More Google Free Albums

@luvche21 I actually bought a Rick Astley CD on April Fool's Day because I love that song.

@luvche21 Nope, no thanks necessary for me. If you hadn't started the original thread, most of us would not have added to our music collections.

@carl669 Definitely check out Watermelon Man and Chameleon if you like his stuff!

@carl669 Yeah, he's actually one of the greatest jazz pianists ever...

But Rockit's pretty cool, too.

@palefire I have a hard time connecting with some of his music.

@jaremelz Great. Another seizure. Thanks.

@mfladd Well, the one I wanted to post might get me banned before you.

@jaremelz Why does that look like it's moving before I hit play?

@sammydog01 It does, doesn't it? A bit freaky.

@jaremelz The didn't include his best song though: (Probably NSFW)

@RedOak Well, out of 84 free albums, you better find something you like! I've got picky musical tastes, but I'll like at least part of most of these albums.

@luvche21 You watch your mouth. We don't take kindly to that kind of language around here.

@Willijs3 It turns out Brubeck was the one who said it... I'm still in the clear!

@Thumperchick So, there are 84 free albums right now - I was wondering if it would be helpful to put that info in the main post so that people don't have to dig through the comments to find out (or just miss it). If it's OK to add, you can add this canned search to the main post.

@luvche21 @Thumperchick If you want to start a brand new thread with all 84 albums listed, it's all right with me to delete my post. It might save some confusion with just one thread.

@luvche21 @Barney - edited the OP with the search - it's easier on the eyes than an 84 song/album list.

@Thumperchick Yeah, you're probably right. Anyway, if I saw 84 FREE albums in one list, I'd probably have drool all over my keyboard.

@Barney @Thumperchick Thanks! Who doesn't like free music anyway?

And Jeff Buckley

Sarah McLachlan

@Pavlov That's not strictly true about renting them. You are free to download them to your computer and keep them. So you do get the actual MP3s, provided you take the time to download them. They can't come along and delete them off your hard drive or phone, even if they remove them out of your online library. I download all of my Google Play music periodically.

For example, I just downloaded a Sarah McLachlan song. It's now on my hard drive, 320kbps, and Windows says it's not a protected file.

If Sony starts sending me emails, I will unsubscribe from them. But out of all the free stuff I've received through Google Play, I haven't received any spam as a result. That's not to say it can't happen, but I've downloaded Playlist stuff before, and nothing has happened as of yet.

I am loving all this free music, so thanks to everyone who is finding them.

@Pavlov @peaceetc This is good info that I did not know about them being able to email me. As @peaceetc said, I as well have never received an email from this, and have been collecting these for 6 months or so (and have well over 100 of these albums).

@peaceetc I haven't received any Sony emails, and I also download the Google music. I have just dedicated one Sansa to it, with no problems. FYI- after the first three pages or so, many more free compilations appear. Johnny Mathis, sing to me!

@Pavlov RE the SONY email spam, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Remember (you have to be old enough to know what a CD is) when SONY put software on their music CDs that auto-installed - without permission - copy protection software on your PC. . . and left it there? Nasty business.

@peaceetc Most people don't take the time to offload them to a local device. I should have put that in my initial post - you're right, if you offload it, you keep it for as long as you have possession of the DRM free file.

@RedOak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

@OldCatLady Sony may elect to email you from a subsidiary or wholly owned other company - you might never connect the dots. But Sony isn't giving away free music and not having a plan to monetize their doing so somehow - they're not at an an altruistic corporation.

Enjoy the free music - just remember that nothing in life is truly "free".

@Pavlov If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Anything free is worth what you paid for it. And my Google persona has a different email. Yup, got it.

@Pavlov RE the free nature of this deal, it could also be that SONY and Google have a cross-promo arrangement.

Google: "SONY, you give us a few thousand freebie tunes so we can warm folks up to buying in our store. In exchange you get brand/band attention. And if you're really nice we'll forego our store fee on an equivalent number of your paid music sales."

