Do you love finding new music and sharing it with your friends? If so, you’ll want to check out these music services that you’ve quite probably never heard of: Jamendo, Plug DJ, and Everyone’s Mixtape.
The internet has long been known as an excellent source of media and in recent years there have been more ways to share music than ever before, from independent artists to up-and-coming label artists.
So, read on and see which of these lesser-known services is right for you and get started letting your friends and relations know what you’re listening to these days!
Jamendo: a great place to find new music
Jamendo is a fairly new site, and worth mentioning because it hosts a huge collection of new and independent artists in all kinds of genres. From World Music to Electronica to Rock and HipHop, Jamendo most likely has something you will enjoy and probably have never heard of before.
You can set up a random playlist or specific artists by becoming a ‘fan’ of their work and get more information on them through the bio pages on each one. While browsing through the bio and news pages, you will have the Jamendo radio bar at the bottom of the screen, playing any selections you have chosen. It will even record your history of listening and you can play a random list of those previously chosen stations as well. Jamendo is a great place to start if you are looking to get into some lesser-known artists and help spread the word about them, as you can share links easily to your favorite social networking sites as well. You aren’t required to sign up but if you do, you will get more in the way of tracking and customization options for the music you like.
Jamendo allows musicians to publish their work and to determine the license they want to use, which means you will be listening to 100% legal and new music that you’ve not heard before. What is remarkable, however, is just how high the quality is of music that you find there. Jamendo is a winner.
Plug DJ: this one is definitely worth watching!
Plug DJ is a bit more of a social site, geared toward music. To get started, you will have to sign in using either a Google, Facebook or Twitter account, but once you do you will be taken straight to the listing of current ‘rooms’ that are sharing and discussing music. It’s rather unique in that, once you plug in to a ‘room’ you’ll be seeing a whole bunch of animated avatars of other people dancing around and enjoying the music that is being played by the room owner (the DJ), making music sharing a very visual and interactive experience. Combine a chat room system with a music discovery and sharing service and you’re on the way to Plug DJ’s basic concept.
It’s rather like a cyber-nightclub that allows you to be the DJ or explore others. There are options to join a wait list to become a DJ in a room, or just add songs to the current play list as well. It is just a little daunting at first, when you get in but if you’re familiar with any other chat system you will likely be in the thick of things, making friends and sharing music and opinions pretty quickly. Currently in beta, Plug DJ is (in my opinion) one of the best ways to make music a social experience on the Internet today and I hope to see even greater things from it in the future.
Everyone’s Mixtape: mixtapes come to the digital age
Remember when Walkman was the big name in portable music and Boom Boxes were all the rage (your prestige was determined by how much larger than your car it was) and mixtapes were a standard way of sharing music as well as thoughts and feelings? Well someone else remembers too, evidently, because they brought the concept to the Internet in a very well-designed visual interface that will allow you to create your own collection of music, mix it up, and share the results with your friends and relations via Facebook or Google.
There’s a handy video tutorial to get you started but it’s almost not needed because the interface is so simple and intuitive. You will need a Facebook or Google account to log in to Everyone’s Mixtape, of course, but once you do, you can drag the URL of nearly any music source on the ‘net into the stack of tapes and it will add it to that particular mix. You can also browse the current mixes that other users are playing the most, to get new ideas if you are hitting a wall on your own. You can rename the mixes to your heart’s content, as well, and of course the best part of all of this is that it costs nothing whatsoever to use! Everyone’s Mixtape is one of my all-time favorite ways to collect and share music, simply because it allows usage of other sites, not just the ones that they have approved or made a deal with. This is true music mixing for the 21st century, in my opinion.
There’s loads more ways to find and share music on the Internet these days, and these are just a few of the best, based on my own experience and research. With so many artists putting their work out there for us to discover and share there’s probably always going to be new stuff out there that you will like! So go check out these services and see where they lead you! Until next time, my friends.
