Rubiverse.net

Are you listening to the same songs over and over again? Do you want to branch out and fine new music? There are many FREE tools out there in web 2.0 land that will help us do this. I’m going to tell you my two favorite website that I use for myself and I would highly recommend

1. Last.fm

Last.fm is a social network for your music.  You could connect with people who like the same bands you like; you could talk about the individual tracks/albums; you could discuss upcoming/passed concerts; you could find new music with your newfound friends; and so much more.

It also recommends you new music based on what you listen to. It does this with a small program that you download called a “scrobbler”. It ties in with your iTunes and your iPod and keeps track of what you are listening to. It uploads all this information to your profile. This is kind of cool because you have a record of every song you listened to since you downloaded the scrobbler. The scrobbler also provides information about the band/track/album you are listening to.

Once you have listened to a good amount of songs, last.fm will give you good recommendations for new music that you might like. I have found some cool new stuff through this and I think it’s a great tool to use.

Another feature last.fm offers that I use quite often is the radio. You have a choice of listening to your recommendations, listening to music that you have already listened to, or you could type in an artist/genre/song/album and it will play songs like it. Best of all… it’s FREE!

2. Pandora

Pandora is like last.fm in a lot of ways, but it is much simpler. Pandora, rather than finding alike music by tagging songs/artists/albums (like last.fm does), actually digs into the song and figures out what makes it the way it is. It uses this to find songs that sound like it.

For example: I feel like listening to songs that sound like Black Holes and Revelations by Muse. I search Black Holes and Revelations in Pandora. It plays music that sounds like that song. Simple enough, right?

 

Both of these services offer great ways to find new music online for FREE. I bet there are many other tools out there; I’m just not familiar with them. These are the best ones I know. Well, good luck finding new music. Happy listening!