• By Jamie Stroble
  • Posted Thursday, June 7, 2018

Resource of the Month: Freegal

Streaming music is great, but generally you have to either pay for the service or put up with annoying commercials. What do we like about Freegal? Well, here’s a few things:

  1. It’s free, so you can save the money you would have spent on downloaded songs on something else, like a tiara for your cat or a Simpsons bicep tattoo.
  2. It’s legal, so you will not be charged with copyright violation and sentenced to clean the dog park.
  3. All you need is a Forsyth County library card in good standing and your PIN (library staff are happy to help if you have questions)


There are:
  • 15 million songs to choose from
  • 10,000 record labels in 60 countries represented
  • Music genres from bluegrass to hip-hop and everything in between - even audiobooks and music videos (you know you want to download Thriller and watch it over and over)


There are no:
  • Digital rights management (DRM) restrictions
  • Pieces of software to download
  • Free legwarmers, even though you will be getting in shape as you work out with your sweet new playlists


Here’s how to get and use Freegal on your mobile device:
  1. Download the Freegal app from your app store
  2. Enter your zip code (do this rather than typing the name of your city or town)
  3. Choose Forsyth County Public Library
  4. Type in your library card number


Here’s a few tips:
  • When browsing songs, you can choose from new arrivals, genres, featured artists, music videos, audiobooks and new arrivals.
  • Tap on the 3 dots to the right of the song to hear a preview of the song, download it or add it to your wishlist.
  • If you hit your limit of 5 songs per week and you know there’s others you want, you can add them to your wishlist to save them to download another week.
  • To check how many downloads you have left for the week, tap the three dots in the upper right hand corner to see your account information.
  • Your five free songs will reset each week on Monday at 12:01 a.m.
  • In the “My Music” section you can create playlists that will allow you to shuffle your songs.


If you want more control over how you search for, organize and play your music, you can download your Freegal songs to itunes or Windows media player using a desktop or laptop (tank tops, flat tops and box tops unfortunately will not work). If you need help, see this page on FCPL’s website: http://www.forsyth.cc/Library/Freegal.aspx or contact your friendly local library staff. If you want a free unicorn… sorry, we are all out of free unicorns, but we have plenty of free music!

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