Streaming Music? Try one of these three…

When it comes to our music, things tend to get personal. There’s a certain way that we tend to enjoy our music, and that’s on our own terms. Whether it’s for working, relaxing, exercising, gaming, or just some sort of background noise, we all have a preference.
Sometimes the radio itself just doesn’t cut it, including satellite radio. There are too many niche genres of music, and not enough radio stations to cover them all. For years, we’ve had collections of Vinyls, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3s. But why bother with playing the DJ when you can pick a couple of tracks you like, and let someone else do it for you?
Today we’ll be looking at three very popular and highly used music streaming sites. Each have their pros and cons, but we’ve done all the work for you so you can make the best choice for your listening pleasure.

1 – Pandora
Probably the most widely used of the three we’ll talk about, Pandora has had time to work out many of its glitches. Just choose the genre you want to hear (or, if you’re not sure, just pick a song you’d like to hear) and it’ll work from there, choosing songs in radio-like fashion to play for your enjoyment. However, also in radio-like fashion are the commercials that play almost all too frequently. And, while you can skip songs, there are only so many times you can skip around. Additionally, you can “like” or “dislike” songs, and Pandora will change accordingly. Overall, this is the perfect experience for someone who likes mainstream music without the hassel of having to make a lot of choices. If you like mainstream, but want a little more variety, you may want to read on…

2 – Grooveshark
Grooveshark has more variety in music than Pandora, but depending on the functionality you choose, there may be a little bit more involved in tailoring the music you want to hear. There are a few options for listening to music on Grooveshark. For a minimal amount of work, you may just want to choose a broadcast that tailors to what you want to hear (for instance, I prefer to listen to instrumentals or video game music, depending on what I’m doing). Alternatively, you can choose a few songs, and turn on the “radio” function, which plays an endless stream of music without you having to choose anything else. Same as pandora, you can favorite certain songs, and even place them into a personalized playlist or two. Hate a song? Choose to skip over it. Love the sound of something it’s playing? Ask Grooveshark to play more like it. One cool feature of Grooveshark is also the most maintenance heavy. You can broadcast your own station. How cool is that? The downside of this is that you have to actually run the broadcast which means talking in chat with listeners (every broadcast has a chat room on the side), choosing songs to play, and approving suggestions from the audience (unless you’ve turned that functionality off). It can be a lot of fun, but also hard work to be a DJ. Speaking of being a DJ…

3 – Soundcloud
Soundcloud has recently taken off because of its ability to help little known artists get their music to the masses. While the functionality is still there for streaming music (you can listen to other people’s playlists, or create your own), this is definitely the most work intense of the three music sites. The cool things about Soundcloud make it worth the work, though. You can actually see the song you’re about to play, with the addition of being able to see where other people were compelled to leave comments during the song.

Here’s the thing, though… and this is my personal favorite part of Soundcloud…
The collection of music from Soundcloud is available to use in DJ mixes via www.partycloud.fm

So, whether you enjoy just kicking back and relaxing with an automated selection, or you’d like to be real nit-picky and play DJ yourself, you have options. You just have to explore them. Click the links in the blog, and check them out for yourself!