Image via CrunchBase

Writing code has been my focus over the past few months, both with personal projects and work, and I’ve given my headphones a good workout. As much as I love to toute my musical savvy, variety is all that I require – I love music, but enjoy hearing a mix of genres and artists. On this front, Pandora is great. If you just want someone to pick the music for you, Pandora will do that task very, very well.

However, sometimes I want to listen to someone specific rather than a style and for this, I’ve turned to Spotify. Spotify has an enormous library of songs and you can chose exactly what you want. My brother in law, a jazz guitarist from Toronto named Andrew Scott (look him up) is in their library. That is awesome. Did I mention that the service is free? If you sign up you get 10 hours free music listening per day – about the length of an average work day plus commute (coincidence? Ha!)

That’s not even the best part – the mobile app is fantastic. You need a premium account, which goes for 10 dollars a month, but it’s worth it. You can download your music to your iPhone/Android and listen offline. Perfect for those who want a large selection but don’t want to waste their data plan on Pandora.

A surprising bonus: you can discover new music using sharemyplaylists.com, a collaborative spotify playlist sharing service. Here you can find new music, check out oldie playlists and share your creations. I needed an option like this when I logged into spotify for the first time – there is so much choice that it’s difficult to know where to start.

Ultimately, I use both accounts. My Pandora stations are a great way to discover new music and Spotify fills the gap when I want something but don’t want to shell out for the album.

Give both services a try and let me know what you think. You won’t be disappointed either way…

~ab

Enjoy

~ab

GrooveShark is a site that allows you to stream music. As a mini “cocktail party geek” snippet – streaming is when you do not keep the file on your own computer and instead, the file is sent in small digestible chunks to your machine over the web. Your browser takes these packets and plays them via a program written right into the website (it’s actually an application).

What makes this service different from Pandora or Last.FM is that you can pause, restart, skip songs, create playlists, mark tracks as favorites and generally listen to whatever strikes your fancy. The only restriction (justifiably I think) is that you can’t download tracks illegally from Grooveshark. I’m traveling right now (again) and forgot my ipod. To satisfy my audio addiction, I’ve been using the site to play tracks I already own. The music is good quality and the selection is extensive.

Try it out at GrooveShark.com. Ping me back with any other sites you like in the comments.

Enjoy,

~ab