Shareware Music

I came across a reference to this site, Magnatune.com via another interesting weblog, Church of the Customer.

Magnatune.com applies the concept of "shareware" to music, allowing you to download and listen to music before you decide to buy.

Here is the blurb from their site:

We're a record label. But we're not evil.

We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music.
Listen to hundreds of MP3'd albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations.

If you like what you hear, buy our music online for as little as $5 an album or license our music for commercial use.

Artists get a full 50% of the purchase price. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep the rights to their music.

Founded by musicians, for musicians. No major label connections. We are not evil.

While I can't bear out their claims, I did find some great music on the site. I was wandering through their classical section, but they have a wide variety of music available.