Where can you find new music that suits your taste? More importantly, where can you get it for free? Try these five top sites:
Pandora is a music recommendation service. It works on the idea that music has a structure which can work like DNA. Just as similar DNA will produce animals closely related to each other, Pandora uses the elements in a piece of music to link it to other music. Pandora considers over 400 attributes, including techniques such as dissonant harmonies and rhythm syncopation, as well as the type of instruments involved and the proficiency of the playing. When you give Pandora either an artist or some individual tracks to work with, it will create a radio station unique to you which plays music you might like based on the artist or tracks you first provided. You can then vote up or down the tracks it plays, which will further refine the recommendations you receive. One limitation to be aware of though - Pandora is officially only available for UK and UK residents
Last FM is an internet radio and community site with over 15 million users. It uses your listening habits to build a profile of the artists you like,from which it can suggest others you might want to listen to. You can build up a profile either by listening to online radio stations provided by Last FM, or by letting Last FM track your listening habits on your computer or Ipod. But Last FM goes beyond Pandora by using this profile to give you your own personalized web pages which display your tastes and show you who your musical neighbors are (ie Last FM users with matching tastes). Recommendations for new music you should try are integrated into these pages as well as links to info about the artists you listen to and guidance on similar artists. All the music on last FM is available in full on the radio and also in part or in full for on demand preview or download (depending on what the record label allows).
The music on Jamendo is completely free to download. It's available in MP3 format and has no legal or technical restrictions on copying and sharing. You can even use some of it to incorporate into your own music, sometimes even for commercial use (check the license when you download an album). Jamendo doesn't have any big name artists, but with over 4000 albums available, there's likely to be something to your taste. Music is tagged by genre for easy browsing and can be previewed before you download.
Dmusic is the oldest online digital music community. It has tracks for preview and download. Unlike Jamendo, not all the music is available for free and the site is oriented towards downloading single tracks rather than whole albums at once. However the volume of music on offer, of which a pretty substantial portion is downloadable, makes Dmusic worth having a browse round. For those looking for something familiar, many contributors to Dmusic seem to send in at least one cover version of a well known artist.
Ok so all Egg radio is at heart is an Internet radio station. And online radio stations are two a penny. However....radio stations like the Egg are not at all common. The Egg Radio philosophy is to play good music without being bound by decade or genre. Now admittedly some people indoctrinated by the narrow play lists and rigid musical straitjackets of commercial terrestrial radio find the resulting musical combinations confusing. However there's probably no finer way of hearing a constant stream of classics mixed in with music you haven't heard before than a bit of time spent listening to Egg radio. You won't have much control over what new music you hear, but on the other hand it doesn't call for much effort on your part. Perfect when you want to do other things at the same time. As a bonus and to influence what you do hear, it's possible to rate the songs so that particular tracks come by more, or less, frequently.
I hope you find one or more of these sites useful. If you do, or you have some other sites to suggest, then please feel free to leave a comment below.
