Downloading, Streaming, Playlists

A bit of a mixed category. The theme is customizing the listening experience.

8tracks
Discovering music through people. Explore millions of playlists lovingly handcrafted by people like you. 8tracks was founded in 2006 by David Porter and launched on 8/8/08 by a small team working nights and weekends in New York, California, and France.

AHA Music
AHA Music is a Chrome extension that detects songs playing on your browser and links to them on Spotify, Deezer, Video & Audio files and YouTube.

Apple Music
Apple Music is a music and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing, curated playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio station Beats 1, which broadcasts live to over 100 countries 24 hours a day. The service was announced on June 8, 2015, and launched on June 30, 2015 in over 100 countries worldwide. New subscribers get a three-month free trial period before the service requires a monthly subscription. (Description: Wikipedia)

Art of the Mix
Art of the Mix is the ultimate warehouse for playlists on the internet. Integrated directly with iTunes, hundreds of playlists are pulled nightly from Apple and can be previewed and purchased from this website.

And, Art of the Mix is home to a community that is passionate about mixes, who discuss, review and blog about playlists, mixes and mixed tapes.

Audiomack
Millions of fans use Audiomack daily to discover the hottest trending music anywhere. Upload your music and submit it for Trending consideration (completely free) to get the chance to be placed in front of a massive new audience.

Birp
Hi, I’m Josh! I started BIRP.fm (Originally as Blalock’s Indie/Rock Playlist) in February of 2009 as a way to share my music discoveries. BIRP is a monthly compilation of +100 tracks that are free to stream/download.   They’re also available on a number of other services like Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer, etc. On top of the monthly playlist, I also run an in-site blog devoted to new music as well as act as a hub for a growing community of people that love to share and talk about music. [Editor’s note: You have to love a website in which the “About” page starts with “Hi! I’m Josh!”]

Boil the Frog
Boil the Frog lets you create a playlist of tracks that gradually takes you from one music style to another. It’s like the proverbial frog in the pot of water. If you heat up the pot slowly enough, the frog will never notice that he’s being made into a stew and jump out of the pot. With a Boil the frog playlist you can do the same, but with music. You can generate a playlist that will take the listener from one style of music to the other, without the listener ever noticing that they are being made into a stew.

Consumer Advocates: Best Music Streaming Services Based on In-Depth Reviews
After weeks of trying out dozens of music streaming platforms, browsing through thousands of customer testimonies, and listening to hundreds of tracks via desktop and mobile, one thing became very clear about the state of music streaming today: the best and most popular services right now seem like clones; they have the same catalog of music, similar audio quality, and almost identical prices.

However, we found that there are certain exclusive features, built-in technologies, and music discovery approaches that set each streaming platform apart. Whether you prefer one service over the others will depend on your musical tastes, your daily lifestyle, and, most importantly, the type of music listener you are.

That’s why, for our research, we discarded the ubiquitous “best overall” approach and selected several “best for” music platforms so that no matter what type of music listener you are, from the lean-backer to the lean-forward listener, you’ll get a recommendation that feels like music to your ears.

Deezer
Deezer lets users “explore over 56 million tracks (and counting), and discover artists and tracks you’ll love with personalised recommendations from the Deezer Editors.” It “works across all your devices, both online and offline, with no listening limits.”

Best Music Streaming Services Based on In-Depth Reviews
After weeks of trying out dozens of music streaming platforms, browsing through thousands of customer testimonies, and listening to hundreds of tracks via desktop and mobile, one thing  became very clear about the state of music streaming today: the best and most popular services right now seem like clones; they have the same catalog of music, similar audio quality, and almost identical prices.

However, we found that there are certain exclusive features, built-in technologies, and music discovery approaches that set each streaming platform apart. Whether you prefer one service over the others will depend on your musical tastes, your daily lifestyle, and, most importantly, the type of music listener you are.

That’s why, for our research, we discarded the ubiquitous “best overall” approach and selected several “best for” music platforms so that no matter what type of music listener you are, from the lean-backer to the lean-forward listener, you’ll get a recommendation that feels like music to your ears. If you want to read the full research head on over to

Earbits
[Earbits seeks to] make it dead simple for artists and music lovers to find each other, and create meaningful connections. Earbits is streaming music built by musicians and music lovers, for musicians and music lovers…Our team of experts brings you the best independent music from around the world, hand-curated and served up hot with all the trimmings.

