Download Free Classical Music at Classic Cat

Classic Cat is a great website for legally downloading thousands of free classical music tracks to keep.

There are thousands of movements by hundreds of different composers at Classic Cat, and if you're not careful, you'll spend all day browsing and downloading these wonderful tracks.

Classic Cat has classical music as well as opera music, religious music, and chamber music.

You'll find thousands of composers and songs that are performed by brass, cello, choir, clarinet, flute, guitar, orchestra, organ, piano, violin, and voice.

There are a few ways you can find music at Classic Cat. A great place to start is by clicking "Top 100" at the top of the page. There you'll see the top composers from whom free music is available. You can click on one of the works to see the performances you can download.

Click "Composers" at the top of the page to view a list of classical composers who have free music available to download. You also can search the list alphabetically, by birth year, birthday, country, and popularity.

Use the "Performers" link to view a list of the performers. You can view this list by name, instrument, and country.

The "Genres" link will take you to a page where all the works are separated into genres such as spiritual, overture, film score, fantasy, choir, jazz, ballet, and dozens of others. You can find religious music downloads in a separate category of their own.

To download music from Classic Cat, you'll need to click the orange download button to the right of the movement you'd like to download.

None of the music is actually housed at Classic Cat, so you'll be taken to the website where you can download the track. Every website has a slightly different process, so be sure to follow any directions listed.

Classic Cat regularly checks the sites where music can be downloaded in order to keep dead links to a minimum, but it will occasionally happen. Some external sites also require users to register, so in addition to registering with Classic Cat, you may need to sign up for whichever site is actually housing the file.

Classic Cat links only to complete movements (or fragments at least three minutes in length) with the minimum sound quality of 128 kbps.

The site encourages users to report dead links or suggests other legal sources for downloading music that meet Classic Cat's minimum standards.

When in doubt about how to download a performance, right-click on the link to the movement and choose "Save As" to save the download to your computer.

If you're looking for even more free classical music downloads, check out these additional options.

• Musopen includes a royalty-free music section you can search by composer, performer, period, form, and instrument. There's also free sheet music, classical radio stations, and music education resources.
• Wikipedia:Sound/list provides subcategories to find your favorite composers and their free works available to download and keep.