For me, the measure of a good free music site is how quickly I can play the song I’m looking for and with the fewest number of strings attached. I don’t want to have to sign up for yet another site only to be bombarded with email updates and special offers. There are only a few sites that do this well (which I will highlight in this post) but in the interest of all of the other people out there who enjoy music sites for their communities and advanced features I felt the need to cover a fuller spectrum.
There are a lot of music sites out there and they cater to different audiences depending on your needs. If you’re just trying to find a song really quickly to play for a friend then seeqpod or skreemr is your answer. If you want to create a playlist to share with your friends and keep track of what they’re listening to then you can choose from dozens of others like ilike, lastfm and blip.fm. Maybe you just want to keep tabs on one of your favorite artists, listen to their newest music and see when they’re playing in your area – for that you might consider MySpace. Whatever your needs there’s definitely at least one site out there for you and I’ve taken the time to highlight 10 sites that either do something unique or seem to be the cream of the crop. This is obviously 100% based on my opinion so you can expect to see my personal favorites at the top of the list.
#1 – SeeqPod
SeeqPod is incredible for a number of reasons. First and most importantly, you don’t have to do any kind of registration to start listening – just type in a song or artist in the search field and you’re off to the races. Seeqpod pulls music from all over the internet to stream in one central location and it gives you the ability to create a disposable playlist with the songs you select on the fly. This “podlist” ability makes it perfect for use as a DJ at a party without having to own or download all of the songs you want to play. Plus, anyone can search for a song they love and add it to the list – like a wikiDJ. Check out the embedded Seeqpod player below and see for yourself.
#2 – HypeMachine
HypeMachine is my favorite place to find and listen to new music because of its eclectic tastes and ease of use. HypeMachine is a blog aggregator/feed, so it pulls in content from popular music blogs on the internet and allows you to stream the songs featured on those blogs in one central location. Again, as with Seeqpod, you can listen to everything on their site without registering (though in this case I think there are some benefits to registering so that you can keep track of the music you’ve found by making it a favorite). There are tabs to view the most popular music (as determined by the number of plays) and the newest music blogged about. It definitely leans towards the hipster crowd a bit, but that’s a direct result of who’s creating the most new music content on the internet. Damn hipsters- they’re so web savvy.
#3 – Live Music Archive
I discovered the Live Music Archive several years ago when I was looking for the set list for a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert I went to. Not only did I end up finding the set list but I found the entire show available for download in lossless audio quality. All of the artists/shows found on the Live Music Archive are trade-friendly (as long as it’s non-commercial) so you won’t have to worry about being hunted down by the RIAA. Among the trade-friendly artists included: Guster, Rogue Wave, Robert Randolph, Rose Hill Drive, Ryan Adams (380 shows!), Andrew Bird, Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, John Butler Trio, John Mayer, Kaki King, Damien Rice, Death Cab for Cutie, Derek Trucks Band, Grateful Dead(over 6000 shows!), Glen Phillips and MANY others. The shows in the archive date back as far as 1941 and there are over 68,000 in total. Forewarned though, if you start browsing the archives you’re not likely to emerge for several hours.
#4 – YouTube
With most of the major record labels now cooperating with YouTube and setting up official channels for their artists, it has become one of the quickest and easiest ways to listen to new music and watch music videos. In addition to having the Top 40 hits you can also find live concert footage for virtually every artist and thus check out shows that you weren’t able to make it to (or weren’t alive to see). I recently missed The Bird and the Bee show at the Museum of Natural History in LA, but the next morning there was video of almost every song performed at the show. You won’t always find great quality (in fact you most likely will not) but it’s still fun to see. YouTube also has gems like classic performances from The Supremes and The Beatles. YouTube is another site that has been known to keep me up until the wee hours of the morning following a trail of live performances. Check out the video below for a really cool discovery from YouTube.
#5 – MySpace
If you’re just looking for free streaming music, MySpace would not be my first choice, in fact I think MySpace is incredibly irritating for the most part. How many times have you gone to an artists page and had like 3 or 4 things auto-playing at the same time so that you’re bombarded with this cacophonous mess? WAY too many times. Get it together people. However, where MySpace does succeed is in the listing of upcoming shows. Outside of an artist’s official website MySpace is the best place to find out when your favorite band is playing next and where. In fact, many independent bands are foregoing a formal website altogether and simply using MySpace.
