RAVE - SXSW Music Downloads

While the SXSW (South By Southwest) festival may not be the best known music event in the world, it's probably the single best source for cutting edge live music in one event.

Next best thing to being there in Austin, Texas, and certainly easier than attempting to see every one of the 1,200 + bands performing during the 4 days, is downloading the thousands of featured tunes from those bands.

That can be achieved, legally and free of charge, by going to the unofficial home of the SXSW torrents.

In the main frame you'll see just over 1,000 songs - 5.43gb - to download as torrents. In the left hand frame you'll see torrents for 2005-2009. Torrents are sets of pointers to peer-to-peer network locations from which the actual MP3s are downloaded.

In order to manage the Torrent content download, I use Vuze.

Having installed Vuze, you can click on each Torrent name in your download folder, and Vuze will fetch each song from the network into your download folder. Once there, you will need to move the thousands of MP3s into your regular music folder, and then into iTunes.

I'm what's colloquially known as a "leech", in that I download then move and delete the originally downloaded files, so as not to keep them around as a "seed" to other people trying to download the same music. Shoot me, but I don't trust leaving music on my machine for just anyone to access.

"And how good is the music?", I hear you ask.

Schmoozing through the 2010 showcase tunes, most of the artists are currently little-known (Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly anyone?) Therefore, you'll need to sample the entire selection in order to get to the jewels.

What's more interesting, in some respects, is looking back at previous years' showcased tunes, spotting bands that you now know and love. The Octopus Project, The Pigeon Detectives, Gossip (for heaven's sakes!) from 2009; The Von Bondies, Noah and The Whale, from 2008; Voxtrot, Scissors For Lefty, MuteMath, from 2007; The Magic Numbers, The Duke Spirit, Noisettes, OK Go, Nine Black Alps, Drive By Truckers, Corinne Bailey Rae, We Are Scientists, Silversun Pickups, Okkervil River, Of Montreal, from 2006; Wolfmother, Kaiser Chiefs, from 2005.

And if you don't like that lot, well, the music's free.