Hype Machine
Hype Machine indexes hundreds of music sites and collects their latest posts for easy streaming and discovery. We’re here to help you find the best new music first. Tracks being favorited the most by the Hype Machine community start to chart on our Popular page. We also keep tabs on the most-posted artists of the week and popular music videos, so you don’t miss out on any good stuff.

iTunes
iTunes is a media player, media library, Internet radio broadcaster, mobile device management utility, and the client app for iTunes Store, developed by Apple Inc. It is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital multimedia, on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems, and can be used to rip songs from CDs, as well as play content with the use of dynamic, smart playlists. Options for sound optimizations exist, as well as ways to wirelessly share the iTunes library. (Description: Wikipedia)

Jamendo
Jamendo’s mission is to offer the perfect platform for all independent artists wishing to share their creations as easily as possible, reaching new audiences internationally. Our philosophy is that any artist in the world is entitled to share his music and should have a chance to be heard by a greater number of people around the world.

Last.FM
Create your own profile, track what you listen to (we call this scrobbling) and get cool stuff like your own music charts, new music recommendations, and a big ol’ community of other music lovers.

LiveXLive
LiveXLive (pronounced Live by Live) is a music streaming platform, combining audio and (often live) video, available in the US and Canada. Users can access the service on the web, through mobile apps on smartphones and on OTT devices. It allows users to create and share customized music stations. (Description: Wikipedia)

Magic Playlist
Magic Playlist is an intelligent algorithm developed under Spotify’s API that enables users to create awesome playlists based on a song.

Mixcloud
Mixcloud is a British online music streaming service that allows for the listening and distribution of radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, which are crowdsourced by its registered users. Its notable users include Wired, Harvard Business School, TED Talks, and Barack Obama.

Musician Biographies
Seemingly thousands of band/group and musician biographies. No explanation. They are sort of just there, like the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Very odd.

Napster
Rhapsody operates the Napster platform in 33 countries with a premium subscription service giving millions of Consumers unlimited ad-free access to music on any device – online or offline. Napster combines the iconic history of one of the most recognizable music brands in the world with the vast experience and technological platform of Rhapsody International Inc., the industry’s first subscription streaming service provider. Rhapsody is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America.

New Sounds
New Sounds is here because we’re curious and excited about music. You’re probably here for the same reason. We created New Sounds for people who love the surprise that comes from discovering something new. But with almost everything ever recorded anywhere now available online, where do you start? This might be the place. We try to be friendly and jargon free, and gleefully oblivious of genre. Our goal is to find the artists, the songs, and the sounds that you might love – if only you get a chance to hear them.

Pandora
Pandora is a leading music and podcast discovery platform, providing a highly-personalized listening experience to approximately 70 million users each month with its proprietary Music Genome Project and Podcast Genome Project technology – whether at home or on the go – through its mobile app, the web, and integrations with more than 2,000 connected products.

ReverbNation
Since 2006, ReverbNation has helped millions of emerging artists build their careers. We’ve connected artists to venues, festivals, brands, publishers, labels, and the fans themselves. ReverbNation’s mission puts Artists First.” It offers “career management and online marketing tools, combined with rapidly growing A&R capabilities and broad industry relationships [to] offer emerging artists from around the world access to the global music industry.”

Spotify
There are millions of tracks and episodes on Spotify. So whether you’re behind the wheel, working out, partying or relaxing, the right music or podcast is always at your fingertips. Choose what you want to listen to, or let Spotify surprise you. You can also browse through the collections of friends, artists, and celebrities, or create a radio station and just sit back.

This is My Jam
This is an archive of the music community This Is My Jam. From 2011 to 2015, every song posted here was someone’s favorite. From hit releases to rare finds to old gold, Jam is home to over two million carefully hand-picked songs. All jams, no filler. Explore the archives and browse the song collections of the members who made Jam what it was. Get every collection as a Spotify playlist, like this.

Tidal
With our library of over 60 million tracks and 250,000 videos, you’ll get the ultimate music experience. Create a playlist or try one of ours, hand-curated by music editors and even the artists themselves.

Two Story Melody
We don’t paste in music and a two-sentence review. We do playlists, but they’re not our focus. I’ve got nothing against those approaches – I mean, I love playlists as much as the next person. Somebody’s got to find the next big thing, after all, and giving artists a space to be heard is definitely an admirable endeavor.

But at the core, this site isn’t about being heard. It’s about being understood. It’s a place to earnestly engage with songs in a way that, hopefully, gives them the value they deserve – and impacts us, too.

VIBBIDI
THE VIBBIDI PHILOSOPHY: Music is a wonderful gift that everyone on Earth can agree upon, so why make it harder for you to get what you need to have a good time? It is our belief that you shouldn’t have to browse hundreds of different websites to find what you’re looking for, so VIBBIDI’s Philosophy revolves around streamlining every possible form of music you would want to experience!