The Best MP3 Music websites

Promotes independent artists by offering free downloads of their songs.

Provider of legal MP3 music. Songs are available as lo-fi stream, hi-fi stream, and downloads. Features indie music, audio software, hardware, and news, and bands get their own pages.

Free MP3 downloads of the most popular world charts including MTV and Billboard. Full Albums and Search option also available.

Site contains lots of information and resources related specifically to the audio coding format known as MP3 (aka MPEG Audio Layer 3).

An MP3 portal with a directory of copyright permitted downloads, as well as links to tools, news and reviews.

European music and artists. Includes music downloads, news, reviews, charts, software and hardware.

Collection of tutorials and help for playing and encoding MP3 files. Also a number of links to popular players and other MP3 resources.

Thorough four-part tutorial describing how MP3 files work and how to start collecting and playing MP3 files yourself, with some related links.

Huge help section from MP3.com discussing getting started with MP3s, playing songs, and making your own MP3s.

Online MP3 magazine with track reviews and downloads, latest MP3 news and commentary and hardware and software listings.

A Wired News Collection focusing on MP3 files and the piracy and lawsuits surrounding it. Large collection of related news articles.

The press headquarters of MP3.com featuring a comprehensive list of news releases and articles dating back to May 1999. There is also the option the receive new press releases via email.

Links and reviews of the best MP3 software available.

CDex is a freeware utility of extraction (ripping) any audio files from an audio CD. The files can be ripped in either the plain WAV format or to a compressed file format (CDex supports many encoders). In addition, it has many additional options to convert between several audio file formats.

Open source broadcast system based on the MP3 streaming audio format. Site includes information on downloading the server application and participating in its development, as well as a directory of current icecast broadcasts.

Free all-in-one player and organizer for MP3 and other digital music formats. Features ripping and encoding to MP3 or WMA formats, and the ability to listen to internet radio stations. [Site requires Shockwave plugin]

Lists various MP3 and WAV conversion utilities available separated into various categories including full versions, shareware, freeware, and converters for use on Macs.

Large guide to MP3 software programs and other related material. Huge listing of various MP3 programs with ratings.

Open source file sharing clients. OpenNap is an Open Source effort to create a version of the proprietary Napster server.

Nullsoft's Free Winamp-based distributed streaming audio system. Anyone can broadcast music through this cutting edge streaming technology. Site features online documentation, downloads, news, and station showcase.

Windows high-fidelity music player with a lot of original features and support for many formats of audio files.

Find your favourite music with WinMP3Locator! It finds any MP3 even if you don't know exactly its name, verifies if files are really downloadable, defines server access conditions, easily integrates with your favorite download software.

Free multiplatform MP3 Playback Toolkit and decoding libraries for all platforms and CPUs. Especially targeted at MPEG Audio (MP1, MP2 and MP3) decoding.  Xaudio allows you to quickly and easily write your own MP3 player with just a few lines of code.