@Pavlov A couple of years ago our public library had a free music download deal. You could download one song free per library card per week. It later was upped to 3 songs per week. I forget the name of the thing but it was all Sony music. I loaded up on Monty Python, Blue Oyster Cult, and Spike Jones. It was free, and I don't see where Sony got much out of it apart from advertisement. They discontinued it eventually.

@sammydog01 It's called Freegal and it's amazing. I just moved and none of my local libraries do it :( My last library upped theirs to 5/week, which was amazing. So.... we may or may not have ended up getting a library card for my baby for this.....

@luvche21 YES!!!! I was sad when they discontinued it. My kids appear to have exactly the same taste in music as me:) Does your dog like to read too?

@sammydog01 lol, that's one step too far for me since we don't have a dog... ;)

@sammydog01 Our local library now requires some proof of ID before they will issue a library card.

@RedOak I just assumed it was google tossing cash at the old school music industry trying to drag them into 2015. :)

@luvche21 Yep. Freegal thru the library, 3 per week for our library. Good stuff. Certainly limited but still a good selection. Helps to have 4 kids. So I did a marathon Handels Messiah download run to get the entire piece in time for the holidays for my spouse last year.

@sammydog01 I'm holding out for the Cowsills and Monkees.

@sammydog01 The Partridge Family was my first favorite band as a kid. Danny was my hero.

@heartny Ooh, the Monkees!

@yahsah15 depending on where your context menu is, i mine was on the left of the screen, there is probably an option for on device and on device and in cloud, or something like that. then you should be able to choose songs or albums to sync to your device. you can also try this if you do'nt have a ton of songs and room on your device.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1291788?hl=en

Is there an echo in WV?

@RedOak No

Is there an echo in WV?

@RedOak No

@cengland0 I figure that hoarding digital stuff is a step up because it doesn't fill up your closets. I'm downloading them all.

@sammydog01 I don't think that this is the kind of help @cenglan0 was looking for...

@cengland0 Well, I refrained from the rap stuff. But I jumped on the rest. I know what I'll be doing today. Adding free to my library and I'll download it all this weekend.

Free is good!

@sammydog01 Thank you, you have made me feel better about myself now. :)

@G1 We're why Amazon cloud has unlimited storage.

@cengland0 With you, brother. Don't tell my wife; what with the buying and this hoarding thing and finding other like-sick-minded folks, she might ban me from meh.

@lisaviolet Ha. I'm keeping the rap and leaving out the country (except for Cash and Willie). I was on the fence about Sinatra.

@cengland0 BTW, with you not about the music, but the collecting of stuff. I'm sorry about whatever happened with music for you. :-( I go through phases, but there's never not been music that made my life better.

@cengland0 Well, hoarding certainly doesn't restrict itself to physical items. But you do it because of the good deal, so that's not so bad, right?
But I'm with @joelmw. Only I might be a bit of an extreme case these days. I'm in headphones at least 2-3 hours of my day.

@cengland0 I'm glad that there are others that share a hate of country music with me. But I still got them to. And the rap. I don't hate rap like I hate country, but I don't like rap.

For me, digital storage is basically "free" since it's so cheap, especially if you look at how much it would cost just to store an album or two.

So, I've been pulling together all of my music (from CDs, Google Play, Amazon mp3, Freegal, etc) and sorting through it and rating all of it. Even though there is a lot of music in there that I don't like any more, I keep it, but I give it a low rating so that it never shows up on my playlists. Tastes change over the years, so things that I don't like as much now I may like a little more down the road. Or my kids might like them.

Definitely worth it when it's free.

@luvche21 I was born to alcoholic parents and, while trying to do homework or sleep, they would be up all night blasting their country music. They fought throughout the night yelling at each other until they passed out. Being a child, I didn't have the ability to move out of the house so I was sort of forced to deal with it.

