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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.

[Ballard]

I realized that as I was posting but they're still a useful resource (also often the mp3 tracks that blogs host permanently are promotional material distributed for free and thus fair game for downloading).

[el_loco_avs]

3voor12 Luisterpaal ("Listening post" ?)
http://3voor12.vpro.nl/luisterpaal/

A whole bunch of new albums available to listen to at any time. Pretty wide selection of genres too.

[Daft pun]

The Luisterpaal is awesome, seems pretty similar to that Spinner thing Johnny mentioned. Only this one is dutch, so you might find yourself listening to some local talent.

The Hype Machine is a blog aggregator similar to elbo.ws where you can stream songs posted on blogs. I think you need to sign up (free of charge) if you want to listen to stuff regularly, but that allows you to love tracks and also gets you your own page with all your loved tracks on it.

[look out! Ninjas!]

You can sometimes hear some cool stuff on 8tracks if you search for long enough. It's not huge at the moment, and I'm pretty sure most of it is pop-punk, but it's a neat site. Song detail is a little sparse though
http://8tracks.com/

[Will]

I'm quite the fan of www.slacker.com. It's streaming audio on multiple different channels, and you can customize your "stations" by voting for or against different songs you hear. Kind of like Pandora, I guess? The comedy channel is often pretty great.

[MobyDickhole]

playlist.com is really good.
you basically search for songs and put them into a playlist... it has just about everything...

I make full albums into playlists sometimes so I can listen to them everywhere....

for example:
Histoire de Melody Nelson- Serge Gainsbourg: http://www.playlist.com/playlist/16162316043/standalone

[Yayniall]

www.grooveshark.com

Questionable legality.

[Metope]

http://www.daytrotter.com

This site is pure gold. I used to check it every day a while back when it was just a tiny site with only one band session each week, but over the last few months it has developed into a huge thing.

The idea behind it is to get interesting bands from everywhere to come into their studio and record a couple of their songs again exclusively for the site, and everyone who wants to can listen to the songs right there on the site or download them for free. You have to register to listen to the songs, but that's quick and easy and completely worth it. They even have artists who draw pictures or the musicians who come into the studio. Their archives are vast, and I'm sure you'll find something you'll fall completely in love with somewhere in there. The people behind Daytrotter describes the whole project like this :

Daytrotter -- One band a day, every day, 28 Daytrotter Session songs each week

There are so many music/entertainment websites that copy one another, scrambling so fast to “discover” or present something new to the world. And just because you get there first, it doesn’t really make you an explorer. We did poke a stars and stripes into the moon, but we could always see it. We knew it was there. It wasn’t new. We can always come along and say we did, saw, heard something first, but we’re never right. What Daytrotter is attempting to do is to not kid around with you and tell you that we found something that you never knew existed. We are going to contribute to the musical landscape, not just toss it around like a used book or a stolen pick-up line. We’re going to give you something that you truly have never heard. We are not giving you songs from someone you love’s record album, thereby stealing from someone you love. We’re giving you exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands.

If you look around on the site you will also find fun things like Will Sheff reading the entire novel Okkervil River took their name from, comics, art and lots of videos and live shows.

[rynne]

http://www.daytrotter.com

This is pretty awesome!

[the_pied_piper]

http://www.daytrotter.com

I can't believe this isn't more popular. They started with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and have had gold ever since. Mountain Goats, Sea Wolf, Grizzly Bear, Page France, The Thermals, Port O'Brien,...

Basically everybody of note seems to have been on here.

[Metope]

Yeah I know, that's the reason I haven't posted it before now. I just assumed everyone knew about it already. Weird!

[Koremora]

Daytrotter is awesome, but dear sweet lord the reviews on there may actually beat out Pitchfork in terms of eye-bleedingly obtuse pretentious language. Reading some of them is like lobotomizing yourself with a dildo.

[scarred]

That, and all the stupid art looks the same amount of shitty.

Some rad tunes, though.

[Johnny C]

Yeah Daytrotter is oldschool and honestly didn't even occur to me! Good call though, Kris. Daytrotter's great not only to check out tunes but also to kind of find out how these bands would be live.

The Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and Sunset Rubdown sessions are essential.

[ViolentDove]

Call me crazy, but I turn on the ol' radio every now and then.

We actually have a couple of pretty good community stations in Sydney that play a whole bunch of different music, and have pretty awesome shows about other things as well. 2SER is a favourite. They stream and offer downloads as well, on the off chance someone wants to check it out.

[the_pied_piper]

That, and all the stupid art looks the same amount of shitty.

I disagree. The art looks great in my opinion and gives the site a nice feel. Close and homely but playing live tunes.

Daytrotter is awesome, but dear sweet lord the reviews on there may actually beat out Pitchfork in terms of eye-bleedingly obtuse pretentious language. Reading some of them is like lobotomizing yourself with a dildo.

I honestly didn't even bother reading any reviews until just now after i read your post but i completely agree. They are some shockingly pretentious reviews.

[a pack of wolves]

Call me crazy, but I turn on the ol' radio every now and then.

I always forget about the radio, even though I listen to a fair bit online. BBC 1Xtra has some really good stuff on the BBC iplayer, although it's only of interest if you like hip-hop, grime, garage, bassline, RnB, dancehall and the like. Although they also have Westwood so it's not all good. Fuck Westwood.

[Johnny C]

Spinner just got their update on and among the records are the new Passion Pit, the new Apostle of Hustle and two Flipper albums, as well as an album by Saskatchewan's own Andy Shauf.

[fish across face]

I'd actually forgotten Spinner is one of the ones I have on a feed... some good free MP3s - Ewan Pearson; the Holy Fuck one is surprisingly OK; Tosca...

[StaedlerMars]

I was just told about Spotify, I downloaded it, and it's pretty cool.

It's basically your replacement for itunes once they have all the music in it. It's a bit like Deezer, only good, and with actually most songs.

I wish it scrobbled tracks to lastfm though. That would be cool. EDIT: they do!

There are adds though.

[fish across face]

A friend just pointed me to the Free Music Archive.  Hard to guess what they're about from the name, but maybe have a look and see if you can figure it out.