Red Cord Records/Christian Music on Freegal

I'd never realized that so many artists from Red Cord Records (past and present) were on Freegal! I stumbled across one of their former (?) artists, Chosen. That particular band drew my eye because that was the working title of the novel I'm currently editing/rewriting. (By the way, it is incredibly difficult to find the correct band "Chosen" online. I guess a couple members are now in Thorns Deep? maybe????). Either way, I am now recommitted to never calling a novel "Chosen" as its full name, ever.)

Anyway, I really enjoyed Chosen's self-titled EP. I am adding their album Passage onto my MP3 player for my car tonight!

So aside from them, there are a lot of Christian rock artists available on Freegal under Red Cord Records. (The name most familiar to me was Righteous Vendetta, which is funny because I'm not sure I've really listened to their music.) This post explains a bit about how Freegal works. Now there's an adequate search function, so you can actually choose advanced search and put in the label Red Cord Records if you want to just browse some artists.

How to Use Freegal from your library

OK, one of my friends was having trouble figuring out how to use Freegal so I thought I'd put up some visuals. Your library may work slightly differently, but this should be the basic method.

1. Go to your library's website and find Freegal.

2. At my library, you go to the "My Library" menu, and then choose "Freegal."

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3. Enter your library card number and library PIN.

4. Enter in the artist (or other search criteria) of your choice. You can download 3 free songs each week.

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When you've downloaded your 3 songs you will see a message "Limit Exceeded." That just means you have to come back next week (Monday at 12:01 AM Eastern time) for more music.

I have a list of some of the Christian artists on Freegal here.

Look! I saved you $3/week! You know what you can do with $3/week? Buy my book. Or more seriously, pocket it or give a couple extra bucks to charity/your church. Enjoy!

50 things I am thankful for from 2011

OK, 2011 was kind of a rough year, but there were a lot of good things too. I decided to look through my blog to see things I was thankful for.

1. A Rotterdam November
2. Ragefest 2011
3. Camping chairs at Ragefest 2011...I must be getting old but man it was sweet to not have to stand for 10 hours straight.
4. New cell phone!
5. Finished a draft of Flight from Endwood
6. VNSA book sale...
7. ...and gingerbread unicorns!

8. Tucson Festival of Books 
9. Florida Renaissance Festival..
10. ...with Maggie! 
11. Also Wonderfool
12. Seeing Skillet live with Rachel and Emily (especially Hero with pyro!)
13. Discovering squirrel monkeys are cute.
14. The Tampa Bay airport....
15. ...and falling in love with my Tiny Duffy.
16. Trying to devote 100 hours to writing/prayer/church/God.
17. Twice!
18. Mom
19. Recalling San Diego
20. Making myself laugh
21. Getting a much-needed new laptop
22. Never being hungry all year
23. Dad
24. Sooooo many wonderful friends.
25. Liberty Bond Cat
26. Watching the Back to the Future trilogy
27. Winning free books O_O
28. Getting a Kindle!
29. Kindle sleeve
30. Homely unicorns
31. Chalk drawings
32. Providence
33. And procrastination
34. Talk Like a Pirate Day
35. Prescott, Arizona
36. My brother
37. Old forgotten music
38. Winged unicorns
39. Halloween
40. TusCon
41. The Healer and the Pirate - published!
42. On Lulu too!
43. And no more editing!
44. Working on the next book
45. Freegal
46. Disneyland!
47. Love is Breathing 
48. New blog devoted to beloved Tiny Duffy
49. Pizza pizza, yum yum
50. BABY!  I am an aunt!

Happy 2012, everyone!

Tons of Free Christian Music on Freegal

Edited 3/25/12

So last week I talked about Freegal, which is a system that some libraries subscribe to that allows patrons to download free and legal MP3s (usually 3/week). More info here.

I suggest you go right now and check your local library website.  If they have Freegal, you can get yourself some music!  If not, then you could check other city libraries that you may be able to get a card to (like if you're in a suburb, try the big city).  If they also don't offer it, then move along; this post will be pretty dull to you.