I grew up hating country and western, now known as just country. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were my dads favorites so those are the ones that bring back most of the bad memories. But with country, all the songs have the same sound. No matter who is singing, it is close enough to what tormented me early in life that I hate those too. I can tell within the first 3 seconds of a song playing that it is going to be country -- that's how close they all sound alike. And then the words of the songs and the accents they use are all very similar too. Telling the same stories with a southern drawl. Absolutely horrible.

@cengland0 I can certainly see why you'd have the aversion to country. Much more understandable than my reason, it just sucks.

@cengland0 Dang. That sucks. I mostly agree about the country music though. @luvche21 I've grown quite fond of a lot of rap, though I despise that thing where they're just talking about how great they are and how much bling they have and how awful everyone else is. How is that even a thing anymore? Actually, I know how it's still a thing, but I still don't like it.

@joelmw For the last 34 years, I've had severe digestive issues. One known problem is my allergy to gluten. However, many times I could be on a gluten free diet and I still get sick. Been going to doctors for the first 22 of those years trying to figure out what the other problem was that caused the digestive distress.

Then one day, I thought I was having a heart attack. I ended up in the emergency room and after hours of testing, it was determined I was having a panic attack. I was given a shot of Adavan and once I calmed down, was sent home.

My primary care physician came to the conclusion that I needed some anti-anxiety medication. He prescribed xanax for 10 days while we waited for me to ramp up on zoloft. The medication fixed the stomach problems I was having all those years. I was amazed and could finally leave the house to do simple chores like grocery shopping.

After taking Zoloft for a couple years, I noticed some undesirable side effects such as blurred vision and depression. Very weird that the drug was designed for depression was being used as an anti-anxiety medicine and actually caused depression. So I got off that medication and started to take a long-term anti-anxiey called klonopin. Works much better than zoloft, by the way. Just makes me sleepy somewhat like a tranquilizer.

Now what is really strange is that something changed after I stopped the zoloft. I can no longer listen to music without getting overly depressed and want to cry. I'm an old man and we shouldn't just cry for no reason so there's obviously something wrong with me. This happens with any Genre of music even cheerful rock. So to prevent from going into a depression, I have to stop listening to music. It's okay if it's in the background of a movie or something but if it's the main focus where you pay attention and listen, that's when it is a problem.

I don't tell the doctors this as they might want to dissect me and do some more tests. I know I'm okay if I stay away from it so that's what I do.

Weird scenario isn't it?

@luvche21 You should check out MC Lars.

@cengland0 Indeed. But I think you should tell the doctors. There's gotta be something to that.

@cengland0 That's a horrible history with country, and my hate for it is based on your other reasons of "every song sounds the same". I used to like it too... when it was one of the two radio stations that I could pick up at work (the other was a gospel/preachy station, so I really didn't have a choice anyway). Then I grew up and broadened my musical horizons to many other amazing genres. I also studied music professionally and currently work as a music librarian. My musical tastes are pretty picky.

I have never heard of music having effects like they do on you currently, since music generally makes people happy (not all music, and not all the time, but it generally provides positive emotions).

My wife is a music therapist. I'll ask her if she has come across this with any of her clients and see if she has any ideas. Music therapy is awesome.

Just curious, have you tried a wide variety of music genres to see if all affect you the same? If you're interested, I could send some ideas that may not have any emotional attachment for you. Let me know what you think!

@joelmw Yes, that's a part of rap that I generally don't enjoy as well.

I had to look up MC Lars to describe is music, as per Wikipedia, "post-punk laptop rap", lol. I'm not sure what the laptop part means, but the rest definitely explains his style. Thanks for sharing!

Definitely closer to something that I would listen to, especially lyric-wise, but still not quite my cup of tea.

@luvche21 Thanks for your offer to help. I am curious if anyone else has the same emotional response to music as I have, noting that it was not always like this but is a recent issue that started about 12 years ago.

Seriously, your wife is a music therapist? That is probably the most perfect person in the world to answer the question on what happened to me. I didn't know people existed in that profession.

