Well, it's July. That means it's past halfway to next Xmas! And that also means that Ernie (Not Bert) is doing his annual Christmas in July.
So head over there and get some tunes while the gettin' is good!
So, who writes all those great (non-carols) songs for Xmas? Why, the Jews, of course: The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs
[via the Schmalz]
The most talented man in the music biz, Butch Walker, released an adorable, yet slightly naughty, Xmas song on his blog today.
For those of you blessed with Macs, open the Activity Window, hold down the Option key, and double-click on the 3 meg file. That'll download it for you.
Other platforms are on their own.
Jamendo is basically an open source music site. Tons of tunes, downloadable, most (if not all) under a Creative Commons license. Check out their selection of Xmas-themed music.
[via Free Christmas Music]
Or maybe it's just called Cthulhumas?
Anyway, if you've a hankering for Lovecraftian Carols, well, there's a site for that.
They have two separate releases: A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice.
Each CD comes with a songbook. The styles cover a wide range. Several tracks could be easily snuck in with traditional versions with only the careful listener any the wiser.
They also bundle both CDs along with a Solstice Tentacle in An Unbearably Scary Solstice Combo.
There are 4 full songs available for download, plus plenty of snippets.
Buying the combo will help ensure that you are eaten first!
[via Greta Christina's Blog]
I've mentioned the Garritan Community Xmas CDs before. Volume 6 is now available!
While they would previously send you audio CDs for free, now they charge a whole $1.75. And, of course, you can still download them for free.
[via Free Christmas Music]
Let Nothing You Dismay is a collection of weird Xmas-ish tunes by artists on Doubtful Palace.
(Doubtful Palace is really more a place for some guy to host music by himself and his friends, rather than an actual record company. More power to him.)
[via Greta Christina's Facebook page]
Personally, I think Amazon is evil and I refuse to do business with them. But you can do what you like. And if what you like is free Xmas music, well then, Amazon has one free tune a day from now until Xmas. Think of it as a musical Advent calendar. (Although not at cool as a Punk Rock one!)
[via Gizmodo, who aren't evil, but prickly enough to repeatedly ban me from making comments]
Yes, it's a Punk Rock Advent Calendar. Get a new punky version of an Xmas song each day from January 1st through the big day.
Or, if you're like me, you'll scrape all the links from the page source and make a quick shell script to grab each one with wget.
[via Free Christmas Music]
SomaFM provides a number of streaming radio stations. During the holidays, they add two Xmas-themed stations to the roster, one that's kid-friendly and one that's appropriate for adults.
nuTsie, in addition to providing an iPhone app, also provides a number of streaming music stations, many of which are Xmas-related.