#6 – Pandora
Internet radio site Pandora started as an offshoot of the Music Genome Project, whose intention was to catalogue hundreds of characteristics (over 400 supposedly) of an individual song in order to identify ways in which it was similar to other songs. Based on this information, Pandora provides listeners music recommendations based on an artist they already enjoy. The site is a great tool for finding new music, especially if you’re not someone who is very active in seeking out and listening to new music. It’s also great to listen to when you’re at work and just want some background music, and if something piques your interest you can always make a note of what it is.
By registering and giving a thumbs up or thumbs down as Pandora plays you new suggestions you can create a customized online radio station that you can access from any computer (or iPhone). If you’re in the mood for narrower field of music you’re probably better off building a playlist on Seeqpod, otherwise you’ll just be hitting the skip button over and over again (until they cut you off). If you really like a song, Pandora gives you a link to purchase it off of iTunes or Amazon.
Check it out for iPhone or iPod Touch – 
#7 – Skreemr
From what I can tell, Skreemr is similar to Seeqpod in that it’s essentially an mp3 search engine. However, in addition to having a pretty shabby interface, it doesn’t allow you to add tracks to a playlist, it simply gives you the option to stream tracks one at at time. In addition to streaming there are links to view a songs lyrics, wikipedia page, Youtube video, the artist’s upcoming concerts and pictures of the artist on Flickr. I’m not sure how accurate these links are all of the time but it is a cool feature to offer. Also, there is a share button next to every song that allows you to “Facebook it,” “Embed it” or “Link it,” and a link to purchase the track from Amazon. Skreemr certainly has the right idea and is offering up a lot of associated links with their mp3 listings, but they should really try and have a more user friendly interface (not necessarily Flash but I do like the ease and look of Seeqpod’s) and allow the option of building playlists on the fly.
#8 – Blip.fm
Blip.fm comes to us on the wave of succinct broadcasting or micro-blogging, with Twitter leading the pack and Facebook Status Updates trying desperately to keep up.
Like Twitter, Blip.fm limits the length of your message (150 char. compared to 140 in Twitter) which I think is fantastic and a really friendly format for the average web-goer. Blogging can be intimidating – there’s so much space to fill and people expect you to write something useful or of social substance. Anybody can fill 140-150 characters without breaking a sweat, and for those of us who are used to writing in a less contained format it’s an exercise in brevity.
Unlike Twitter, the main purpose of Blip.fm is to share not just thoughts but music with your friends. Blip.fm accesses streaming media much like Seeqpod and lets you link to it in your Blip so that all of your friends can listen to your latest favorite song and read what you have to say about it at the same time. You can set it up so that every time you Blip a new song it is updated in your Twitter feed and various other social networking sites which could be very useful. Blip.fm also offers community features like following other DJs and giving out “props” to your favorites but I haven’t really experimented with those. For my purposes, it acts as a vehicle for posting tunes on my Twitter site and for that it is perfect.
Check out their embeddable player for your blog or MySpace site:
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#9 – MixTape.me
Just learned of this site last week via a post from its creator on Lifehacker. Though still in it’s beta release, MixTape.me has pulled together some of the great features of other sites on this list into a polished looking web interface. Like SeeqPod you can search for any song (no registration required) and be listening to it in moments. The central focus of MixTape.me seems to be playlist creation and the sharing of playlists. One really cool feature of MixTape.me is that if you click on the “i” for info button next to the song you can read an artist bio (apparently powered by Last.fm), lyrics for that song (from Lyrics.Wiki) and check out its video on YouTube (or a video featuring the song). Very impressive interface and easy on the eyes. This will be a fun site to keep an eye on as it grows.
Check out the introduction video:
Welcome to MixTape.me from MixTape.me on Vimeo.
#10 – Honorable Mentions
I couldn’t decide on my #10 slot filler, so I decided to list a few sites that were in contention and let you guys decide.
Fizy – very, very simple, no-nonsense player. Closest relative is Skreemr.
Last.fm – Pandora meets MySpace (without all of the annoying non-music related content). Music, videos and concert listings as well as recommends based on your faves.
Muziic – I’d love to include more about this site that is getting a ton of press over it’s desktop software designed to stream music from YouTube sans video – but alas it is only Windows compatible at this point. Anybody have any experience with it?
I’m always on the prowl for new music sites, so if you have any suggestions I’ve missed (and I’ve inevitably missed many) please comment below and pitch me your favorite site!
