Review: Best Music Discovery Website

For folks with highly evolved music discovery habits, the Internet has become the resource for finding new songs or albums to add to the library. Radio and word-of-mouth have always been there, but some of the best music websites offer greater personalization and customization than radio could ever offer (even satellite). And while hearing about a great new (or old) track from a buddy is always fun, how often over the course of your week do you get that chance? The Web is always on.

So I've decided to write up my thoughts on a number of music discovery sites. I only chose sites that I've had plenty of experience with. Also, I only chose sites that offer full-length listens for free. Let's be honest - free listens are what we all crave in our quest for new music. The list was thus narrowed down to 6 sites: Last.fm, Pandora, YouTube, MySpace, Lala, and Imeem. Then I judged the sites based on features I look for when I'm scouring the Web for music - features like comprehensiveness of the library, ease of use, number of free listens allowed, and speed/quality of streaming. The results, from worst to first, are as follows:

6th Place: Pandora

This is a little unfair, because Pandora is conceived by its designers as an Internet radio site rather than an on-demand streaming site. As a result, you cannot simply search for that song you just heard in your car and listen to it. Instead, you create a custom station based on the sound of a specific artist or song.

Regardless, I feel justified in reviewing Pandora here because it's an extremely popular site (and one of the most popular iPhone apps). My thoughts are as follows: Pandora has a deep library that covers both major label and indie catalogs. It's an easy and fun site to use. The inability to skip songs an unlimited number of times when you'd rather hear something else is disheartening, and probably the main reason I rarely go to Pandora anymore. The streaming program is especially robust, however, and pauses in the music are very rare (depending on your Internet connection, of course). So - if you're looking for a customized radio that you're willing to let play without much input, then Pandora may be the solution. But if you really need to find that song you just heard, or even if you're just surfing for something new, there are better options.

5th Place: MySpace

Facebook's scatterbrained nemesis happens to be a decent music discovery engine as well. Unfortunately, a few details are holding it back. On the positive side, basically every artist has a profile on MySpace, with at least a handful of songs available for streaming. In general, you can listen to those songs an unlimited number of times. If you're lucky, the artist you searched has an entire library uploaded to the profile.

However, those artist pages are often lacking the precise song you want. It depends: if the song is a new single, most likely you'll find it. But I've often had issues finding even year-old songs on MySpace. The library is, in a word, inconsistent. Also, the programming is pretty weak. Lots of songs have choppy playback. You need quite a strong Web connection to enjoy MySpace. And the pages hardly have a standard format; often, you'll have to scroll through other media (video, photos) before you find the music player. All in all, MySpace is a hassle.

4th Place: YouTube

Oh, YouTube, how you have changed our lives...and pissed off content owners. YouTube probably has the best streaming speed of any music site, as well as an easy interface that we're all used to. It offers unlimited listens to all its content. And its user-uploaded library is pretty complete, too.

But that library is in peril due to many record labels' actions to have their content removed. I'm not going to take a side on that issue at the moment - besides, that would be another post altogether. Suffice it to say that last week when I tried to embed a YouTube video of Van Morrison in The Last Waltz on to Hot Riffs, I found not a single audio or video track available. The video had been removed. This doesn't bode well for YouTube's future as a viable music discovery site.

Listen, if you can find it on YouTube, great. But if you need a one-stop shop for music streaming, read on.

3rd Place: Last.fm

Last.fm, built and operated in Britain, is my favorite website. Bar none. The concept of Last.fm is so elegant: offer a tiny software download that records every song listened to in iTunes or on an iPod to an online database, automatically create a profile for the user based on what they listen to, and recommend new music to the user based on their taste and the tastes of similar site users. I have found countless new (to me) acts through Last.fm. It may well be the best use of cloud computing I've seen (aside from Google).

So why do I give it a 3rd place finish? For one, only certain tracks are available in full-length streams, and even those tracks can be listened to for only three plays before you get the 30-second sample instead. Even if that's all the plays you'll ever need, there's the issue of streaming speed: often my solid Internet connection isn't enough to handle an entire Last.fm song without a skip.

