Streaming music online has become one of the most popular ways to listen to music in this day of age. It makes finding and sharing music simple and you can take it with you anywhere. Music streaming sites are a great tool for discovery of new music and bands, as well. Here is a list of some of the best music streaming sites and services out there, or at least ones that I like and use often...
Well Known Streaming Sites:
1.)
Pandora: A music streaming site where you can create unique "radio stations" based on a specific band, song, or genre. For each station you make, Pandora will play songs based on previous songs and selections that you liked/disliked. The site allows you to create up to 100 unique stations. Since it's start up in 2000, Pandora has been using listener information to further their work with the Music Genome Project. It is said to be "the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken." (
Click here to learn more about the Music Genome Project.) Pandora says that their name comes from Greek mythology. "The name Pandora means "all gifted" in Greek. In ancient Greek mythology, Pandora received many gifts from the gods, including the gift of music, from Apollo. She was also, as we all know, very curious. Unlike those gods of old, however, we celebrate that virtue and have made it our mission to reward the musically curious among us with a never-ending experience of music discovery." This site is one of my go-to sites to discover new music and enjoy music I already know about. Pandora is a really well thought out system. I highly recommend it to anyone with a need for streaming music.
2.)
Spotify: A Swedish music streaming service that was started in 2006 (Spotify wasn't available in the United States until late July of 2011). Creating an account with the free service allows users to have access to millions of tracks. They can create playlists, use apps specific to Spotify, and connect and share with other users. Not only do you have millions of tracks available for use, the service also adds your own music library to your available tracks. Spotify's Facebook integration system allows users to easily share music with friends on social networking sites. Spotify is great for finding new artists daily with a vastly growing collection of songs and artists. It is wonderful for home and office music streaming.
3.)
iTunes: A media player from Apple for your computer. Itunes allows users to buy, play, download, and organize music, as well as videos, movies, books, TV shows, apps, and more. With iTunes, you can bring your music library with you anywhere, anytime. One of my favorite features on iTunes is the iTunes Radio. It has thousands of radio stations from all over the world, making it very easy to find new music. I also like the featured free downloads that are offered weekly. I have found some of my favorite bands through these downloads.
4.)
Grooveshark: A music streaming and discovery site that allows you to stream and upload music for playlists or immediate playback. Share your music on Facebook, Twitter, and more with just one click. The site makes music discovery easy by offering artist suggesions based on past preferences and site searches.
5.)
SoundCloud: SoundCloud is classified as a "social sound platform." The site allows anyone to create and share sounds. Users can share their sounds privately with friends or publicly with blogs, social networks, and other sites. You can find nearly any kind of music/sound imaginable on SoundCloud. Often the songs and albums on SoundCloud are available for download and a lot of times are a free download. It is an incredible music disovery experience.
6.)
YouTube: Nearly everyone knows what YouTube is all about, but for those of you that don't, I will explain. YouTube is a video sharing site for originally-created videos. It creates a forum for billions of people to connect, share, discover, inform, and inspire others. It's hard to fathom the amout of videos available on this site. I use it to my advantage, video jumping (as I like to call it) from one music video to the next. It's amazing the amount of obscure and unknown bands you can find by using the suggested/related videos on the side bar to video jump. It's fun once you get the hang of it.
Other Streaming Sites:
7.)
8tracks: Described as handcrafted internet radio (although I don't exactly consider it "radio"). 8tracks people can discover and share music through an online music mix/playlist containing at least 8 tracks (hence the name 8tracks...). Users can either listen to other people's mixes or make their own. Mixes can be found by a genre, artist name, or mix name. 8tracks say their service allows "listeners get a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming — long the trusted means for music
discovery — on a global scale." All in all, 8tracks is a really wonderful site and I use it extremely often.
8.)
Jango: When Pandora still had limited listening time, I used Jango as a back up once I ran out of hours on Pandora. It is very similar to Pandora in that you can create stations based on bands, songs, or genres you like to listen to. The main difference between the two is that you can tune in to other user's stations. This site allows station sharing with the Jango community as well as easy social network sharing. So, if you get tired of Pandora, give Jango a try.
9.)
Musicovery: A very simple, but unique music streaming site that picks songs according to your chosen mood. The site allows listeners to choose "I like" or "I don't like" option for every song played as well as pick a familiarity level: listen to songs or artists you know and like, or
discover lesser-known artists. Playlists are customized according to the
choices of the listener (mood, genres, decades, artists, ratings, etc...).
10.)
