I wrote this to someone elses question, here it is for you:
To start off, there are 2 different answers:
1) Free downloads that are legal
2) Free Illegal downloads
I'll deal with #1.
Since the whole issue about downloading music, the music companies and artists themselves need to get "income" from their music. To be fair, they ARE entitled to it. Nobody want s to work for free.
This is why the (new) Napster, Rhapsody, Walmart, Itunes, etc exist and charge for their music. Bottom line...If you want legal downloads, you have to "pay" for it.
HOWEVER, there is another option. "Pay" doesn't have to be money. Spiralfrog.com deals with the whole "Pay" idea as being Banner ad income. The more ads you see the more money they make, and they DO pass the income to the artists/music companies.
Unfortunately, seeing the ads once don't provide a recurring source of income to the company, so they require you to come back to their website to 'renew' your licenses every 30-60 days by taking their 5 question survey again. Not a real problem since I check them out several times a week.
Their selection of NEW music is mixed. SOME new albums are released through them at the same time as other sites. MANY may not make it until some time has passed, and others never show up. You have to look around and see if their selection is good for you.
Oh, 2 things to take note of:
1) you need to have a player that supports .wma files with DRM (Digital Rights Management). This means iPod is NOT supported, but lots of other players (my phone even) do work with it.
2) you can't burn to CD to bypass #1