Where to Find Uplifting Music for Free
In just a few days, I will be leaving to the Missionary Training Center and then I will be off to the Arizona Tempe Mission, Spanish-speaking! This means that I will be setting this blog aside for two years as I serve the Lord as an LDS missionary.
Therefore, I will not be able to provide readers with “free music alerts” from sources such as Positive Music and Downloads. Here are the sources that I check, if you would like to keep up-to-date!
- Positive Music and Downloads has a new free song every Friday for the first 100 downloaders daily for a week. After the week is past, the song won’t be free. There is a link to the left of the site (“Free Download”) that will take you directly to the current free song. Or, you can sign up for the site’s newsletter; the free download link will be at the top right of the newsletter on Fridays.
- LDSTunesNow features a new free song about once a month; usually within the first week of each month. There is a link to the free song’s album page, directly from the home page. They also advertise a newsletter, but I haven’t received one yet; so the newsletter is not a reliable source for free song info.
- Sally DeFord is an arranger of hymns and other music, mainly for choirs or performances in a church setting. To be notified when there are updates, you can sign up for a Yahoo! Groups mailing list through her web site.
- LDS.org/CM is a good source for hymns and children’s songs, even in different languages. The Seminary video soundtracks are also available. Updates aren’t frequent, but they are occasional. The Church has been expanding their internet presence tremendously in recent years, so I expect there to be major updates (especially for other languages) in the next couple of years.
- General Conference archives for recent sessions include music from the various choirs that sing during Conference. A link for music is near the top of each General Conference page since October 2008.
- LDSMusicWorld hasn’t changed for a while, but it’s worth mentioning as a top source for free, legal, uplifting music. A few links are broken, but they can be accessed with a tool like Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
- Liahona.net is also a good source for free inspirational music, though the content is not updated frequently. Most of the music is hymns, and there is some overlap with LDS.org/CM.*
- MormonMusic.org is a new web site by the More Good Foundation that also provides free music. Liahona.net is one of their sources for music (though not all Liahona.net songs are included).* Apart from Liahona.net, MormonMusic.org offers foreign-language inspirational music and a few selections of more-contemporary music such as Sam Payne (LDS) and Voice Male music.
Note, I will be gone for two years. Any of these sites may change without notice. If you’re following me via RSS or other means, expect an update within 25 months!
*Information about the LDS.org/CM, Liahona.net, and MormonMusic.net overlap:
LDS.org/CM contains the official recordings of hymns, children’s songs, selected YW songs, YW camp songs, music from Church magazines, and seminary music; vocal and instrumental, English and other languages.
Liahona.net contains some of the English content from LDS.org/CM. The overlaps are the following sections: “Hymns” (vocal and instrumental), ”Children’s Music” (vocal and instrumental), ”YW Select Music” (vocal and instrumental), and “Choir Music” (vocal only, with 2 exceptions). Everything else on the site originates from Liahona.net. The “Seasonal” songs are duplicates of some of the songs in other sections.
MormonMusic.org contains an incomplete (seemingly random) selection from Liahona.net, divided into similarly-named sections as those at Liahona.net. The other (currently 6) sections originate from MormonMusic.org, as well as some foreign-language songs. The organization of MormonMusic.org is hard to follow, but I really enjoy some of the music, such as the Sam Payne music. Also, MormonMusic.org is a good source for “album artwork” for the sections at Liahona.net.
