Anyway, Winter Jam has a theme song.  The song is called “Winter Jam”, and was recorded by a Christian musician by the name of Rawsrvnt.  It’s an arena anthem with a catchy chorus, and it happens to be free on HearItFirst.com.  Scroll to the bottom of the article for the download link.  Enjoy!

-“Winter Jam” the theme song on HearItFirst-

Anyway, I sorted through the 300+ posts and probably 1000+ songs and ended up with this list of favorites:

10: Tie Between Children 18:3, Children 18:3, and Children 18:3 - So, Matt had a tie at 10th, so I thought it was only fair that I do the same. Children 18:3 was a band I found near the beginning of the year and was the first band that year to show me that pop-punk could be something that I could enjoy if it was done right.

9: Sides of the North - This small band was one of Christian music’s best kept secrets, which is a shame because they were awesome. Six songs by them is definitely an awesome post and worthy of placing in the top 10.

8: Summer Slam Volume 2 - Indie Vision Music has been one of the top sources of free Christian music, and SSV2 is their biggest and best. It gave me free songs from Project 86, Stavesacre, Ocean is Theory, The Dark Romantics, and introduced me to a bunch of smaller bands, especially The Human Flight Committee, with their song “She’s A Car Destroyer.”

7: The Devil Wears Prada - I became a fan of TDWP when I saw them at Warped Tour (and crowdsurfed to them). So I was very excited when I found a free sampler containing “Hey John, What’s Your Name Again?”

6: The Awkward Romance - The Awkward Romance was already my favorite local band before they came out with this CD, This Song Is Writing Me, but this CD caught me by surprise by how well produced it was. And the fact that they gave it away for free was an even bigger surprise.

5: Capital Lights - What Children 18:3 started was reinforced by the introduction to my of Capital Lights. And what we have here with “Can I Get An Amen” is Capital Lights at their best.

4: Stavesacre - Stavesacre is a band that I’d heard of a for a while but never listened to for the longest time. However, once I saw on here that they had a song (”It’s Beautiful Once You’re Out There”) up for download, I decided to give them a listen. I was far from disappointed, and I must say that I have found one of my new favorite bands.

3: mewithoutYou - As I’ve mentioned before, mewithoutYou is my favorite band. The only reason that this isn’t listed higher is that I already had the song long before I found the download that I featured. Still, they are my favorite band.

2: Tooth & Nail Fuel Sampler - Any Tooth & Nail sampler is gonna have awesome songs on it, but this one caught me by surprise with the artists that I enjoyed the most on it. Now, I already had the great songs from Children 18:3 and Showbread, but this sampler introduced me to Capital Lights and Oh, Sleeper plus it gave me amazing songs from Sever Your Ties and my personal favorite on the whole sampler, “Abracadavers” by The Classic Crime, which was a band I had long ago written off.

1: House of Heroes - Sure, I found it before I found this site, but the three free songs, in combination with the ones they streamed on myspace, held me over until their new CD finally came out in September. “In The Valley Of The Dying Son” has been in my collection since March and has yet to ever at any point get old, and neither have any of the others, which is why this places as the number one download of the 2008.

Honorary Mentions:

Everyday Joe’s - This sampler was no longer available by the time that I found this site, but anything that includes Listener Project is awesome.

Christmas Day 12 - Matt put a ton of work into this post, listing something like 2 dozen artists with Christmas songs up for download.

10.  Tie: Jonathon Steingard’s Atlantis EP & Fighting the Fall- I just couldn’t decide on this.  The Atlantis EP is an excellent & personal solo debut from Hawk Nelson’s guitarist Jonathon Steingard that I really like.  On the other hand, Fighting the Fall is a talented independant emo/screamo band with two good free songs.  Both Atlantis & the FtF downloads are still available.

9.  Run Kid Run “One In A Million” and Sanctus Real “Turn On The Lights” - “Turn On The Lights” is a great song, but the real reason I particularly love this post was “One In A Million”.  It’s an awesome, catchy song that I can’t get enough of.  Sadly, both songs are no longer available.

8.  Leeland “Opposite Way” - Not only do I like the song, but I also really like what Leeland did by asking fans to share their stories about “going the opposite way”.  This one is still available, if you’d like to check it out.

7.  The Devil Wears Prada, Burden of a Day, Before Their Eyes - It’s hard to top The Devil Wears Prada, and when you add in two promising new bands like Burden of a Day (with an excusive demo, I might add) and Before Their Eyes, it’s probably going to be good.  Still available.

6.  The Tooth & Nail Fuel Sampler - I shouldn’t really need to explain this one much.  Something like 25 free songs from the best Tooth & Nail Records bands.  My favorites are Run Kid Run, Capital Lights, and The Becoming.  By the looks of it, this sampler is still available too.

5.  House of Heroes’ FreeHoH .com - Three awesome songs from The End Is Not The End, House of Heroes’ latest that could very well be the best CD of the year.  Really, really good.  As far as I can tell the songs are still available.

4.  Staple “Dictatorship vs. Democracy” - I don’t know what it is about this song, but I just don’t get tired of it.  This one has been on my mp3 player all year, and I still love it.  This one is also still available.

3.  Number One Gun - Pure alternative rock goodness.  I don’t think I can begin to count how many times I’ve listened to these three songs this year.  Still available, and highly recommended.

2.  Three Cord Wonder - Even though they may not have been the next big thing musically, I think Three Cord Wonder was one of the coolest Christian bands I featured this year.  I listen to a lot of music, and I rarely ever get to hear such a unashamedly Christian band.  Sure, the lyrics are simple, but they’re true, and give glory to God.  That’s a band I can look up to.

