By Scott Onigman, Senior Editor ||
The following is a list of sites where you can digitally stream your own choices, some of which come with video (mainly Youtube). Each of these services offers something different, whether it’s a recommendation after choosing your own song or music videos. They also vary on the free-premium (freemium scale).
Spotify: https://www.spotify.com/us/ – As the gold standard for music streaming, Spotify makes it possible to choose songs, artists, albums, and genres to listen to. They also offer playlists for specific activities. Spotify offers free listening with ads and premium listening without ads and including the ability to listen to music offline.
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com – Youtube is the standard for video streaming. Since most mainstream music makes it onto Youtube via the artist uploading it or it being shared by fans through a lyric video, most of what you would want to listen to is available.
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com – Soundcloud offers free streaming music with no paid option and minimal ads. A lot of indie artists start on Soundcloud and feature a lot of remixes. Soundcloud unfortunately does not have much mainstream music available.
Who Sampled: http://www.whosampled.com – Though this is not music demand specifically, it gives the listener a way to listen to the samples that are used in the remixes they listen to.
Twitter Music: https://music.twitter.com – Allows you to listen to songs by any artist on twitter, with an emphasis on the bands that you follow.
The rest are websites with algorithms that try to fit songs to your chosen song, artist, or genre.
Songza: http://songza.com – Does mood matching, activity pairing, and genre matching. The activity pairing playlists are highly recommended by many user comments.
Pandora: http://www.pandora.com – The best of Internet radio and playlist generation, pandora uses the Music Genome Project to create playlists based on a variety of characteristics.
Itunes Radio: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewRadioMain?ls=1# – This is Apple’s new venture into streaming music, making it possible to stream playlists via itunes or iOS on an Apple device. This is algorithm encourages you to listen to music you don’t know and to buy it for offline use through the iTunes store.
Boil the Frog: http://static.echonest.com/frog/ – Bridges the gap between two artistst that the listener inputs and plays songs that combine the characteristics of the two artists.
HypeM: http://hypem.com/popular – Allows for reading and blogging about recommended songs
Infinite Jukebox: http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html – Plays your chosen song on repeat, making it possible to jump to different parts of the song through beat analysis to make the song infinite.
This is my Jam: http://www.thisismyjam.com/thatonesong – Sharing amongst friend based on the one song that your friends are really “digging” right now.
8Tracks: http://8tracks.com – This internet radio service claims to make playlist recommendations based on human recommendation, rather than algorithms. This playlist made by combining a online mixtape with 8 or more tracks and then sharing; or playlists on demand.
Rdio: https://www.rdio.com – Allows for on demand music stations, albums and playlists with the ability to get rid of ads with a small subscription fee.
Last.FM: http://www.last.fm – As a self proclaimed, “music recommendation service,” Last.Fm “scrobbles,” giving information on what songs you listen to the most and what is recommended for you by others and your friends.
Top Ten: http://tothebestof.com – Plays the top ten best songs of any artist you put in. This is technically on demand streaming, though not quite the same choice preference as direct choice streaming services.
Junior Scott Onigman is the Senior Editor. His email is sonigman@fandm.edu.