Lately I've been checking out many new and not so new music discovery services on the web. Most of them are either completely free or have a free version with option to upgrade. In any case each of the following has their pros and cons.
Yahoo Music - This one's been around for a while in some form or another. It uses a system of ratings based on other listener's trends to help find music to match your listening preferences. You can set up your account so that other members influence your taste. Yahoo's Music Player looks a lot like iTunes but it's integration of LAUNCHcast radio and the Yahoo ratings is nice. The big drawback, as with anything on Yahoo, is the commercial aspect. You can expect a commercial between every other song. What's worse are the commercials for the music video player. But, then again, what do you expect from Yahoo? To check out my station on Yahoo Music,
click here.
Music Hawk - This service is currently beta but it looks like it will be a MySpace for music. There isn't much to it yet but it allows you to share your favorite bands. For people with webpages, you can easily set up a badge with cd covers from your favorite bands. To view my stage,
click here.
Last.fm - Last.fm is one of my favorites because of it's simplicity. After installing the player, you can simply type in a favorite band and it does all the work for you in finding similar bands or bands of the same genre. If you don't like a song, you can easily skip it. It also has some nice features for webmasters like a chart builder. I've included an example of the chart below.
Pandora - Pandora is just like Last.fm only its player is entirely web-based. The interface also has a more step-by-step guided approach. I recommend this one to users who require a more user-friendly service.
LivePlasma - LivePlasma is a nifty music discovery tool that works like a mind map of the collective music preference trends of it's users. It also works with movies. Unfortuneately it doesn't include a player.
Musicovery - Here's an example of the potential of a service like LivePlasma if it included a player. Musicovery is a French site but it's easy for any anglophone to figure out. It prompts you to pick a genre or genres, tempo, and mood. Then it creates a mind-map like LivePlasma and plays a song by the artist in the center circle.
