[Update: They appear to cost 99 cents each now. Which still isn’t a bad price, but a bit annoying the freeness ended so quickly. If I’d known it would, I’d have grabbed more of them while they were free.]
Free digital media is great, isn’t it? Baen helped to pioneer the e-book market by giving scads of them away, after all. The best thing about digital media is that, since there are no fixed manufacturing costs apart from license fees, it’s easy to give it away for free, whether it’s e-books, video, or music.
And speaking of music, Google Play Music has been giving away a bunch of “Greatest Hits” albums lately—collections of DRM-free music from popular artists you know. You don’t have to be a subscriber to the streaming service, either, because you can simply add the album to your library and then either listen free from there (especially if you’re using Android, which has access to Google’s music service effectively baked in whether you subscribe or not) or download it in unfettered MP3 format.
I first mentioned this a couple of months ago, but since then Google’s added a bunch more collections from a lot of well-known acts: Harry Nilsson, Jeff Buckley, Europe, Cyndi Lauper, Dave Brubeck, The Highwaymen, and many more. Android Police has a full list of every known free album so far. If you’re looking for something good to listen to while you read your e-books, give this a shot. The selection is wide enough that no matter what genre you prefer, you’re sure to find something you like.
Missed it the first time around but I fixed that mistake. Writing this to Leslie West and Mountain’s “For Yasgur’s Farm.”