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Alternatives To Downloadin'

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Johnny C:
Hey everyone! The Med!afire thread is really popular, but I was wondering if anyone uses other excellent resources to listen to records and songs and artists that doesn't involve downloads. There are plenty of ways to legally stream music for free, you know! Here are a couple I know.

Spinner - Probably my favourite, this website has cursory news and stuff but its centrepiece is the wicked Album Listening Party function. Between twelve and twenty new records are hosted in full at any given time, letting you listen to them as many times as you want for free. And it's cool stuff too! I was just telling people in Meebo how I was thinking about picking up St. Vincent's new album, Actor, and then I realized it was time to check Spinner and - bam! - there it was. It turns out this is a really good record, and I found out for free, and I didn't have to download it! The only downside is that albums get taken down on a regular basis but they're always replaced with new ones. Plus there are always weird little b-sides and covers and stuff.

Imeem - I stan pretty hard for this website but that's because all it requires is a quick signup and you can start looking for songs and albums! Sometimes albums just have a bunch of thirty-second song previews which suck but on the other hand you can build playlists of entire albums yourself! That's what I did with Ladyhawk's self-titled record, which you can stream for free if you sign up. Way cool!

Myspace - Seems pretty silly but did you guys know that Myspace now lets artists host up to ten songs? The These Estates Myspace now has the entire EP plus two live songs up! I'm sure other artists use the whole ten if they're cool, I just haven't had time to check.

That's it for me! What do you use?

sean:
I use last.fm radio a whole bunch. Plus if a band is cool enough to pay attention to last.fm they can put their albums up for listening! It's pretty rad when that happens. I also use myspace to listen to all the DC local bands that I like. Mostly cause you can't download those guys if you searched the internet for 40 days and 40 nights with a really big microscope.

a pack of wolves:
Spotify - Free downloadable program that lets you stream a pretty decent selection of music, with occasional adverts (disabled if you pay for the service). However, just before I started using it they got hacked and lost all of the personal data they held on users so you might want to be economical with the truth when giving them your details.

Also, I am still a big fan of mixtapes. I haven't done a trade in a while due to a lack of time plus my tape deck being broken, but mix CD trades are still pretty good. Despite all the ways you can share music on the internet for some reason nothing gets me more actually engaged with artists I'd never heard before (and would very possibly never have bothered to check out of my own volition) than a good old-fashioned physical mix.

Ballard:
Just Hear It is just starting out but it is growing and has actually been really convenient lately when I've found myself without a track on hand (this happens quite often).

elbo.ws is a music blog aggregator that lets you search a shit ton of known music blogs for mp3s hosted in their directories. Sometimes these mp3s are outdated and no longer online (particularly because a lot of blogs have a policy of keeping copyrighted music online for a few days to promote a record and then taking it down) but often it is a big help.

fish across face:
Surely blog aggregators aren't "alternatives to downloadin'" in the sense of the original post?

I check these sites for free downloads - I prefer the option to download, generally.

http://www.tonspion.de (I can understand enough to take a punt, generally...)
http://www.xlr8r.com/mp3
http://www.3hive.com
http://www.betterpropaganda.com
http://www.rcrdlbl.com  (makes me throw up in my mouth a little more often than the others, but does have some great stuff)

When I say "check" I mean use RSS feeds, where possible.

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