1.  Esterlyn - I’d never heard of the group Esterlyn before 2008, and now, they’re one of my top artists.  In fact, I liked their music enough to write up a whole spotlight on them.  Extremely good.

There you have it, the year 2008 in free Christian music as seen by Matt.  Now, even though those were my favorite free music posts, there were a couple of others that deserve mention simply because they were particularly fun, random, and unusual.  That list includeds No More Gloom, the free CD Everyday Joe’s Coffee House (in Fort Collins, Colorado) released, featuring different songs by artists who’ve played there, which was really random.  And then there’s the BarlowGirl song on the German site that required step-by-step instructions.  That was a lot of fun to write up.  And, last but not least, the mind-blowing weird song titles post.  That was so much fun to research and write for, and totally random too.

That’s why I decided to start stockpiling song titles for version 2, which you can look for sometime soon.  Like last time, I’d love it if everyone could contribute their favorite weird-and-wacky titles.  Leave a comment, or shot me an email at freechristianmusicblog@gmail.com.  Thank everyone for reading, and happy New Year!

Oh, and I just remembered, I was going to ask what your favorite posts from 2008 were.  Do you agree with me, or have your own top pick?

Free music today from Kutless! Word has just reached me that the band is giving away their song “Complete” as part of a promotion with Bible Study Magazine.  Not only can you snag the song (which is from the band’s latest CD To Know That You’re Alive), you can also enter win a snazzy Kutless prize pack.  Pretty cool:

-Bible Study Magazine + Kutless-

Free music today from new artist Seabird.  Purevolume.com is actually giving away their song “Rescue” for free, as part of a special promotion.  Turns out, Seabird was recently selected as one of the Top 20 Unsigned Artists of 2008 on Purevolume, a huge honor. 

They were the only Christian band selected, which is pretty cool for them, and, since we get free music, it’s pretty cool for us too.  :)  The song is quite good, soft piano based rock with good lyrics.  Enjoy!

-Seabird as one of Top 20 Unsigned Artists of 2008-

To get the song, surf over to RedCloud’s iLike profile and click the “free mp3″ by the song title.  Enjoy!

-RedCloud on iLike-

Let’s kick it off with Shane & Shane. They’ve got their song “Away in A Manger” available from Today’s Christian Woman. Actually, Mandisa, Sara Groves, and Casting Crowns all have songs on that site too.

Alli Rogers has a brand new Christmas EP up on NoiseTrade. It’s called The Silent Stars EP, and you can pay want you want for it, or get it for free by sharing it with 5 friends. Also on NoiseTrade is the Christmas edition of The Silent’s CD Unseen, featuring their version of “We Three Kings”. To top those two, you can also get a free compilation featuring songs from the Love Came Down A Christmas Time Tour. The sampler has songs from all 4 artists on the tour, Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer, Sara Groves, and Leeland. Very cool. Check it here.

If that’s still not enough music for you, GodTube has got free Christmas songs from Travis Ryan, Rachel Scott, and Sara Groves, plus some other goodies. Then there’s two free songs from High Valley on the Centricity Record’s website. Leigh Nash has a free Christmas song on Download.com, Theocracy has a wild Christmas song called “Rudolph vs. Frosty” up on their website, and then there’s The Staple Singers, who have “No Room at the Inn” up on Download.com.

Sixpence None the Richer, Sara Groves, and DecembeRadio all have Christmas songs available for free on JesusFreakHideout.com, iTicket’s has a Christmas download from Gabriela Hindy, plus two other songs from Abandon and Mission Six. Asthmatic Kitty Records has two free Sufjan Stevens Christmas songs available too.
Amazon.com has got numerous free songs from the likes of Sixpence None the Richer, Leigh Nash, Jars of Clay, Mannheim Steamroller, Big Daddy Weave, Jim Brickman, David Phelps, and BarlowGirl.

BarlowGirl, Jars of Clay, Chris Sligh, and Casting Crowns all have free mp3s available on CCM Magazine’s website.

I think Don Francisco wins the award for the most songs available. 21 on his website!

Even though it’s not a download, The Advantage has added a cool Christmas song to their MySpace profile. It’s called “Retail Christmas”, and it’s actually quite good. Here’s hoping they do a free download of it soon.

Brian Bate’s has an interesting free download. It works on a honor system - something you sadly don’t see much of any more. Anyway, the song is “Mary Christmas” and it’s available on his website.

Willet’s website, after being down for weeks, is finally up and running again with a free original Christmas song by the band. It’s called “The Nativity”, and looks pretty good.

Speaking of independent rock, the group The Violet Burning has got a full Christmas CD for free this year. It’s called Divine, and you can check that out on their website.

And, to close, Sleeping At Last has three Christmas downloads up on their Virb profile, plus one live song and another normal track.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Indie Vision Music have created yet another awesome sampler - only this time, it’s a early indie Christmas present.  It’s got some great Christmas songs (most notably MxPx and Esterlyn) plus around 45 all-year-round-tracks from bands like Kiros, Ocean Is Theory, My Epic, Saints Never Surrender, and more.  Totally sweet.  Check it out:

-A Very Indie Christmas from Indie Vision Music-

Vanquishing the opposition and conquering by a 2/3 margin, Josh Wilson is the Song Combat champion.  *Applause*  To the victory goes the spoils - or, in this case, this blog post…

Jsoh Wilson has been doing an advent calender on his website for the month of December, and has been sharing something cool everyday.  For example, discounts on store items, YouTube videos with behind-the-song information, pictures of Josh as a kid, and the recipe for his Mom’s Caramel Nut Biscuit Ring.

Now, if you were to visit his website, open the envelope, and click on day 4, you might just find “Angels We Have Heard On High”.  Enjoy the mp3! 

-Josh Wilson’s Website-