One of the best things that came out of the changes in the music is free music sites.
Here are three site I use all the time. I would like to know what other free music sites everyone is using.
1-Pandora.com This site is no secret. Last year when I mentioned Pandora to anyone I would hear “ Oh I have heard of Pandora, I will check it out.” Now when I mention it all I hear is “I use Pandora everyday.”
If you don’t know Pandora.com it is a site that builds a customized online radio station for you or you can listen to stations built by other users.
In 2000, the Genome project was started, Pandora is based on the Genome Project.
“Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.”
How it works is you enter a song or artist to start with and Pandora will start playing songs. You can give each song a thumbs up, thumbs down or do nothing but listen. Using the genome projects data and your input Pandora will create a station you like and they even include new songs and some surprises. Check it you I know you will like it.
2-Wolfgangs Vault is one of the best finds on the internet if you love live music from the mid sixties to 2010 there are some real jems on this site and if you are lucky you might even be able to find concerts you attended. Like my first concert ever The New Riders of the Purple Sage in 1975 or this classic Bruce Hornsby Show just as he was making it big.
There is also plenty to buy from this site for the classic rocker.
3-My third pick I have known about for a long time but I have just recently started to really enjoy. http://www.npr.org/music/ has tons of treasures. I was looking around for some live Tom Waits and I found this complete concert and now I visit everyday to look for something new.
Checks these out and tell us what you think while your at it participate in the survey on the right.
