Tunes Gratis: Radio Free Internet
It's hard to dispute the financial value of gaining access to nearly a million songs for less than $10 per month, but you can get digital music legally for free. The one-and-a-half-year-old Mercora Web service enables its members to listen to music files streamed from other members' hard drives, a hybrid of peer-to-peer and streaming. And Shoutcast, a radio-like service owned by AOL (PC World is an AOL content partner), offers thousands of different streams, some taken from actual broadcast radio stations.
As with the for-pay streaming services, you can't keep the music you hear through Mercora or Shoutcast. The "stations" on each service must pay public performance royalties for the right to provide commercial music streams--the same fees radio stations pay. Shoutcasters can sell ad time just the way radio broadcasters do. Mercora runs Google text ads alongside search results to bring in a little money; but unlike some peer-to-peer apps, Mercora doesn't deluge your system with adware programs.
To hear Shoutcast streams, you simply visit Shoutcast.com and select one of the thousands of streams available, if your music player software supports Shoutcast (most types do). Streams come from individual DJs (people who designate their computers as servers) and from radio stations that use Shoutcast to widen their audience.
Mercora operates a little differently. After you install the client and register for the service, Mercora searches your hard drive for music files it can stream. At the same time, you can search for artists or songs, tune in to others' streams, and chat or play online games with other Mercora users. And it's no coincidence that Mercora's client resembles an instant messenger client. It's a very sociable, personal music service.
Like Napster in its early days, Mercora has a thriving community feel to it. If you find people whose playlists you like, you can add them to a favorites list. But unlike the early Napster, Mercora needs more people (and their music) to populate the service. Both Mercora and Shoutcast offer a viable alternative to fee-based streaming services. Unfortunately, even though you can tune in to dozens of different genres of music, Mercora and Shoutcast have the same drawback as radio: You can't pick the song you want to hear.
Eric Hellweg is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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