AOL's website offers a pretty impressive amount of free music. The only caveat is that the music has to be streamed, and not downloaded. The plus side, its all pretty well organized, so you can pick a song you'd like to stream.

There's definitely a focus on the more popular music of today, with the "Top 100" songs placed prominently on their front page. If you dig deeper, you can find their "Music Archive" which is a great resource for a lot of content. The audio files and the video files are all mixed together. Most of the video files include "AOL Sessions" where some band apparently filmed a special session just to put on this site (or stream to AOL users live at the time). Overall a good site.

Site:AOL Music / More Info

One of the greatest music websites in existence, KEXP takes pride in being an advocate for independent acts. What this means to you is that it's a veritable treasure trove of downloads and streams. Primarily, KEXP.org is the web presence of a listener-supported radio station in Seattle, WA. In reality, though, their website is more than a radio station could ever be. They push the envelope by streaming their live broadcast in WindowsMedia, Real, and MP3 formats without asking for a login. You can view constantly updating information about the currently playing song. Also, you're not limited to their live radio show either, as they have links to replay anything from the past two weeks.

Next, also in their On Demand section, they offer a series of PodCasts, including my favorite "Song of the Day." Every day they post a downloadable song (or you can just subscribe to it on iTunes or something). If you want to see a great archive of all their posts, there's one here.

Finally, they also post great lives sets from bands they've had in their studio. There are some real gems here, and even though they're a bit long (they're the entire set) you can always split the file up. If you want to know more about alternatives to corporate-music, here's the perfect place to start.

Site:KEXP 90.3 FM / More Info