Remember a time when the only way to discover new music was listening to the radio or asking your friends? With the growing list of ways to find music online, that sure seems like ancient history now!
We were in awe when Spotify was released, a perfect equation of one-part Pandora and one-part iTunes, with practically every song you think of available for free and instant streaming. Unfortunately, for those who downloaded the service when its first US release came out in July 2011, your streaming access will soon be capped to just 10 hours per month.
Still, you don’t have to worry – there are many other options for finding music. Facebook, for example, has been rolling out its “Listen With Friends” feature, allowing friends to listen to songs simultaneously.
Still need more options? Here are 4 more ideas for finding music online:
Google Music
Google Music may not have as much free music as either Spotify or MOG, but every day it offers new songs and albums from big-name artists that users can download to their computers for free. Moreover, users can upload up to 20,000 of their own songs to Google Music for free to stream from any computer or mobile device. This way, you don’t have to waste any of your allotted time on services such as Spotify listening to music you already have.
RCRD LBL
Like Google Music, RCRD Label lets you stream and download new tracks from established and lesser-known artists for free every day. There’s no membership fee or subscription; all you have to do is create a free account and you can download the tracks, no strings attached. The site’s selection is much smaller than the others on the list, but then again, the point of it is to discover new artists whose catalogs you can listen to elsewhere.
Turntable.fm
Calling Turntable a music streaming service misses the point somewhat. In reality, Turntable is a virtual hangout space that just happens to be built around music. Users create avatars for themselves and can join or create music rooms of their choice, each centered around a different genre, where users take turn playing the role of DJ and chatting with other users. It’s probably not the right service for someone who just wants to passively listen to a few songs while at work, but the site does offer the potential to discover artists and new friends, all for no cost.
YouTube
Will you be paying for a Spotify membership once they start capping the free music, or will you turn to other services? What other ways do you find music online?
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Photo by cdharrison, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
Suzy S.