SXSW 2009 on BitTorrent: 6 GB of Free Music
Written by Ernesto on March 12, 2009The South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival is one of the largest and most popular in the United States. For the fifth year in a row, SXSW has released a DRM-free, RIAA-safe collection of songs totaling 6 GB, which can all be downloaded for free, thanks to BitTorrent.
For some of the previous editions, SXSW itself has offered torrents showcasing the artists scheduled to perform at the festival. Starting last year, however, SXSW stopped releasing a torrent of their own.
Since all of the mp3s are available for download on the festival’s site, it only takes one person to get a torrent up and running. Last year it was Greg Hewgill who took the time and effort to put all the MP3s into one big torrent, and for the 2009 edition Ben Stolt did the same.
Since there’s over 6 GB of DRM-free music, using torrents makes it much easier than laboriously downloading every MP3 separately. In addition, using BitTorrent instead of the server based system saves SXSW money in bandwidth costs. The good news is that, for once, the RIAA isn’t watching over your shoulder when downloading music.
There are three torrents for the 23rd SXSW edition which contain a record breaking 1267 MP3s of both upcoming, as well as established artists who will appear at this year’s festival. Needless to say there should be something to suit everyone’s tastes, and all in all it’s a great way to expand your horizons and discover new and upcoming artists, all for free.
This year’s SXSW music festival takes place from March 18-22 in Austin Texas. All the tracks released for the previous editions are also still available for those people who want to fill up their iPod without having to invest thousands of dollars.
Previously: MusicTank Fishes for Online Music Solutions
Next: Piracy Has Become Mainstream, Studies Show
33 Responses
Cool
Very cool, downloading the 2009 part 1, 2, 3 :)
There ought to be more music festivals and conventions – why confine everything to the internet?
Gotta love Artists who are already down with the program.
Very nice to see artists doing this. It’s a nice way to spread good music without being watched by big brother.
great to see this
I’ve picked up the past years of this, also. SxSW is awesome, if I can’t go to it, this is still pretty good. Hours of quality music with some real good stuff from tomorrow’s hottest acts. Remember to seed, it’s a beefy DL.
Pretty cool although i like to pick my own music not get a bundle of somebody else’s tastes.
This is illegal competition as seen from IFPI. It /has/ to be stopped! Now! Shut down bittorrent! Shut down the internet!
Austin Texas Fvcking Rocks. Gorgeous women Great music = Heaven on earth.
I’ll also take the 6gigs of Free music.
Just found out about this torrents some weeks ago at this wonderful site – http://croz.fm/.
Great stuff! I think there should be more reporting of events such as this and where RIAA free music is available. Let the RIAA and their goons choke on their shitty music. We all need to go to the Artists that have moved into this new era of music and let the RIAA die with it’s crappy music and deals in hand.
6GB of free music!? As if everyone here pay for its music…
at jeffy your a troll noob , go back to your rock and learn how to pray to the riaa gods you dwell with
people do pay here for tunes and guess what if and when i am given a choice ill support NON riaa, non IFPI NON CRIA musicans and this is a wake up call.
and if there is opensource software and operating systems WHY not music and movies and tv shows
HA
SPONSERED BY…..
The point of this arcticle is far beyond. This his another way to use BitTorent and create a dependance to a technologie. Fighting it will be more harder!
Heck yeah dude that is SIC!
RT
http://www.privacy.at.tc
Hey, talking about Creative Commons Music, check out this. It’s probably the biggest independent CC-licensed music project out there (+30k downloads of their music).
Check this out
http://www.ucubd.com/Index.aspx?id=695&cid=x01000096
@18
Heyy Jay… Thanks for the link mate !
I listened to ‘Samssadeur’ and then ‘Bishop Allen’ ..then…..’The Postal Service’…then…Kinda got hooked to the free playing radio !
Nice site..thanks again !!!
check out one of the band
http://digg.com/music/The_Death_of_Analog_Music
Sweet! Downloaded this last year and have been waiting for this years one for so long!
my friends playing this year, he’s the bassist for Cetan Clawson, some good blues rock, so check em out!
I concur with jeffy, …as if anybody here pays for music. Sure, a few people may pay for non-RIAA represented music for the reason thats it’s not RIAA … but I doubt very many as it’s not really about the fact that it’s RIAA that people pirate – people use this as a reason, sure, but it’s the fact that it’s free and convenient.
It’s pretty easy to work this out: games and apps get pirated all the time despite not having the “RIAA distributor” crap meme that gets ranted about all the time. You don’t see many pirates supporting games companies unless they have to (for on;ine play or running on ps3).
How exactly is that a troll then?
hey I am wondering is the links for 09 / 08 legal? I tend not to down load music unless its legal to do so.
SXSW FTW!
@Nubcakes
I personally buy music, but only if I know it isnt a pile of festering shit. I obviously buy a lot less than I download, but I do buy the music that I find particularly good.
Games often suffer from ridiculous DRM (Hi, you can only activate this game three times) and may actually negatively influence your playing experience (Love when my copy of The Witcher decided that I was evil haxx0r because I had Daemon tools installed and removed some key NPCs from the game). Or when Starforce decided to OMNOMNOM my harddisk for no apparent reason at all.
Most of the games I own, I pirated after I bought them, simply to get a copy that will always work, will not install suspiciously acting third party drivers on my computer, and will, most likely, not all of a sudden go compatibility-error on me.
As far as Ive seen, applications do not have the same sort of ridiculous DRM, hence I do not pirate them, once again, unless I want to know if the app is worth it before I buy it.
@NubCakes
In case you didn’t notice, the entertainment industry is doing better than ever before in history. Do you think that is thanks to overpriced and inefficient distribution methods like CD’s?
And by the way, people do buy computer games. A lot actually. The computer game industry has never been bigger.
Hey!! We are playing too, check us out at http://www.infantreemusic.com <3
Nice guys, I’m streaming all this at http://www.1337x.net
Don’t STEAL MUSIC PEOPLE!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Love it!
check out my updates blog on SXSW at:
http://sxsw-news.blogspot.com/
and/or
http://twitter-1.blogspot.com/
This is what it’s all about for me. I love sharing the creative spirit plus music is one of the quickest ways to my soul. Thanks for making this so easy!!
“The good news is that, for once, the RIAA isn’t watching over your shoulder when downloading music.”
How would we know if they won’t just sue you for using bittorrent?
And how would we know if they don’t care about false-positives?
38 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.