Whether you are annoyed by the ads on Pandora, the limited number of skips, or the abyss of cruel 30-second song teasers from Last.FM, many online listeners are growing weary of mainstream methods of hearing new music. While the Pandora algorithm is strong, and the Last.FM related artists tool is pretty useful, don’t fool yourself in to thinking that there aren’t other great ways to expose yourself to new music in the depths of cyberspace.
Here are 7 alternatives to Pandora and Last.FM that will infuse your day with an uninterrupted stream of music that large record companies haven’t managed to squash under their thumbs yet.
StumbleAudio
StumbleAudio has a killer recommendation engine that works better for me than Pandora’s. Instead of “genomes”, StumbleAudio uses listeners’ favoritism as well as buying pattern data from online music stores to make suggestions. Even better, for every track that comes up in the player, you can choose to explore the entire album – a great feature for music snobs. Unlike Pandora, a listener can choose very specific genres in which to listen – within the ‘Blues’ category alone there are 14 sub-types. No skip limit, at least not that I’ve ever reached and I’m notorious for flying through my Pandora skip limit.
Songza
Songza uses a recommendation engine that runs for each ‘channel’, but unlike Pandora, channels are not tied to specific listeners and rather are community property. Anyone can listen to anyone’s station and add suggestions for tracks or artists that belong there. Powered by the Emergent Discovery recommendation engine, Songza is in beta version and makes streaming music a very community-based activity – this is bound to gain a strong footing in the music community during this social networking renaissance we are all living in.
Musicovery
Elegantly, Musicovery boils down songs to a location on two scales: Energetic-Calm and Positive-Dark. These attributes may be more meaningful in targeting music for a listener’s mood than the hundreds of music genomes that Pandora uses. When you click a location on an X-Y graph of these two scales that fits your mood, Musicovery builds a playlist. Complimented by the ability to disable “hits” and a decent recommendation algorithm, the only limitation here is that you’ll need a paid account to skip songs.
Stereomood
Ah, the power of the ‘tag cloud’. Stereomood crawls the music blog scene and extracts any posts with an embedded .MP3 file as well as associated tags. Users can select channels based on their mood or activity. Chillout, beautiful, melancholy, calm, dreamy, happy, summer, sad, electronic, ambient, cool, and sexy are among the dozens of popular tags that users can select which spurs an ongoing playlist of tunes that fit the listener’s mood. Of course, users can suggest new tags and improve the database, making this a very groovy place to lurk on the web.
8tracks
If you are in the mood for a personalized gift from an anonymous friend, you can find a slew of carefully hand-crafted mix tapes ready to listen to on 8tracks (over 100,000 currently). Based on user uploads, you can find mix tapes for every occasion, from the simple to the bizarre. With a pretty decent tag engine and a deep collection of B-sides, there only two limitations: your imagination and the number of skips (though the point of a mix tape is not to skip, have some respect, son).
Grooveshark
Supported by millions of user uploads, Grooveshark is an online music player without limitations and virtually every song you could ever want to hear. It is the only service on this list which has the capability to play a specific song of your choosing, free from the confines of DMCA licensing and recommendations. Between its extensive library, its radio stations and its limitless playback, if you have a song in mind that you need to hear, drop the YouTube music in the dumpster and stumble over to Grooveshark.
The Hype Machine
Similar to Stereomood, The Hype Machine is a blog-crawling service that finds new music in the music blogging community, but in contrast, THM is focused around the writing rather than just listening alone. THM is a giant catalog of high-quality music blogs that also aggregates embedded music from its sources directly on the site, so you can crawl around for hours of listening and reading about your favorite artists, concert and album reviews and emerging talent without ever leaving the site; a great alternative to the feverish Wikipedia crawler who happens to be a music snob.
Final thought: Life is too short to listen to cruddy music – especially with all of these ways to find new material. Go enhance your snobbery, my pretentious loyal subjects!
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You need to go on grooveshark.com..
OMG I LOVE THT WEBSITE NOW!!! THNX
Theres a good one on my phone called slacker radio… I have an android, so idk if there is a computer website
Yeah slacker totally has a computer site. Its great. Love slacker. They have way more music than pandora and you dont get as much repeating stuff.
