Best place for free classical music mp3 downloads

The title pretty much sums it up. I figure that old recordings of classical music is the best bet for finding music downloads in the public domain. Does anyone do this? What are your favorite sites/ recordings?

classiccat.net is a great directory of free classical music online. It also has links to essays about pieces, book recommendations, etc. A GREAT site. ;-)

Wow, this thread goes back a ways, but I just joined. And yes, the above site is cool, through which I came across the Peabody Institute's website that hosts a nice little collection of performances.

http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/psorecordings

Oh yeah, and I've also bookmarked http://www.musopen.org/

It has a random stream, sheet music, and free downloads.

There are lots of terrific older performances available at http://www.europarchive.org/collection.php?id=public_classical_music_BeG . Good range of formats also (.mp3, .flac, .ogg). Some podcasts are also available from http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/podcast/theconcert.asp ; there is a link to the podcast archive at the right hand side of this page.

Happy downloading!
Guy

The MusOpen and European Archive websites are new to me and look fascinating. Many thanks to B. and Feurmann for posting them!

Thanks for the posts--some redirected but mostly still there.

thanks for this. awesome site!! will recommend it to my friends https://mp3download.to/

I'm not sure about the .mp3 part because I avoid that format; however . . .

youtube-dl is an excellent tool for downloading videos (or the audio portion) from web sites. There's a Wikipedia article on it. Someone has made a Windows port, apparently, but I know nothing about how well that works.

Another rich site is International Music Score Library Project, which includes many sound files. See Wikipedia. Since it's restricted to archiving material in the public domain, it's mostly useful for music before — is it 1923 now?

Just a reminder: If you can afford it, please support classical musicians with purchases, subscriptions, or concert tickets. They have to make a living, and some of those instruments are really expensive. I'm not saying you should never use free downloads, but also help musicians to earn money when you think they deserve it.

>12 GaryMcGath: Excellent point - the creation of new art requires our support.