Best Web Sites to Find Free Music in 2012

RCRD LBL
Like Google Music, RCRD Label lets you stream and download new tracks from established and lesser-known artists for free every day. There's no membership fee or subscription; all you have to do is create a free account and you can download the tracks, no strings attached. The site's selection is much smaller than the others on the list, but then again, the point of it is to discover new artists whose catalogs you can listen to elsewhere.

MySpace
Don't laugh. If you really want to listen to and discover new music for free, you could do much worse than MySpace. The social network is overhauling its business model and recently introduced a new music player that lets users listen to more than 40 million songs from independent and unsigned artists. Some of those songs are probably pretty scary, but who knows? You might end up finding your next favorite band.

Pandora
Pandora was largely overshadowed when Spotify first came out, but now it may be time to revisit the service. Sure, Pandora doesn't let you listen to the songs you want on demand (you search for a song and get a playlist of related songs), but it arguably does something more valuable by forcing you to listen to similar songs and artists you may not be aware of.

Turntable.fm
Calling Turntable a music streaming service misses the point somewhat. In reality, Turntable is a virtual hangout space (not unlike Second Life) that just happens to be built around music. Users create avatars for themselves and can join or create music rooms of their choice, each centered around a different genre, where users take turn playing the role of DJ and chatting with other users. It's probably not the right service for someone who just wants to passively listen to a few songs while at work, but the site does offer the potential to discover artists and new friends, all for no cost.

YouTube
When all else fails, there's always YouTube. If there's an artist or song you want to listen to, chances are YouTube has it -- it just may not always be studio quality.

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