The one that’s in the news at the moment is Spotify, an interactive streaming music service. You can take out a paid subscription, but — if you can tolerate the occasional advertisement — you can listen free! So it’s kinda like commercial radio – but without the annoying DJ! And – really the main thing – you get to choose the music you listen to, either by setting preferences for genre and era, or by searching and setting up playlists. The sound quality is fine and play is pretty much continuous (the Spotify client software uses a local cache).
The range of music on offer is good, although it’s focussed on mainstream stuff, both rock|pop & orchestral, with few of the electronica artists I’m following these days…
However… you can’t download the music, and thus can’t download it to play offline or on your iPod (whaddya mean, there are other MP3 players?). So… I’m not convinced that it’s an alternative to actually owning the music…
But it’s certainly a great way of checking out artists or works that you’re not familiar with.
The other “discovery” I made this week – rather later than many others (I’m so not hoopy sometimes) – is netlabels, online music sites that (mostly) offer free downloads. See the description from No Type:
No Type exists since 1998 to provide discriminating listeners with remarkable free music releases from artists who choose to operate outside of the evil music industry. And because we’re contrarians at heart, we’re also offering a selection of related CDs & vinyls, which you can purchase online.
Most are dedicated to electronica and related genres – which is fine by me! – though this is apparently changing. And much of it is experimental – that is, tending towards the unlistenable! But there is some very good stuff amongst it; for example, Loscil’s Stases on One.
Other netlables that I’ve begun to explore are Chill Productions, Nishi, Stadtgruen, and thinner. There are hundreds more – see the netlabels section on the Internet Archive!
PS. 12,903 songs in my iTunes Library!
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