08 2 / 2012
How I discover new music, then play the hell out of it
I have a pretty good music system now. A while back I discovered Last.fm and immediately fell in love with its discovery engine.
How it works
Type in an artist or song that you like, and Last.fm will play songs that the community at large has deemed similar. It does this by tags. You’re encouraged to tag songs with genres and similar artists. And it works remarkably well.
I discover new music that I think is awesome almost every day. And every once in a while I find a song that makes me stop in my tracks, listen intently and just get immersed in it.
But, then I usually want to listen to more of the artist that made the song that just got me all excited. Unfortunately, Last.fm is not the place to do that.
You see, Last.fm licenses its music similar to a how a radio station would (at least it’s how I understand it) and so you cannot listen to any specific song you want on demand (only a short preview), because that would be more similar to buying a CD or purchasing a song from iTunes.
They are essentially creating a radio station on demand for you, based on your search criteria (song, artist or genre).
So… that’s kind of a bummer. Downloading MP3’s is tedius. And expensive. More often than not I get bored of a song/artist after I obsess over their tracks for a few weeks to a month or two.
Enter Rdio.
What is Rdio
Oddly enough, Rdio is less like a radio station than Last.fm is. Rdio can be compared to Spotify. But Rdio works in Canada while Spotify doesn’t. And from what I have seen, I like Rdio better.
How it works: Find music you like and listen to it. That’s it. They have a pretty huge catalog of albums for you to listen to all you want. You can even sync songs to your iPhone or iPad, so you can listen to them later while offline.
Rdio does have a sort of recommendation engine built in as well, but for me it doesn’t work nearly as well as Last.fm in terms of usability and the tracks it selects.
Price
Last.fm is $3/month and Rdio is $10/month for unlimited web and mobile streaming + sync (listen offline). For me, $13/month for the ability to discover new music and listen to almost anything I want, when I want is well worth it.
Little rant
These are the types of services that consumers want. I find it incredibly pathetic that record labels would rather keep trying to sell their plastic and lobbying to pass legislation to stifle innovation, than just change their model and offer something that consumers want and would willingly pay for.
