Visit Amazon and do searches for well known belly dance musicians, such as Mostafa Amar, Wardo, Mohamed Fouad, Alabina, Samira Said, Amr Diab, Solace and Dania. You can also use the keyword “belly dance music” to locate a score of music albums on the site. The majority of the albums sold on Amazon allow you to play sample mp3s of the individual tracks. However, these tracks are truncated. You can also visit popular belly-dancing websites that allow you to not only stream belly dancing mp3s, but also download the music for free. Do a Google search by keying in the words “belly dancing music mp3.”
Go to online radio stations that offer belly dancing music. Raks Radio has a dedicated web-based belly-dancing music station. In order to listen to the music, you need to become a VIP member. Monthly subscriptions range from about $6 to $8. Raks Radio offers a wide range of belly dancing music, including Lebanese, Turkish, Egyptian, fusion, alternative and pop. Last.fm provides free tag radio where you can listen to belly dancing songs without interruption or having to click through selections. However, you have no control over which song is played next. If you prefer to listen to one artist, you can click to that artist’s page on Last.fm and play all the tracks from his or her featured albums.
Watch video clips of belly dancers on Youtube. Use the keywords “belly dancing music” and choose from over 5,500 results. If you sign up for Youtube, you can create your own favorite playlists of belly dancing music. By doing so, you can listen to multiple videos one after the other without having to stop and start the videos. Dedicated belly dance sites also offer video clips. Bellydance (http://bellydanceduventre.com) boasts an online library of over 32,000 videos that have been uploaded from around the world. The “Bellydance Music” category features over 680 videos. Other categories include Dutch, Japanese, Portugese, Spanish, French, India, Greek, Polish and Russian bellydance videos.
Listen to podcasts of belly dancing music. Podcasts are audio broadcasts on the Internet. Because many people download these broadcasts into their iPods, the term “podcast” became popular. To access podcasts, you can use various media players such as Windows Media Player, Winamp and iTunes. If you do a search for belly dancing podcasts on iTunes, you can find at least a dozen free belly dancing music selections. Among them are Bellydance Revolution, Café Arabia and Shimmy Cast.