Best Free Christmas Music Online: Sheet Music, Radio and Downloads

If you'd like to listen to some music for Christmas, you can find just about any song you want for free online. The online music available includes sheet music, streaming radio stations and downloadable MP3 music files. You will need the latest version of Adobe Reader to view and print the free sheet music downloads. To listen to free online Christmas radio, you will need a broadband Internet connection.

Free Christmas Sheet Music

An excellent place to find free Christmas sheet music online is Cantorion.org. The Christmas sheet music on Cantorion includes classical pieces for full orchestra, piano, guitar and voice. It also includes a Christmas carol song book. Many of the Christmas sheet music pieces include lyrics. There are also audio files that let you listen to what the song sounds like when played. Christmas songs on the Cantorion website include Silent Night, Jingle Bells, The First Noel, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen and O Holy Night.

You can also find free sheet music for many classical Christmas carols on the CantateDomino.com website. The site includes full lyrics and sheet music in PDF format for Christmas carols such as A Child Is Born in Bethlehem, God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen, Good King Wenceslas, Away in a Manger, Ding Dong Merrily on High, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, O Come All Ye Faithful and The Holly and The Ivy.

There is also free sheet music for Christmas carols on the NoelNoelNoel.com website. The sheet music consists of image files complete with an attractive Christmas picture with the title of the song at the top of each piece. Christmas carols on this site include Adeste Fideles, Angels We Have Heard on High, Deck the Halls, I Saw Three Ships, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Christmas Tree and We Three Kings. For best results, you should save the image files to your hard drive and then print them from an image viewer or processor.

Free Online Christmas Radio

Pandora.com is a great online radio website that allows you to create your own free radio stations. You only need to sign up for a free account on the Pandora to get started. Click the "Create a New Station" link and type "Christmas" in the field provided. If you have a favorite Christmas song, you could type that in, too. Alternatively, check out the "Genre Stations" at the bottom of the page, click "Holiday" and choose a pre-mixed Christmas station from the list. Then rate music to train your Pandora radio station to stream the Christmas music you like best. And you don't have to listen to Pandora on your computer. There are several TV set top boxes such as Roku Digital Video Player, Vudu and TiVo that offer a Pandora app.

AOL Music hosts several free radio stations that play Christian, classical, comedy, country, jazz, kids, Latin, rock, rhythm and blues, rock and alternative and international Christmas streaming music. Their free radio offerings include Christmas carols and instrumental selections. If you have a slower broadband Internet connection, select "Low" on the radio station page.

Live 365, which hosts both amateur and professional online radio, also offers several free Christmas radio stations. Their Christmas music includes both vocal and instrumental songs. To find them, click "Genres" on the Live 365 website, then click "Christmas." The professional stations on Live 365 are clearly marked in the list of free online radio stations. If the radio station reads, "VIP Only," it isn't free. Each free radio station on the site streams at a different rate, which is indicated at the bottom of the listing. Be sure to select one that is slower than your current Internet connection speed.

Free Christmas Music Downloads

Amazon.com is one of the best sites to get free MP3 music. You can find the free songs and albums by selecting "Shop All Departments," "Digital Downloads" and then "MP3 Downloads." On the left side of the page, click the link for "Free Songs & Special Deals." Then, on the right side of the page, scroll down to click either "Browse all free songs" or "Browse all free albums." You can then search the free MP3s using the term "Christmas" or search for the specific song you would like to download. You must have a free Amazon.com account to download the free MP3 songs on the site.

Jamendo.com hosts many Christmas albums produced by independent artists under a Creative Commons license. Since the songs are produced independently, you're not likely to find much traditional Christmas music on the site. However, you will find some creative renderings of traditional Christmas carols and instrumentals. If you download songs directly from the site, you can get them either in ZIP or MP3 format. However, there is also an option to download Christmas songs in either Ogg or MP3 format by BitTorrent.

The Internet Archive hosts many classical and modern classical Christmas songs, which are available both for streaming and for download. You can download the music in a wide range of file formats, such as ZIP, WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, M3U or MP3. Some of the songs are over a century old, and have been transferred to digital files from wax cylinders. However, the Internet Archive also has many newer Christmas music files as well. You'll be more likely to find the Christmas music you're looking for if you search by song title with the media type "Audio."

The downloadable MP3 songs on all of these websites are free from digital rights management (DRM), which allows you to transfer them to any device you like for playback.

For more information on this topic, read Tips for Downloading Free Music on Amazon.com and The Best Free Online Radio Stations.

Sources:

"Pandora in the Home." Pandora.com