In honor of a conversation we had at my birthday party, I am going to list some of the music discovery sites and programs I use.
- First up is Pandora Radio. Enter a song or artist and it plays songs like those. You can give a thumbs-up and thumbs-down to a song to help it select better songs. The drawback to Pandora is that it does not have a lot of mainstream music. Most of it is obscure and/or independent. For some this is a feature, but I like a lot of mainstream music.
- Another favorite of mine is Last.FM. You download a program that tells Last.FM what music you play, called “scrobbling.” Then it takes that information and builds a station for you, recommends music and recommends stations of people with similar music tastes. It also lets you choose friends and listen to their channels. I am tlenze, by the way. Feel free to add me.
- Musicovery is also really neat. No need to download anything. You choose genres, energetic or calm and dark or positive. The nice thing about this service is that it shows you a map of the songs it will play you. That way you can ban songs before you actually have to hear them, unlike Pandora and Last.FM.
All three of these services let you buy the songs you hear in a click or two. Give them a try.