I was actually just going to post that you can finally look up songs by genre on Freegal, but I just checked and couldn't get it to work.  Again.  So below is a list of some popular Christian artists on Freegal.  The below is not a comprehensive list, but it gives you a starting point.

I suggest you use "Advanced Search" and search by artist. Asterisks are for my own use, as I'll be checking back to download some more songs from them later.  And once you've grabbed some free songs, maybe you can head on over to iTunes or Amazon MP3 and show some love to one of your favorite smaller artists.  :)

Skillet - Skillet; Ardent Worship: Skillet; Alien Youth; Hey You, I Love Your Soul; Invincible; The Early Years
Don't Miss: Angels Fall Down; Will You Be There (Falling Down)

Stellar Kart - Everything Is Different Now; A Whole New World EP
Don't Miss: All My Heart; Something Holy; Rescue

*Disciple - Disciple; Southern Hospitality; Horseshoes & Handgrenades
Don't Miss: Still working on it

Fireflight - For Those Who Wait; The Healing of Harms; Unbroken and Unplugged
Don't Miss: Unbreakable; For Those Who Wait

Wavorly - Conquering the Fear of Flight
Don't Miss: Praise and Adore

*Relient K - The First Three Gears; Forget And Not Slow Down; The Bird And the Bee Sides; Let It Snow Baby, Let It Reindeer; Is For Karaoke EP; Is For Karaoke EP Part 2
Don't Miss: Softer To Me; For The Moments I Feel Faint; Forward Motion; Getting Into You

*Subseven - Free To Conquer; Subseven the EP
Don't Miss: Faded Letters; Mayday (from Subseven the EP)

Red (I had to use Advanced Search and look up Artist and Album) - End of Silence; Innocence and Instinct; Until We Have Faces
Don't Miss: Already Over

The Chemistry - The Chemistry
Don't Miss: Still Alive

Nevertheless - Live Like We're Alive; In the Making…
Don't Miss: Live Like We're Alive

Plumb - The Best of Plumb; Plumb; Simply Plumb; candycoatedwaterdrops

Switchfoot - The Beautiful Letdown; Live; Nothing Is Sound; Stars; Oh! Gravity., The Best Yet

The Fray - The Fray; Heartbeat; Over My Head (Cable Car); Reason; Acoustic in Nashville Bootleg No. 2; How To Save A Life; Live at the Electric Factory (Bootleg No. 2)

Eleventyseven - Galactic Conquest; and the land of fake believe

*House of Heroes - The End Is Not The End; Meets the Beatles EP; The Acoustic End EP; Suburba; The Christmas Class; Lovesick Zombie; The Rebel Jesus

Jars of Clay - A ton of songs



Are any of your other favorite Christian bands on Freegal?  Did I miss any songs that you consider "Don't Miss"?  Leave a comment!

Tons o' free (to you) music

First, A Rotterdam November could really use your help...if you have $5 or more to spare, please hop over to their Kickstarter and preorder their upcoming EP. I have no doubt it will be excellent. $5 for the EP or you can put up more money and get some really cool stuff.

I was surprised to find my library subscribes to a service called Freegal...you can log in with your library card info and then download up to 3 MP3s a week at no cost to you. The count resets Sunday; I understand some libraries may run through their allotment by the end of the day Sunday or Monday.

When I investigated further, I found it may not be the best use of the library's money, as the library is often paying Freegal (who appears to work through Sony?) about $1 per MP3. But on the other hand, it also appears it's kind of a prepaid thing, so if your library has it, it's paid for and you might as well take advantage.

Christian artists include Switchfoot, Relient K, Fireflight, Nevertheless, Skillet, The Fray, and Red (you'll have to do Advanced Search for those last two). Certainly a ton more, but their browse option is absolutely abysmal so you have to search for a particular artist to find them!

Assuming you actually would've bought all these MP3s for $1 each, that's a free $156 a year...not too bad!

Now that I've saved you all that money, don't you want to go support a band who needs you? :)