precedes a 15 second description of what classical music is.
3. Below this? Even more artists that I know you won’t know. I know I don't. These, however, are arranged in a “Top Downloads” chart which is somewhat helpful. If you want to find music from a classical composer (not artist), you’ ll need to do something else. So now what? Look to your left.
4. You will see a Navbar containing the Classical genre plus a wealth of subgenres. If there is a favorite composers works that you want to find, just find the subgenre, click on that link, go through the list, and find if your favorite composer is listed.
5. Alternatively, you can type in your desired composition. For this, scroll back up. Anyway, on the top left, you’ll find a search tool, whereby you can type in the composition in the attempt to see the different versions performed by different artists. What if you don’t see them? You’ll need to do one of two things.
1. You can go back, surf the site and “test the waters”. After you’ve gotten a feel for the site by following the above guideline, you can naturally navigate the site somewhat better on your own. The best place to start would, of course, be the “Top Downloads” from step 3 above. Remember, there are different Top Downloads Charts for each of the 40 subgenres. Quite a few - with much free classical music in each.
2. Or you can go to what I would consider the most comprehensive site of classical music, The Classical Music Archives in Step B.
This site has both a free and a paid version, both risk free in terms of spyware etc. With the the one offering free classical music – and I believe this one will suffice for most unless you are a musician wanting to practice a piece, or a true diehard classical music fan (is there such a thing?) – you can get access to five music files (not necessary downloads) - per day. Great deal.
The paid version by the way is quite cheap. Yes, it will instantaneously set you back $25, but that right there gets you one whole year of:
access to hifi mp3 classical music downloads, and
access to 1000 files per month, 100 per day
out of over 34,000 files, by over 1800 composers.
How to access files here is actually quite simple. There is well-placed navbar on top. Just click on one of the links and search for your favorite song, artist, or composer.
If you’re a mega-diehard fan, hopefully this will work for you. In the improbable case that it doesn’t then you will have to subscribe to a paid music subscription service. If you feel that this may be an option for you, the then you may compare reputable services.
Otherwise, happy free classical music downloading!