City Sounds: A global streaming site where you can listen to local music from almost every city in the world. The site has three sections: the latest chart, the popular chart, and individual city pages. The latest chart is a list of the recently updated cities. The popular chart is where City Sounds list the 32 most popular cities, which are based on tweets and Facebook posts about the cities. The individual
city pages allow you to find more tracks, genres, and stats for individual cities. City Sounds is a really neat site and I love it because you have so many kinds of music at your fingertips. It's an excellent cultural experience.
11.)
thesixtyone: This is one of my favorite sites at the moment. Thesixtyone is a "music adventure" streaming and discovery site which uses collaborative filtering to organize, promote, and sell music uploaded by artists, many of whom are independent musicians. Each day thesixtyone has listener "quests." Listeners must listen to and vote on the available artists/songs to complete these quests. The webpage was named after Highway 61 (the route has many deep connections to American music culture). According to the site, "thesixtyone's guiding principle is to enable the creative middle class, providing talented artists the opportunity to make a living making music." Not only is this a great service to unknown artists, it is also a unique and fun way for music lovers to find these artists.
12.)
Songza: A free music streaming site in a web radio format that is unlike similar web radios for two reasons. One being that the stations are made by members of the Songza community. The other being that Songza helps users find stations through personal interests. Not only are stations available by artists, songs, and genre, but they are also listed by themes, interests, and eras. The site's goal is "to help you find the radio station that perfectly fits your mood or whatever you're doing right now; in other words, to help you find your soundtrack." Songza is a really interesting site if you are in the mood for a different music streaming experience.
13.)
The Hype Machine: This is actually a music blog collective. The Hype Machine keeps track of what music bloggers write about. The blogs they pick are showcased on the site and the music they write about is also showcased. It makes it easy for readers to find new blogs and new music. Their focus "is on making the most culturally rich music discovery experience on the web." The Hype Machine is "creating tools that empower independent voices that write about music. We think a select group of passionate people can produce more engaging conversation than a huge social mob, or a rigid hierarchy of editors. We amplify their posts and the audio they choose, to help this vibrant culture spread." Who knows? Maybe The Lesser Known will end up on The Hype Machine at some point...
14.)
Musictonic: Musictonic is sort of like YouTube, but is specifically for music videos. The site combines related artists from last.fm with music videos from YouTube. It's great if you don't have the patience to search YouTube on your own. All you have to do is pick an artist or song and Musictonic does the rest. You can't hardly make music discovery easier than that.
15.)
Drinkify: This is a really interesting streaming site. I haven't been able to find anything else like it. Drinkify automatically generates the "perfect" cocktail recipe to accompany any music. All you have to do is tell Drinkify what you're listening to or want to listen to (it will play music from the selected artist so you don't have to find it yourself) and it gives you the cocktail name and recipe to go with your selection. The crazy thing is, this site was created in 24 short hours.
16.)
Stereomood: Similar to Musicovery and Songza in that it finds music for you based on your mood or what you are doing. It gives listeners "a tool to create playlists for every occasion, a tool to share emotions through the music." Stereomood is based out of Rome, Italy, so it is yet another way for you to find endless amounts of music you've probably never heard of.
17.)
uwall.tv: This site is literally a wall of music. Scroll through and pick an artist of your choice and discover from there. It is very straight forward, so there's not really much else to say about uWall.
18.)
We Are Hunted: An online music chart that features up-and-coming artists from all genres and streams their music. We Are Hunted says, "We listen to what people are saying about artists and their music on blogs, social media, message boards and P2P networks to chart the top 99 songs online right now. Looking at music this way, we detect sentiment, expression and advocacy to better understand what people like and dislike at any given moment." We Are Hunted is one of the apps that are offered on Spotify. Just one more way to discover music.
19.)
Everyone's Mixtape: Actual mixtapes died out a long time ago, but with this music streaming site, mixtapes are back in style. The site allows users to add songs to an existing mix or to create their own and then share it with the world. Everyone's Mixtape's motto: "It's more than a playlist."
20.)
This Is My Jam: A music sharing site in which you pick one song to share that means the most to you at the time (one that's stuck in your head or just one you really like). That song becomes yours for up to seven days. This Is My Jam allows users to follow other users and friends and listen to their jams. All of the jams are then put into playlists on the This Is My Jam Spotify app. This site was created by the creators of Drinkify.
And there you have it, 20 sites and services to find, stream, and share music. I hope you will find at least a few of these to be interesting and helpful in your music endeavors!