A final point: Last.fm also offers a customizable radio that blows Pandora out of the water. You can skip through songs an unlimited number of times, and the selections are based on users' listening habits instead of the judgments of Pandora employees (Google the Music Genome Project for a further explanation of what goes on behind the scenes at Pandora).

2nd Place: Imeem

High-speed streaming, deep and eclectic user-generated library, unlimited full-length plays, easy interface: Imeem is a wonderful tool. I recommend it to anyone who needs to find that one song now: search the database and most likely your song is there. You can even make playlists of your own using songs that are already on the site, although after a time some of those songs will become the dreaded 30-second samples.

Imeem doesn't have every song, but it does have most. I get the sense that the labels are having a tricky time with Imeem, as they are simultaneously supporting the site financially and issuing takedown notices for some songs. As with YouTube, this isn't a good sign. But for now, Imeem remains a great resource for full-length tracks.

1st Place: Lala

Have you heard of Lala? My guess is that out of the six sites I've reviewed here, Lala is the least popular. But by my standards, it's also the best. If you visit lala.com, you will instantly appreciate the clear and attractive layout. If you search for a few songs, you will soon realize that its database contains virtually everything you need - both major label and independent. And the streaming code is robust. You can watch as the playback bar chases the data-loaded bar while the song is playing; the data bar almost always stays a distance ahead of playback.

Lala also offers a great option for the serious Web music voyager: for an average of 80 cents per album, you can buy an unlimited stream of an entire album. The songs will go into your "Music Collection" on Lala, and will be playable from any browser thereafter. I use this feature all the time, and for about $10 total I have accumulated some great music over the past few months that I simply needed to hear several times before I bought the CD or downloaded the iTunes track.

All in all, Lala is the best one-stop solution for discovering and hearing music that's new to you. However, I have to be honest: I continue to make use of all these sites in my quest for online music. I recommend that you get yourself a free account at a number of these sites if you're going to be hunting for music on the Web in the future. As always, enjoy the music!

Song of the Day: Grant-Lee Phillips - "Spring Released"

This guy's sound isn't quite rock, nor is it pop. "Spring Released" and the other tracks on Mobilize (2001) exist somewhere in the space between genres, in a place where melody is enough.

Grant-Lee Phillips was never a commercial success, and you won't find his work on terrestrial radio. Heck, you'll have to search long and hard to hear a song of his on satellite radio (in 6 years of XM listening in the car, I've only heard him once or twice). But if you give Mobilize a couple listens, it will wash over you in the same way that a new Radiohead album does.

Yes, I do find Grant-Lee Phillips' music to be satisfying on the same wavelength that OK Computer is satisfying. Forget the claim made by music critics that Phillips is an alt-country musician. Like I said, genres don't really apply to him. Try "Spring Released," you'll see. (By the way, it appears my embedded music widgets are only playing 30-second samples. For this song, I am linking to a full-length stream. Should work better.)

Grant-Lee Phillips - "Spring Released"

One Chord

Sometimes that's all it takes for a song to electrify your mind. One chord, summoned ever so delicately by a combination of instruments, and preserved in a recording which now lives on forever in our hard drives so that we can come back to it, again and again, whenever we need to feel that lift.

Scrolling through my iTunes today, I thought about this. If I had to pick out only one moment in all of recorded music - one chord - to call my favorite, which moment would it be?

