More websites to help you find MP3s, assist in promotion for bands/artists, connect you to live music & ticketing, offer place-shifting for your media (PC-to-PC, PC-to-mobile phone), stream music, and provide video discovery while others are fantastic recommendation engines or social & sharing platforms.

[See first page of Web-based Tools here]





Noisevox
HD video digest with interviews and performances of indie stars
[website]

Quoting their tagline: "Noisevox is an open music magazine and media network created by journalists, photographers, musicians, and you." Noisevox's straight-forward presentation provides wide-format HD video with a scrolling menu to the right of the window containing a significant selection of interviews and live performances for each episode of a featured artist/band. To date, episodes include The Thermals, Animal Collective, Moby, and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Crocodiles, Dan Deacon, Japandroids, Here We Go Magic, Arctic Monkies, and a recap of The All Points West Festival. If you're an indie junkie like us and enjoy in-depth information on one subject—but find reading long-form text online daunting—go the audio/video route with Noisevox.






Cowbell.fm
An aggregator of music blogs
[website]

Cowbell.fm is an automated aggregator site collecting data from the world of music blogs. By default, the presentation of their data on the home page highlights "Recently Popular Songs" and "Popular Bands." From there you can change the main view to "newest songs" or peruse the straight-forward navigation for "Hot Songs" (the week's most popular songs), "Hot Bands" (a tag cloud of the week's most popular bands), and "hot blogs" (a list of trend-setting blogs).

What's most valuable about this site, is the simple, streamlined way in which the pulled data is presented and the (subjective) quality of rankings. The easily scannable list of blog posts are called out according to a song, sometimes prefaced by the band—but its all about the songs, which lead each entry and are made available for streaming in its entirety. Each list item continues with a thumbnail-size image of the album (not always correctly connected to the song), the blog's name, and a 3-line teaser of—and link to—the blog entry from which the song is 'discovered.' You can, often, find the song available for download on these blogs, but proceed at your own risk and respect. It is likely that a lot of the music found on music blogs is made available without proper permission from the artists and labels.

There's, also, an option to "collect this song" or to "follow" the band. This data is stored in "My Stuff" but you must register to utilize this functionality.

What subset of the music blogoshpere Cowbell.fm draws from, we're unsure. But, we definitely find the selection of music it features—from, mostly, indie-pop artists—of great interest.








last.fm
A bit of everything: streaming, discovery, community, etc.
[website]

Last.fm is a combination internet radio, social network, video and news site. Chances are most readers are already using it as they listen now. The initial premise is rather simple—make an account and run the scrobbler tool while listening to music and the program reports the tracks to the webpage. This lets the website generate recommendations, musical 'neighbors' and objects to drop in forum signatures and the like showing what the user is in to. But this is only the start.

The same tool that reports music can also be used as an internet radio tool, in genre stations, recommendation stations and artist oriented stations. Through the interface, many artists allow full tracks to be listened to for free, some allow free downloads through the page and users can create playlists to share with others. A very affordable $3 a month subscription allows unlimited playlist creation, more in depth views and removal of the ads on the webpage. On top of these features, users can add other users as friends for messaging and shoutboxes as well as joining any of the multitude of groups which each have their own forums.

Perhaps the best part, though, is the fact that last.fm is very open to allowing use of their code to design other programs and website interfaces. No small number of quizes, musical taste tests, alternate scrobblers exist as well as programs to provide synching up iPod or other MP3 player histories as long as the device supports the features. And since the listeners are able to tag and define music, it is a very user-driven experience.




Build.Last.fm
[website]

This website provides no use to someone who does not use last.fm, as it is simply a case of extended tools and devices that work off a last.fm account. While many of these gadgets and widgets could be categorized as fluff, some of them are very fun bits of fluff. Others can create nice, robust options like musicquilt screensavers and more in depth ways to view your musical listening habits.

Primary use, however, is likely their variety of scrobblers for phones and mp3 players not normally supported by the main tools and for more 'odd' operating systems. If you can't find what you need on last.fm, there is a reasonable chance it can be found here. One to check out is the PandoraFM widget to have Pandora listening scrobble to last.fm.






Jamendo
Free music discovery for consumers and free music licensing for businesses, shops and multimedia projects
[website]

Jamendo has grown up a lot over the last few years, from a very simplistic and ugly initial site it's now a sleek and optimized experience for finding free music. Founded to share artists releasing their music under Creative Commons liscensing, it has met with a ton of support from independent and rising artists around the globe. On any given week as many as five hundred new albums stretching every genre imaginable are uploaded as simply as possible and then enters the collective space of users.