I usually end up listening to Grooveshark though. <3 me some grooveshark!!
http://www.facebook.com/rapburg
It is so good to be here and be able to read all of this
You should really read what you’re getting into with grooveshark.com http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_grooveshark.com_legal
Sounds to me like, as long as you do not upload music your good to go.
More like, if you don’t SELL other people’s music you’ll be fine. Seriously, I doubt anyone is going to try to sell a Dave Matthew’s song under their own name.
fuhshniZZle – The Ultimate Music Video Jukebox beta is running a special beta tester promotion. First 10,000 beta testers to create a playlist will automatically be upgraded to their premium subscription when beta test ends. fuhshniZZle integrates YouTube, bing, Discogs, Facebook and Amazon APIs to create a seamless integrated and revolutionary multimedia experience.
Check out their press release http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9254140.htm
fuhshniZZle – The Ultimate Music Video Jukebox (www.fuhshniZZle.com)
zaycev.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjaaSK6FX3Y
Don’t waste your time with this link, completely unrelated to discussion.
Visite radionomy.com
I love hypem.com you can find a lot of stuff on there, and like you said, the writing quality is also good so keeps me entertained!
Yeaha! I totally love Hypem. The best of the lot I would say.
Jamendo.com is perfect if you want free music under the CC licence. but these are nice too
Hey Guys
Good list, but hey: No Spotify???
regards
Leonard
Spotifyblog Netherlands
Maybe because Spotify doesn’t actually recommend you anything. Even though the program is perfect if you want to check something/someone out.
AFAIK Grooveshark also does not recommend you anything. I haven’t found such a function anyway, and I’ve been using it heavily for the last few weeks. IMO Grooveshark is better than Spotify since you can listen to a limitless amount of music without (audio) ads and for free. And if you have an account you can also create your own playlists. I wouldn’t mind knowing why Spotify has such a huge following actually (most of my facebook friends are based in Norway and the Netherlands, and it is pretty huge there).
Grooveshark does suggest music to you based on whats already in your playlist if you click the radio button and dont dictate a genre.
The main reason I love Spotify, is that I can use it on my Cell, and basicly have all the music I wan`t all the time.
I do pay around $15 a month though, but hey! the utopia of free music is for kids really
Don’t forget about music.yandex.ru
shuffler.fm
deezer.com
jango.com
I love Jango. Way better than Pandora, in my opinion.
Jango is the shit
hell yeah, Jango is amazing
thesixtyone.com
Makes listening to music more like a video game, with bonuses and quests and rewards. Also, most of the music is indie and available under CC licenses or inexpensively.
thesixtyone.com is awesome, thanks for sharing
Woah. Bro music. Lame.
thesixtyone.com all the way !!
Hello Nick!
Looks like you’d love AUPEO!
Have a listen now!
http://www.aupeo.com
Your AUPEO! Team
Nothing compares to the Music Map. No, you can’t hear the music, but you can easily find something you will love based on what you like.
you should visit playlist.com
spotify is the best i’ve ever used and i’ve used most. problem is it’s not available for the U.S. if you have any friends residing outside the U.S., have them make an account and give you the information. may be a hassle, but well worth it.
I know some of these but I am going to check the rest of them out. The main place I listen to music is at blip.fm. I love it!
Blip.fm for me too
i miss anywhere.fm
For those of u who love quality world music, ethno jazz, afro funk, arab and turkish fusion, latin and mediterranean or spiritual indian music u should check radio interkulti at http://interkulti.net/index.php/world-music-radio
will not regret it…promise.
Check out somafm.com- eclectic-cool-unique-good list thanks
grooveshark.com is very good
You guys should try slacker.com too. For radio, RadioSure and RadioTime are the best in the world. And the best of the best is AudioGalaxy, you can listen all the songs you have in your computer at home, in any computer, anywhere, simply awesome. Enjoy music!
Check this one: http://musictonic.com/
Wow! thnx youtube music and similar artist! that’s all what i need!
Big thanks!
try checking out http://www.grooveshark.com
grooveshark is the sh**
Dude it’s awesome your just sh**
lol “The sh**” is slang meaning awesome.
You should really read what you’re getting into with grooveshark.com http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_grooveshark.com_legal
No good opera plot can be sensible:… people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. ~W.H. Auden, Time, 29 December 1961
Damn StumbleAudio is crap music!
Definitely correct on the Last.FM bullsh**.