Well, that's just an impossible question, isn't it? I know I can't answer it. But I did give a lot of thought to the answer, so here are a few of my very favorite chords in all of rock:

Bruce Springsteen - "Darkness on the Edge of Town" - 0:52

I only became a real Bruce fan after hearing this song. His radio hits are great, and those were the only tunes I knew of his for a long time. But when my girlfriend, a longtime Bruce fanatic, played me this song, my appreciation of Bruce shot through the roof. "Darkness" feels like a walk in the night, and the D minor 7th chord that hits on the word "edge" is like a rare Italian sports car that speeds by with a gust of wind. It's unexpected; it leaves you thinking "What was that?" The intrigue in this moment is overwhelming. The chord is really beyond words, but I'll call it magical.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town - Bruce Springsteen


Bob Dylan - "Like A Rolling Stone" - 0:01

The drum is struck once, and then that opening chord: thick, reeling, and all nostalgia. The chord is a cue for us as listeners and as Americans, a switch that goes off in our heads and flips a sepia-toned lens down over our eyes. Immediately engaging yet mysterious in its ability to compel you, this is perhaps the only rock song to deserve the books that have been written about it (see Greil Marcus' work). You know this song already, but it's always a fresh sound when you hear it.

Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan


Elton John - "My Father's Gun" - 2:12

There is a rather subtle and muffled electric guitar that trickles in and out of this gem from 1970's Tumbleweed Connection. Then there is the presence of the brass section, giving the sound breadth and muscle. The song rises and falls like most songs do, but the difference here is in the interaction of the horns and the guitar. That interaction drives the second half of the song, when the chorus repeats continuously and builds in our minds a la "Hey Jude." But the horns and guitar come together most beautifully at 2:12, when the chorus overflows and Elton hits the word "bend." This song kept me up late at night when I first bought the Super Audio (hi-def) CD and played it in surround sound. Elton at his most powerful and visceral.

My Fathers Gun - Elton John

Song of the Day: Blitzen Trapper - "Sleepytime in the Western World"

This band and this album (Furr) turned me on to indie rock. The word "indie" has this weird connotation, describing music that's both liberated from mainstream limitations and subjected to the judgment of an exclusive and sometimes self-important little world, also called "indie." Until recently, I had imagined all indie rock to be experimental, aimless, and incoherent. Perhaps my imagination had been colored by the brutal performance that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah put on up at college a couple years ago. I don't know.

I started reading Pitchfork.com about a year ago, in hopes of finding a second opinion on some album reviews (the first opinion came from Allmusic.com). What I found was that this little indie world had a lot of good music and good taste to go along with the crap. Blitzen Trapper's Furr was the first record I gave a full listen as a result of the review I read on Pitchfork, and there have been many records since. But Furr has gotten a lot of straight-through-no-skips listens from me in the past year.

"Sleepytime in the Western World" is not the most immediately accessible song on the album, but it's the first track and it might open your eyes like it opened mine. Give it a little time, and you may be looking for the next Trapper concert on the East Coast like I am.

Sleepytime in the Western Worl...

Song of the Day: The Band with Van Morrison - "Caravan"

The first time I saw The Last Waltz was on an enormous projection screen at a friend’s house. I was in high school at the time, and neither my musical taste nor my music collection had expanded very far yet. At the time I was still accumulating songs one by one on Kazaa or Limewire. But that night, watching “Van the Man” strut around and kick his leg up while Robbie Robertson and the Band belted out the chorus on “Caravan,” my outlook on rock music was forever changed.

In some ways, The Last Waltz concert (1976) came at the end of the golden age of rock and roll. The Beatles were over, the Stones were past their prime. Dylan was meandering. Maybe that means something to the folks who were alive in 1976. But to me, The Last Waltz means the greatest rock moment ever captured on film. And if I was given the task of explaining rock and roll to an alien, the first thing I'd do is pop The Last Waltz in the DVD player.

The concept is so perfect. What I mean is, The Band's career sans Dylan ran from '68-'76 (ending with The Last Waltz concert). That was the golden age, in my opinion. That captures the peaks of Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, the end of the Beatles (the best part), Woodstock, Joni Mitchell, Clapton, Neil Young, and countless other acts with unreal albums from that time period. Not to mention The Band itself, which is possibly the most underrated act of the classic rock era (and my favorite band ever). So the Last Waltz brings all these folks together on one stage. Oh, and Scorcese took care of the filmmaking.

