Music

For anybody who knows me at all, they know that I love music. It's a huge part of my life, and I constantly have some song or another stuck in my head. I prefer it not be Duran Duran, though it's been known to happen. But it's never, EVER a country song. Anyway, the reason this happens, and for the reason for this post, is to talk about some different music services on the world wide interwebs that I don't know if people realize exist. But if you like music at all, you really should, because internet music services have come a LONG way in the last few years.

The service that I originally started using was Yahoo Music. They had a great online radio service, allowing you to "rate" each song, artist, or album, and using that information to determine what else you might want to hear. Also, for a small fee (I think I got in at the early adopter price of $5/month), you could listen to, and download to your PC, any song in their catalog. This was huge!!! I could get down to James Brown, jam with the Beasties, or want to slit my wrist listening to The Cure, all from the comfort of my uncomfortable desk chair, without lugging around a bunch of CD's, or finding and downloading all of the songs to my MP3 player. I loved the fact that I could just check out any music I wanted, at any time, within reason.

Sadly, the reason I'm using the past tense, and the reason for not providing a link, is that Yahoo Music is no more. They were gobbled up by Rhapsody, though, and sort of lives on through that. Which brings me to my next service....

Rhapsody is basically the 2nd coming of Yahoo Music. (As a side note, you'll have to forgive me for not using the exclamation point at the end of Yahoo...I didn't do it above, and I won't do it now. Fortunately for anybody who cares, I won't be using that word anymore, so you won't have to cringe from here on out - at least not at that issue). Anyway, Rhapsody is almost identical to...the old service I used. Same format, same features, etc. The price went up a bit, but is still a reasonable $13/month. So for the price of a CD every month, you can have access to all of their music, and download it to your PC, or just stream it. It's pretty much amazing. For an additional $2/month, you can get that music to go, on your MP3 player. Apparently it flips back and forth between whether it supports iPods or not, so if you've conformed with the rest of the known world, this may not be for you. I've kept my Creative MP3 player, and love this To Go service. I have nearly filled up my hard drive with everything from the Rolling Stones and Doors, to the John Butler Trio and The Avett Brothers, to the James-Brown-wannabe Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, to Coldplay and Ben Harper, to Bob Marley and Brian Wilson, to Duran Duran....wait...what? Who put that on there? Anyway... It's a fantastic service, whichever plan fits you best. But, it does cost you. Unlike...

Pandora, which is more of just an online radio, but a very cool one. Again, you rate the songs and artists, so Pandora knows what you like. It then tweaks what you're listening to based on your likes and dislikes. The coolest thing about this and the services I mentioned previously is that you find all kinds of artists you'd never even heard of. It's how I found The Avett Brothers, Phoenix, Loudon Wainwright III, Owl City, Cobra Starship, The Swell Season, and Amadou & Miriam, to name just a few. If you're listening to something, Rhapsody and...the other service will tell you other artists and albums that are similar to it. So you click on those, and find a new band, as well as even more artists that sound like that one. I've spent more hours than I care to admit following that chain, and if you're like me...well, first of all, you have my deepest apologies, but second, I think you'd like this too.

MOG is the newest service I've seen, and is kind of like the cool, browser-based Rhapsody. Everything flies around in different windows, it's fast, and it has some cool features. It's a pay service, unlike Pandora (totally free), but it's cheaper than Rhapsody. Right now it's $5/month, which is exceptional. You don't get to download the music to your PC (or MP3 player), like you do with Rhapsody, but for 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost, and if all you need is streaming, this is pretty awesome. The tour video on their site does it way more justice than I can, so I'll let them tell you why they're great, and leave it at that. If I didn't need to download the songs to my MP3 player, I probably would be using this service and dropping Rhapsody in a heartbeat. Oh yeah, and they have a download for the iPhone. So...you know...if you have one of those....woot for you.

IMeem used to be a great site. I say "used to", because I don't know what's going on with it now. Apparently very recently MySpace bought them out. I'm not much of a fan of MySpace, so we'll see what this means for the music site. What sucks is, I only just learned about this site from a friend at work like 2 weeks ago. I thought it was pretty awesome. Now, it's changed. So, we'll see where it goes from here.

Anyway, this has run too long as it is. There are other fantastic services out there, especially for online radio listening, like last.fm, Digitally Imported, and others, but I'm not going to talk about all of them. Mostly because I don't use all of them. Digitally Imported (di.fm) is a techno site, so if you like drum & bass, techno, trance, psychill, house, lounge, goa, roa, toa, and moa, it's nearly unbeatable. last.fm is more of a "standard" radio station, similar to Pandora. If you want to just have a bare-boned streaming service, I would check those out. The others, that you pay for, are more robust, and give you a lot more options. So if you like music, at all, check these out. You can thank me later.