4AD Free Digital Compilation

The nice people at 4AD have a free compilation of tracks the label released in 2008 available to download here. Artists include Stereolab, The Breeders, Deerhunter and TV On The Radio, whose last album was by some margin the most disappointing thing I listened to last year. The mp3s are all tagged according to the source album rather than as a compilation, so you'll have to fuck around with those, and the whole thing's encoded at a pretty disappointing 96kbps, but it's worth at least temporary space on iTunes to check out anything you may have missed.

Most of the 4AD catalog is available on emusic (along with the rest of the Beggars Group labels), which is well worth the $12 each month it costs for 50 non-DRM'ed 192kbps mp3s, particularly for padding out the back catalog. The monthly forced expiration of your downloads actually works to the system's benefit as it compels you to download a few test tracks of stuff you might not otherwise have listened to. The low cost per song also means that, should you download something utterly fucking awful, like, say, the new Antony & The Johnsons EP, you can happily and immediately purge it from your hard drive.