Have you seen The Last Waltz? If not, do yourself a favor and watch it on the biggest TV you've got, with the sound up. And pay attention to "Caravan" with Van Morrison. If you like classic rock, you're gonna love this.

Oh, but of course they took down all the video and audio of "Caravan" online. So here, I'll show you video of "Don't Do It," another great performance that plays in the opening credits. This'll get you excited to watch the whole thing at home.

The Listening Experience

From what I've been told, listening to music used to be a sacred thing, preserved in ritual. Our parents would get the urge, go to the living room, run their hands across the record shelves until they found the album, then slide out the vinyl from the sleeve, place Side 1 on the turntable, place the needle in the groove, and press play.

Listening had a place and a process. The means of listening were delicate and precious. I won't say the sound was better, I'm not going down that road. But the experience was richer in comparison to most listening habits today.

How does it happen today? Throw the earbuds in, click-click-click on the iPod, and we're golden. Right? Well, it certainly is faster that way. And we should all be thankful we aren't listening to Donovan like our parents did.

But how close to the music are we with those earbuds in? Are we dedicating ourselves to the experience? Let's face it: music has taken a serious backseat to movies in terms of cultural significance. I think that's at least partially due to the actual experience of consuming the medium: While movies still require a couple hours of our focused time in a fixed place - the theater or the living room television - music can be had anywhere at any time. We lost our grip on the listening experience somewhere along the way.

Now, I'm going to indulge in a little stereo bragging, but I'm only going to do it as a way of exposing how far out of the mainstream my listening habits are. Here's my setup:

LaCie 500GB external hard drive > Mac mini > Decco DAC/amp > Klipsch Synergy F-1 speakers

I also have a Sony Super Audio CD player (and a collection of Super Audio CDs) which runs through the Decco as well. And all the connecting cables between my components are top-notch. Oh, and I listen to XM satellite radio in the car.

So yeah, I'm an audiophile. When I want an album, I buy the CD and import it into my iTunes twice - once in compressed form so it will fit on my iPod, and once in Apple Lossless format for home listening. And those Super Audio CDs - they were only manufactured in numbers for a few years in the early 2000s, but to me they are the equivalent of HDTV. Which is to say, they blow me away.

Believe me, I know I'm an oddity in this day and age. Who buys CDs anymore? But I feel like this stereo is my version of an HDTV. I'm in front of the speakers for hours each day. This is my movie theater. And I feel like a lot of people who really love music deserve better than the earbuds they've grown accustomed to.

Now, if they would just bring those stereo prices down...

Song of the Day: Drive-By Truckers - "A Ghost To Most"

As I sit here with wet feet, just off the train back from rainy Manhattan to rainy Connecticut, pondering what this blog can become, my body is warmed by the slide guitar in this beautiful song. Drive-By Truckers might be my favorite band of the past decade, and "A Ghost To Most" really captures the essence of their sound. It's a sound that has progressed away from the triple-guitar attack with which they made their mark in 2001 with Southern Rock Opera. (That album remains an incredible listen for me. Do yourself a favor: listen to Disc 1 of SRO with the lyrics sheet in front of you. Southern rock hasn't been that relevant or that good since Ronnie Van Zant died.)

The Truckers shuffled through a few new members in the time since SRO. Their sound has matured, becoming crisper and cleaner without losing any of that southern swagger. What you hear in "A Ghost to Most" is a band finding their sweet spot in mid-tempo rock and roll.

Baby every bone in my body's gone to jumping
Like they're gonna come through my skin

Well, that's exactly how I feel when I hear the Truckers.

A Ghost To Most - Drive-By Tru...

Song of the Day: Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos"

Which song will I do first, which song...Actually, this was an easy choice. "Mykonos," from the Sun Giant EP (2008), touches a place inside your head where you keep your adventures locked away.

You go wherever you go today

That's what lead vocalist Robin Pecknold sings in the outro. Where are you going when you listen to this? I am trekking through a vast desert of pristine, untouched sand.

Hope you enjoy.

Mykonos (Album) - Fleet Foxes