Why Magnatune is not evil
- Fantastic music: we work with artists directly, not with record labels, and all our music is hand-picked. On average, we accept 3% of submissions.
- Listen to everything: listen to every album in full, free. Free streams have a short spoken voice every 30 seconds; members hear the music without it.
- Musicians get paid: when you buy an album for $8, 100% goes straight to the musician. Magnatune keeps nothing.
- Download everything: members can download anything from our entire catalog, no limits.
- Make things with our music: members can use our music in their own projects, such as videos, podcasts, games and client work, under the Magnatune Project Licence.
- Creative Commons: all our music is licensed Creative Commons BY-NC-SA for non-commercial sharing and reuse.
- Perfect audio quality: our music is available in both lossless and smaller-size "lossy" formats.
- Many audio formats: download albums as WAV, high-quality VBR MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless (ALAC), and open-source-friendly FLAC, OGG and OPUS.
- Album art: every album includes high-quality album art (PDF and 300 DPI JPG).
- Give to your friends: we encourage you to give 3 copies of any album you download to your friends.
- Artists direct: we sign contracts directly with musicians, so you can rest assured that we can legally license music to you, and no middlemen get in the way of the artist's earnings.
- Podcast-legal: non-commercial podcasters can use our music for free.
- No major labels: we have absolutely nothing to do with major labels, their lawyers or the RIAA.
- Financially support Open Source: we have financially supported open source projects such as Amarok and Rhythmbox.
- No DRM: no copy protection (DRM), so you can do what you like with your music.