I have tried several music genres. I used to like classical/instrumental, disco, easy listening, classic rock, modern rock/pop, jazz, and Techno/Electric/Industrial. I never did like Country, Blues, Rap, Opera, or R&B. I obviously still don't like those bad genres but I'm surprised that none of the others are okay to listen to without reaction. I'm really curious what your wife has to say about that.

@luvche21 Part of my thing with rap is just the words and with "laptop rap," the goofiness.

If someone's doing anything even semi-creative with words, I'm at least semi-interested.

@joelmw I just found out yesterday that rap is "rhythm and poetry". Still don't care for it. Everytime I see the word "rap" my mind goes back in its wayback machine to when I got a stereo in my mustang and someone was testing out his new system and speakers. I have no idea what the song was or who the artist was, nor do I care. All I remember is "suck my dick suck my dick suck my dick" being broadcasted over the entire parking area.

That was enough rap for a lifetime for this old fart.

@cengland0 I'll talk to my wife about it and see what she says. It's a phenomenal profession, and she's a perfect fit for it. She hasn't told me about any clients that have a similar response as you have mentioned. ...that makes me sad for you since music does so much for me.

A couple varieties that may or may not work for you:

• Bluegrass. Even with my dislike for country, there are certain types of bluegrass that I thoroughly enjoy - often without lyrics, and with amazing instrumentalists performing.
• Upbeat jazz. This would include new artists that employ electronic instruments, but also slightly more traditional big band groups. I've got lots of ideas in this genre.
• Chiptunes. There are some really fun recordings out there.
• If that sounds interesting, let me know and I'll send a couple suggestions. No pressure either way.

The hard thing with music is that it's often written to elicit an emotional response of some sort, so finding music that doesn't bring up any emotions may be tough.

@cengland0 OMG! My mother was a mean alcoholic, a ball buster, she could be incredibly verbally vicious, and my father was a cheater. He loved his C&W.

When I was old enough, I realized why he'd play Jim Reeves "Just Walk On By" and other songs of that ilk over and over. My most loathed song of all time was "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden". I hated that song. Still do.

I can't stand the old stuff (well, Marty Robbins is pretty cool, but his music told stories). Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, George Jones...shudder.... Such a different time then. Not good memories.

Sorry you had to go through what you went through.

@lisaviolet sounds like you and I had similar childhood histories. Sorry about that.

@joelmw I have some sticky phone stands, zhip stands, and child alarms you can have- what in the hell was I thinking?

@mcanavino No one said that you had to get that album...

@luvche21 Well the Pretty Girls told me to do it, which they're free so didn't make me a Criminal.
I wish I could say Gimmie More, but you think that's Crazy, it's My Perogitive so don't Hold it Against Me.

@mcanavino With that masterpiece, your collection is truly complete :)

@Sedorner

@Sedorner they should be paying me to take that album.

@RedOak Yes, it does.

@Pufferfishy Since I've 'purchased' all of the free ones, I'm only seeing new albums that are now a buck. Still worth it for some of them.

@sammydog01 How do I find out about the free album of the week? Thanks for adding those albums to the list :)

@luvche21 From the main music page on google play just scroll down about half way.

@remo28 Thanks! How did I not know about this earlier?? Do they tend to have good albums?

@luvche21 No idea. I hadn't gone there in over a year until this free offer was posted.

@luvche21 Do you consider Venom to be good?

@sammydog01 I'm not familiar with them yet, and the 30 seconds that I listened to it was a bit too heavy for my tastes. Hopefully better albums will come up in the future.

@sammydog01 The band is Bullet for my Valentine. Not my taste. My 15 year old who likes similar bands didn't want it for free either. So I passed, but who knows what will be there next week.

@OldCatLady I used to look through those, but in the end I found it was a waste of time and electrons. That was a few years back though, so maybe there is a better pick. I'll check it out, thanks!

@OldCatLady yeah, I'm looking for artists I've actually heard of. Not Jim Bob Johnson's Garage Band's free album.

@medz Jim Bob Johnson's mom probably doesn't want it either, even for free.