I stopped using it after seeing the multitudes of incomplete songs along with other “impostors” listed in the “favorited near you” list…People like me that were fooled into thinking that was the real song.
try alonetone too
Jango is the best. In addittion to finding the best artist and gendres you can also discover new upcoming artist. Very good new artists.
I also like surfing on thesixtyone.com it has a lovely graphic enviroment, nice tunes from breakin through artists and a nice social network.
The thing that pisses me about last fm is that I never charged a single cent when they were building their data base, I think all of us allowd lastfm to spy on our hard drives so it could grow that enormous data base and then it started to charge for the service we all helped to build.
Grooveshark gave me a horrible virus that forced me to reformat my >12 month old laptop and now it doesn’t work the same. It was a freak thing but I’ve seen others say the same on other forums.
Stumble upon changes my life !
blip.fm is another
Spotify
Check out Public Records — an online networking tool for musicians that makes their data go to work for them. Coming this May.
publicrcrds.wordpress.com
http://www.publicrecords.org
facebook.com/publicrcrds
twitter: @publicrcrds
try awdio.com
its an international dj website..a bit diff than the radios on here but still awesome
check it out!!
Try filtermusic.net – it’s a collection of tons of internet radio stations.
I would suggest one more website: http://x-musics.com/, where I found a lot of free songs with ability to listen them online, download for free for test purpose, or buy on iTunes and Amazon.(http://x-musics.com/)
radioparadise.com
I still think last.fm is the best. You really do need to subscribe to get any decent use out of it, but $3 a month (you can stop any time) is really not that much.
After they took away the playlist feature it became not worth even $3. Anything useful on the site is available for free.
I cant believe you didnt mention JANGO.com, which i love
lol, i know, jango is the best and they don’t know it
What about shuffleer easy to use google chrome ext that gives you a list of genres to choose from and it trawls through blogs and sites to find good msuic for you– check it out
8tracks.com is WONDERFUL!
8tracks sucks…
wow ganda
still awesome
Problem with most of these is if you listen to anything really underground you’re screwed. Last.fm has recommended me so many independent, under the radar artists that are awesome but I can never find anything else about these artists from the sites listed above. Overall the sites are useful for what they’re intended for so I can’t bash any of them. Good stuff.
How is Last.fm not on this list… also, check out tuberadio.com
daaah, because the title says: alternatives to pandora and LASTFM idiot!
Dude. Wearehunted.com
Top 99 emergent songs….fantastic.
I second this. Was my gateway site away from Pandora to seek out better music sites.
ЗДЕСЬ БЫЛ ВАСЯ!!!
ВЫ ВСЕ ПИДОРЫ!!!
check out thesixtyone.com it’s WAY better than half of these sites.
http://www.vinylpenetration.com has an app that is strictly house, dubstep, and electro music. Its amazing
Nah, I’m good with last.fm, thank you very much.
I don’t use last.fm to listen to new music, I use it as a record of what I’m listening to. Therefore I wasn’t upset when they limited the previews or whatever it was they did.
Besides, I have Spotify unlimited. So suck it.
Fantastic list!
DUBSET.COM GOTTA CHECK THIS OUT
There is a site in development right now called BEATPLAY that is going to be a great tool for independent artists to showcase their music for free. It’s a great way to gain exposure and fans without selling your soul to a record label. Check out beatplay.wordpress.com right now for news on up-and-coming artists and the development of the actual site. BEATPLAY, IT’S GOING TO BE REAL GOOD…ON THE REAL.
Everyone should try out Jukesy.com
My favourite one is Songza..really usable for me..
I checked out stumpleaudio and found some new pretty good bands, but I’ll stick with Grooveshark for now. Personally I think it’s superior to any of the other on the list.
xff
My favourite one is Songza..really usable for me.. Replica Bell&Ross 46MM
to be honest if your into happyharhcore than http://www.happyhardcore.com/radio/ will be your god. youd end up downdloading more then your HDD can handle if you know what I mean
Hey everyone, go ahead and listen and upload on grooveshark.com, you become 100% liable if they ever go to court over it.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_grooveshark.com_legal
http://www.grooveshark.com/terms
Have fun getting sued like Jammie Thomas.
mole holes
by Chris Sowa
oh, to be a cosmic mole
in and out of planck-sized holes
experiencing all as whole
trying to preserve one’s soul
You forgot to add Playlist.com, where it isn’t even required for you to register and you can stream any song you want.
nise stie!!!:)
You forgot to mention to add Playlist.com, where it isn’t even required for you to register and you can stream any song you want.
get these on the squeezebox menu
You forgot Jango.
