There are a slew of websites at the moment offering music via the Internet. They’re a little different to Internet radio though, because many of these services can adapt to your preferences….if you’re willing to spend a bit of time with them.
Pandora
Pandora is the most well-known. Billed as a music discovery service, Pandora allows you to discover new and old tunes via a little flash player. I don’t think it’s available outside the US yet, but it’s easy enough to get an account if you know any ZIP codes;).
Pandora comes from the Music Genone Project, which tries to classify and link music according to common attributes. So, if you tell Pandora that you like Metallica, then it will queue up songs that are similar in style that you’ll probably also like! This can include music you’ve heard before and totally new artists, and it’s great if you’re in the mood for a particular kind of music, but can’t think of a specific artist or album you want to hear.
The graphic below shows the kind of channel Pandora builds based on Metallica:
last.fm
last.fm is one of the new breed of ’social’ music services which allows you search for styles of music by either artist or genre and build a playlist of music.
It’s slightly more advanced though, because it can plug into your music player and record the type of music you’re already listening to and then ‘tune in’ to your preferences, recommending other artists or songs you might like. There’s also a full forum and community for real diehards who want to discuss music in greater detail.
Finally, last.fm has a standalone music player that you can download and create radio stations on the fly with. It allows you to flag up songs you liked, which refines the program’s understanding of your preferences.
Musicovery
I discovered Musicovery this evening. It’s a French site that allows you to select music based on a selection of styles, then sub-categorise this into light, dark, energetic and calm for each style. You can also select a decade to refine the type of music played.
When you make your selection, Musicovery displays a winding playlist for you showing the songs it will play, and allows you to skip tracks. Another nice feature is the ability to restrict it to play hits/non-hits. I’ve been listening to a couple of channels this evening and so far it’s been brilliant.
So there you go, a few cool new ways to get music online. Has anybody tried out any similar services?
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