Where to find free Classical music

If you’ve ever tried searching for classical music downloads on the web, you’ll have soon realised that it’s much harder to find what you want that it may have first appeared. (That is, given you’re wanting to stay within the bounds of the law and thus avoid torrents of commercial CDs, of course.) Surely there would be an abundance of free tracks for download, given that almost all composers of this genre of music are long dead, holding no copyrights (or if any, ones that have long since expired), you may think? Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. If you’ve searched for any more than a few recordings, you will have likely stumbled across one or two useful download/archive sites for free music out there, but most of the tiny number that exist actually have fairly sparse collections and usually far from the best quality recordings. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll download a bunch of MP3s only to later realise they are poorly synthesised MIDI files. The obvious explanation for this lack of free recordings is that the performers quite often need to make a living from their sales, and all of the recordings now out of copyright are typically of very poor quality, given that they were created well before the age of digital storage.

My own long (and ongoing) search for such music has lead me to a few exceptional websites for downloading free recordings (normally MP3s, but sometimes OGGs (Vorbis), and on the rare occasion even lossless codecs). Several I have only recently discovered after many months of (semi-regular) searching. Indeed, many seem to have somehow hidden themselves from Google particularly well! To the point: I thought I would finally share some of these websites I’ve bookmarked over time, with a brief guide to each so that you’re be aware of their strengths (and letdowns).

• Classical Cat – Possibly the most useful directory for decent quality recordings of all sorts of classical music (ranging from the Renaissance through Romantic to the modern era). It contains a database of almost 5000 links to MP3 recordings (and helpful information about them such as their completeness and the instruments used) – the vast majority of which are active. The directory is updated and expanded on a regular basis (by a single dedicated maintainer, I believe). What is more, the layout and functionality of the site makes it trivial to find the piece you want very quickly. In my opinion, this should always be the first place to check for any free piece of classical music.
• CoCoA – The most recent find of mine, and easily the largest resource for all types of classical music. Being open to user submissions (which seem to be moderated), it means that the collection is growing at a rapid rate. All MP3s are hosted on the website’s own servers (though there is the odd broken link).  However, it is important to note that the quality of recordings is quite variable, ranging from nearly perfect to those that have evidently been taken straight off vinyl records (though I suspect some have at least been remastered). The reason for this huge number of  tracks is unsurprinslgy that they were taken from old records that are now out of copyright, though there is a significant number of very recent public domain recordings in addition (many kindly made and released by one of the guys running the project, and his friends).
• Musopen – A rather small collection of high quality recordings, presented through an elegant looking site. Pieces are organised by composer and artist, though there is no search utility at the moment. Still, this website is clearly in its infancy and looks highly promising for the future! If you’re at all familiar with the Open Source movement, Musopen is more or less the musical equivalent, as you can read on its About page – its stated noble aim is to “set music free”. Similar to CoCoA’s system, if you feel like contributing any public domain music from your personal collection (or elsewhere), you can upload it directly to your site (with moderation it seems).
• SoundClick – An enormous repository of over 25,000 classical recordings produced by modern artists who have released their work to the public. Some of the performances are however not of especially high standard (due to the nature of the repository), likewise with the sound quality, though the majority are definitely suitable for a personal music collection. The site requires registration (free), which enables access to all content, hosted on the website’s private servers. In particular, this is a good place to check if you’re looking for recordings of some of the less famous pieces of classical music, though there are plenty of popular ones too. Note that Classical Cat contains many links to SoundClick pages, and generally doesn’t include the less desirable recordings, so its always advisable to search that first.
• Topdownloads.net – It’s not much easier to find a specific piece here than via Google, though there are ceraintly a number of good quality recordings here, of better and less well-known works – some of which you may not find anywhere else. Above all, the pristine recordings of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies by the BBC Philharmonic (previously hosted on the BBC website but taken down long ago) are well worth the download!

The download speed from all of the above servers (disregarding Classical Cat, which doesn’t host any files) is usually quite good. If you find a broken link on any of these sites and the file is not mirrored elsewhere, it is always recommended to come back a week or two later and try again, as they are often only down temporarily from my experience.

So that’s my complete guide on where to find free Classical music. I do hope this saves some people from the arduous task of scouring the internet for for decent (and legal) recordings of Classical music. Without doubt there are many people such as myself that simply don’t have the money to spend on a good Classical collection, and it would be a shame to restrict the music to only those that do. The fact remains that there simply aren’t any recordings for some major Classical works, but fortunately their number is ever decreasing. Finally, if anyone has a notable addition to this list, please do let me know and I’ll gladly edit this post to encorperate it.