Jesus, somebody call ma, really love this blog
! But hey bud, I got some bad news, you’re really missing out of a lot of visitors. I’m a blogger myself and I spend a lot of time making and reading them, ones like 7 Alternatives to Pandora and Last.FM | Mystery Tricycle. I recently got a new tool and it’s done *wonders* to my entire business, this crazy thing is SO much more powerful and better. It’s only been a week but my revenue has gone up to $258.11 $$CASH$$, all in one day! So want me to do you a favor? Ok, here’s my big secret, where I learned all my tricks: –>>http://doiop.com/TheBlogWealthMakerv2.0 <– Just giving your site a look I can tell you'll probably pull in a couple hundred bucks a month if you just spend a few minutes tweaking some stuff. Damn, I feel like I just made someone's day today. But keep it a secret! I don't want too many people using it. Byanca Deaguero
http://radiotuna.com/ gives you the freedom to choose genre and search an unlimited number of radio stations
FYI : I tried copying the BlogWealthMaker url and Trend Micros blocked it as a malicious website – so beware!
Nice list here. I haven’t heard of most of them but tried Groove Shark a while back. It’s quite an easy site to use and there are plenty of songs to choose from. Have to try the rest sometime!
hitlantis.com for unsigned talents. Lots of great finds there.
bravo… is amazing list for radio!
Download Spotify! It is available in the u.s now & it has recommendations/similar artists/top songs/artists bio/playlists all integrated into their downloadable program with an easy to use interface & did I mention its free…
A good music website, in my opinion, is one that has EVERYTHING, and that includes my music. I’ve checked every website, the only two that are worth the time are 8tracks and Grooveshark.
Fantastic blog you have here but I was wondering if you knew of any community forums that cover the same topics talked about here? I’d really like to be a part of group where I can get opinions from other experienced individuals that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Thank you!
Um what about Jango.com
Why do so many people say Jango isn’t mentioned in the replies? There are plenty of replies that mention Jango. It is probably the most referenced site in all of the replies.
With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright violation? My site has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my authorization. Do you know any ways to help reduce content from being ripped off? I’d really appreciate it.
pick whatever omg amazing
en.ciyuu.com is super site. no commerce and great work
Although it’s a branch of Last.fm,
a good site to find through music is through Turntable.fm
You can search through rooms of different genres, be a DJ and play your own music, and talk with people within your rooms, or you can make a room of your own.
It’s sounds kind of dumb at first, but if you get some friends together, it’s actually pretty fun.
in the Songza description you say we are in a renaissance of social media.. btw means “rebirth” and to my knowledge social media is fairly new, therefore making this a genesis or revolution. Sorry to be the jerk that pointed that out.
Hi,
I’m an academic researcher in the music recommendation field, this is the project I’m working on:
http://mentor.fm
it’s the first alpha of a new recommendation radio, at the moment you can use it for free, without advertising.
I would be glad to have some feedback.
How about one of the original sites…. live365.com been around since the late 90′s
thanks for friends
Might also want to check out http://www.indieshuffle.com — functions a lot like Pandora (creates a playlist for you).
Look at MyFiveStarMusic.com I find great music and i’m always updating. Its farely new and I’m trying to get it off the ground. Please check it out. Thanks
I like the idea of these, but I personally like listening to online radio stations. It just takes away the need to look for music. Just set it, and leave it in the background.
I stumbled to this site http://www.shadeoforange.com
Longtime Pandora fan, but as pointed out, it’s vastly outpaced by other services in terms of content. Currently subscribed to MOG which is pretty awesome, but a work in progress in some areas. For example, you still can’t ban/dislike artist, albums or tracks in radio mode (You can skip to your heart’s content, but who wants to do that all day?)
Many of you are only interested in free services. I checked out Jango based on recommendations here and agree it’s probably one of the best. Sound quality is not bad either. For a brief while it almost seemed like a challenger to MOG! But then I searched Jango for some favorite artists discovered on MOG and came up empty. No Kevin Hearn? No Jonathan Wilson? No Lotus Plaza?? You guys are missing some really good music!