They support a player, but you can also search by artists or genres to download what you wish. Both direct downloads and Bit Torrent are supported (the latter providing the option between mp3 and ogg for those who have a format preference). The only real problem with all of this is the vast number of tags and artists can make finding your exact wishes a bit of a challenge. It's easy to get lost in the vast sea of songs but it's just as likely that a user will find a gem or seven amidst the waves.

One of the more interesting features, beyond the ridiculous ease of uploading music for artists, is Jamendo Pro. This is a way to use the service for commercial purposes, from scoring film to website content and make sure the artists are supported. With only a few buttons any listener can donate to artists as well to try and help buy them a couple drinks next time out.





Pandora Internet Radio
[website]

Perhaps the most recognized name in internet radio, Pandora's stated goal was to play only music for the user that they love. Of course, this can be something of a challenge to make good on but they try their best by using the Musical Genome Project. This ambitious little science project takes any song and classifies it through hundreds of "genes" - attributes of the song that cover anything from gender to influence to which instruemnts are used to dissection of lyrical stylings and more. Then when you select a song or artist to found your station, it runs an algorithm to try and find similar artists.

Does it work? Sometimes. The main problem can come from using too many root artists in one of your defined stations. While one may feel they are similar, based on how deeply they are broken down and categorized they may find it casting a far larger net than intended. Given the quality of the audio and the fact that a user can create many, many stations to configure independently there is not much to really complain about and continued use will teach someone how best to fine tune and use the service.

For those who don't want to configure their own stations, they may also listen to broader genre stations available to everyone or can trust friends to take care of it. Any radio station created can be shared by others, letting them listen in and add it to their list of songs on the player. Those options, the ability to configure things more deeply, may be why amidst many internet radio stations Pandora is often the dominant name in the conversation.




SellABand
[website]

SellABand is an interesting site, built on a very nice idea that may not be entirely feasible. The premise is pretty simple, if a touch unusual: artists may list themselves on the site and try and get "Believers", essentially anyone willing to support them with at least $10 to get them a recorded CD. The site tracks how much each band makes and most, when they reach 50k get to do a recording studio session, though a few are aiming for 100k.

Of course the problem is getting people to part with money on the internet can be something of a challenge. Out of nearly 10,000 artists, some thirty have actually hit the magic number and its a journey of years rather than months. Beyond that, the interface really is somewhat lacking. This is to say nothing about the question of how dignifed the whole process is. If a band can't make the money to self-record a demo from their shows, they may just not have the talent to have an audience.

Regardless of that, there is some good music available to listen to and a certain spectacle aspect to the website that will interest some. Watching and reading updates from favorite bands, a bit of competition aspect and the chance to say you have a limited edition of some bands first cut may be worth it.





ARTISTserver
[website]

A pretty simple, no frills website that allows song streaming and downloading. Artists can post their own music, either copywritten or creative commons, as chosen by the song in a variety of options. There is no constant quality amongst the various songs available and rarely is there a full album from an artist, more often just a single or two. As with many sites of this style, there are the options for some social interaction, commenting on songs and blogging as well as a picture sharing area in this particular instance.

All in all, it is a perfectly functional site. The problem is, there are so many of these now that it really takes more than just being functional to shine. Compared to others, the amount of songs is small and there are far more limited options available. The interface is a little barebones. But the truth is, finding some songs to enjoy here makes any of that worthwhile. The top genre sorting on the front page can make things easy to browse through.





Music Dumpster
[website]

This website provides a search engine to find songs available on the internet for free. What this means on a practical level is primarily live tracks and recordings, promo pieces that are made available but it can give you an idea what a song looks like.

Growing on a constant level, it could be a very useful tool given some time. At the moment, most of the songs are mainstream and there is hardly a wide variety of items. The utility of their listen/embed/download options seems to vary somewhat from song to song. But it is a site in growth. Stay tuned for updates.





Musical Measure
[website]

Learn about new music while you play a bit of a metagame with others. Musical Measure is one of the most interesting ways to handle a music experience available. Instead of presenting a normal format to recommend things, users are given fictional currency to promote albums and artists.

At first it may seem to be something of a gimmick, but it can be addictive fun to try and get all the bands one wants to promote under the restrictions of the budget. It is a fabulous amusement and some will no doubt find themselves addicted to writing comments and trying to get deserving bands a little more well-deserved attention.  The website offers an ease of adding artists, suggesting them in and getting them linked through. As an organic, growing creature its really quite enjoyable.