Sound Lift is a pretty cool website with lots of different genres covered. Watch music videos, browse the charts or search by genre. Lots of new bands promoting themselves from around the world. There are links to the bands’ website and info about tours. Lots of tracks available to stream or download for free.

Jamendo is a community site is where artists go to share their music with other users. You can download as many tracks as like and it’s all free. Sign up and then take a look at some of more than 80,000 tracks by various artists. Donations can be made to the artists. You can download via BitTorrent or Emule, or else via http protocol.

Besonic.com. Despite having annoying pop-ups, this is a decent portal with 20,000 or so artists and 30,000 songs for download. There’s lots of free music from weird and interesting European bands in a variety of standard genres.

United Bands is supposed to offer free downloads of indie bands, but doesn’t at the moment. You won’t have heard of most of these bands and there isn’t much on the website any more for some reason. No downloads to be seen right now.

Karadar is all about classical music. It features simply heaps of MP3s for free download, as well as info, photos and bits about composers. Easy to browse through composers and download what you want. Recommended if classical music is your things.

Zik Web has been around since 1996. Lots of music by bands we’ve never heard of, including an album named Mysterious Monks by Phoebus. Also the home of No Sushi. Doesn’t look like it gets updated much any more, but there are still some decent tunes there, including lots of remixes and tools for people who like remixing.

Lots of electronic music MP3s for download at Remix Wars, as well as loops if you’re into producing. You have to sign up and become a member to get access to everything, but if this is your style of music, it’s worth the effort. Doesn’t look to have been updated much recently, though.

This live-music archive has heaps of concerts and live shows from hundreds of artists. Chances are that you will be able to find something of interest to you. The music isn’t divided into any categories, so it’s simply a case of thinking of someone you like and searching for them.

Net Labels is still going strong, with tons of free music. The tunes are mostly electronic genres and there is some pretty hip stuff there to be discovered. At the moment, it looks like there are more than 10,000 tracks available. Check it out.

Epitonic wins points for having the hippest design of any website around. There is radio, streaming audio and a bunch of tracks available for download. It’s all very cool. Lots of cool bands, most of whom we’ve never heard of. A good site for exploring.