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Music The Internet

Free Music Archive Is Shutting Down (theverge.com) 67

Posted by BeauHD from the another-good-thing-coming-to-an-end dept.
WFMU's Free Music Archive -- a digital library of high-quality and legal downloads that users could listen to, remix, and share -- is shutting down due to funding shortages. The Verge reports: "The future is uncertain, has been my mantra lately," says Cheyenne Hohman, who's been the director of the Free Music Archive since 2014. The shutdown date was initially the 9th, but has since been pushed back to November 16th because the FMA is in early talks with four different organizations that are interested in taking the project over. "The site may stay up a little bit longer to ensure, at the very least, that our collections are backed up on archive.org and the Wayback Machine." Even so, it's not a perfect solution. "If it just goes into archive.org, it's going to be there in perpetuity, but it's not going to be changing at all," Hohman says. "It's not going to be the same thing, that sort of community and project that it was for ... almost 10 years."
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Free Music Archive Is Shutting Down More

Free Music Archive Is Shutting Down

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  • Woah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bobrick ( 5220289 ) on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @08:38PM (#57609474)
    Jesus christ, I'm gonna be downloading as much stuff as I can... this was my main music source for videos. This is a huge loss, the FMA is a godsend for a lot of indie production of all types.

  • Bummer (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @08:39PM (#57609476) Homepage Journal
    That is a real bummer. Where will I get my minimalist dubstep alt-electronica music now?

    • That is a real bummer. Where will I get my minimalist dubstep alt-electronica music now?

      GET it?!? You could probably write a 10 line BASIC program to GENERATE it!!!

      (j/k) (I like it, too!)

  • You cheap bastards (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

    You coulda parted with a couple of bucks to keep this excellent project going. I have a ton of friends who have put music on that site and I've contributed some too.

    You expect everything for free and this is why we can't have nice things.

    Here for example, check out these nice young men from the Northwest who play deep deep funk and have given music to the site for free.

    http://freemusicarchive.org/mu... [freemusicarchive.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
      Wow. Too bad there is no where else they can upload their music.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by RickyShade ( 5419186 )

        If only Jamendo existed.

        • If only Jamendo existed.

          Jamendo is a commercial site with a really shitty mobile app. They're not doing what the Free Music Archive is doing. They're just making a small amount of music free to act as promotion for their commercial licensing service.

    • Re:You cheap bastards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CanadianMacFan ( 1900244 ) on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @10:08PM (#57609850)

      Hard to donate when you haven't heard of the site before. In other discussions on here about the music industry people have suggested sites that they get their music from and I haven't seen this before.

      • Re:You cheap bastards (Score:5, Interesting)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @11:08PM (#57610082) Journal

        This is true. They could have promoted the site better. With luck, someone will buy it and do a better job. I remember it being a lot of chiptune and 8-bit music, but over time it's gotten to be a really nice little collection.

      • The only people I knew that used the site were other video editors and content creators that heavily relied on it for all our music sourcing. It's a shame, you can find hours and hours of great music just for listening enjoyment, too.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, under CC BY-NC-ND, so you can't use it anywhere "commercially" nor can you remix it...so if you make a video with it and then monetize it, you've broken the license. Useless.

    • You coulda parted with a couple of bucks to keep this excellent project going. I have a ton of friends who have put music on that site and I've contributed some too.

      You expect everything for free and this is why we can't have nice things.

      Here for example, check out these nice young men from the Northwest who play deep deep funk and have given music to the site for free.

      http://freemusicarchive.org/mu... [freemusicarchive.org]

      Nice!

      Sounds like the Rhythm-bed for an early Zappa tune...

      Love the Trombone solo!

      Guitar solo is way too hot in the mix, though.

  • Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @08:53PM (#57609524)

    Why do we keep seeing these type posts on /. for the first time, only after a site is soon to be shutdown or after it already has been shutdown?

    Seriously, I've never even heard of this site before now. I suspect many others haven't as well.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Came here to say this!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd never heard of it either. Last time I followed this kind of thing was when IUMA was alive and well.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd heard of it, but didn't know anything about its ownership or funding arrangements. Part of the problem with "stuff for $0" is that unless they are getting something back (like google's advertising targets) you can only last so long.

  • Move Everything To Bittorrent Volunteers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Keep the main website up and database of listener stats, store the music on volunteer's PCs via bittorrent. That should cut storage and bandwidth costs by 99%. Also, maybe advertise? Partner with a music community? I had NEVER heard of this website!

    • Never heard of this also. Maybe they can just have a network of volunteer's of mirrors sites (like Linux distributions). I have a small business and I can contribute by giving a part of my bandwidth. I want to support those artists.

  • The first step to getting something is asking for it, I admit I rarely look for a donate button but a legit and backed up claim saying you are going to close if you don't get funding should be one of the first things to put on their home page. Maybe someone likes it enough to just cover the costs.

    • The first sentence of the first message in the front page:

      "We regret to inform you that due to a funding shortage, the FMA will be closing down later this month."

      Which part of "will be closing down later this month" doesn't say they are closing?

      • It doesn't state: "*IF* we're not gonna get the funds we'll close down", it states: "We *DIDN'T get the funds hence we're closing down."
        • In the years I've been using it I don't recall anything like a donation drive or the sort... I think they could've found out they have a lot of supporters.

  • Some alternatives (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @11:50PM (#57610230)

    Here's some alternatives:
    archive.org [archive.org]
    Bensound [bensound.com]
    cctrax [cctrax.com]
    musopen [musopen.org]
    bumpfoot [bumpfoot.net]
    incompetech [incompetech.com]
    audionautix [audionautix.com]
    audeeyah [audeeyah.com]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • That's ok. The only free music archive I need is the IMSLP :-)

  • and so we end up with an internet where the only sites that are still up & running are owned by (mega)corps, because anything else can't afford to stay available.

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