Today’s find focuses a couple different websites with a common theme. Like a lot of professionals, creative and otherwise, I often have music playing in my office while I work. Depending on the task at hand, I find that certain music makes my quiet office a happier place to work. In my personal work environment, I enjoy quiet background music while I design, edit and take care of things around the office. Since the music I listen to usually has lyrics, I tend to turn it off while writing or copy editing as I find the lyrics to be more of a distraction in such cases.

I have at least two sources that I turn to for music online. The site I use most often is Pandora. I have been a big Pandora fan since college…back in the days before we had to sit through advertisements, click “I’m still listening” what seems like every 20 minutes, and were limited to 40 hours of listening per month. In reality the “Are you still listening?” prompt occurs after one hour of non-activity, and I have only hit the 40 hours/month ceiling once or twice. Pandora, for those of you not familiar, is an internet radio that is largely customizable by listeners. It is a part of the Music Genome Project, a project intending to “capture the complex musical DNA of songs using a large team of highly-trained musicians” and use that information to suggest songs and artists based on listeners’ feedback. The radio offers features such as Like, Dislike and Skip, and you can save numerous stations in your profile. Pandora offers an array of other features, including song lyrics, pre-made stations, and recently a Facebook integration that lets you see which of your friends like certain songs and artists.

My second preferred source for music is Grooveshark. While Pandora chooses your music for you based on your likes and dislikes, at Grooveshark.com you can hand pick each song on your playlist. There is no limit to the number of songs you can skip (Pandora has a limit of 6 skips per hour and 12 per day), and you can play the same song over and over as much as you’d like. A lot of folks are making the move from Pandora to Grooveshark as their #1 online music source, but I still prefer Pandora most of the time. I have my stations all set up and saved (as opposed to making all new ones at Grooveshark), and Pandora’s use of the Music Genome Project allows it to make more accurate predictions about songs and artists that I will like. Both services are free, with the option to upgrade to a paid account  in order to avoid ads, among other benefits.

After being spoiled by these personalized music options, it is hard to go back to old-fashioned radio. On occasion though, it is nice to have someone else make the decisions for you. Radioio is an internet radio that is a kind of hybrid- similar in content to satellite radio. There are hundreds of channels to choose from; for example in the Country category there are 6 different options ranging from Americana to Today’s Country. Almost all local radio stations offer free online streaming as well, so that is a viable option too. And, there is always your trusty iTunes library to fall back on, limited though it may be in comparison to the online music giants discussed here today.

Do you use Pandora and/or Grooveshark? Are there other online music options (free of charge or otherwise) that I’m missing out on? Let me know in the comments, and have a great weekend everyone- happy listening!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 2:04 PM and is filed under facebook, Friday Finds, links, resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.