Over the years, the way we listen to music has changed dramatically. I remember my first Sony Walkman cassette tape player. I used to rock out to the Ninja Turtles soundtrack and Michael Jackson’s album Bad. While my tastes have evolved little, my method for listening to music has. (If you can’t pick up on sarcasm on the internet: that was sarcasm.)
My first CD was the Top Gun soundtrack. I still listen to the song “Danger Zone” when I am on a plane taking off. It makes me feel like a BAMF. I rarely buy CDs anymore. I just pre-ordered the new Linkin Park album, but for the most part, I have gone digital.
I got my first MP3 player in high school. It held a whopping 32mb, or about 5 songs. I learned about the incredible potential of music that does not skip when on a bike or running. I changed my five songs regularly, but it was not until I got my first iPod in college that my music collection began to expand.
In my college days, I used questionably legal methods to amass a collection of nearly 40gb of songs. My tens of thousands of songs could play for weeks without repeating once. I have still never listened to a big number of them. I keep my 60gb iPod full of songs.
Now, we are in a new age. There are two great online resources that I use for listening to music. These work on smart phones as well, but I use the PC based version. Those sites are Pandora and Grooveshark.
Pandora is the best resource I have found to discover new music. Pandora lets you create custom radio stations based on songs you like. I have found dozens of new artists and songs from Pandora. If you reach a song you don’t like, you can just click skip. You can only skip up to five songs at a time, but it is rarely a problem for me, as the site picks great songs consistently.
Grooveshark is the next generation of music, in my opinion. On the site, you can find virtually any popular song and create a music library for free. The site is ad supported, which you can remove for $3 per month (or a handy user script). I am amazed by the ability to start and stop any song I can imagine for free instantly.
How do you listen to music? Do you buy from iTunes? Do you get old fashioned CDs? Are you one of the proud and true that still keeps a vinyl record collection? Are you web based? Is there a better site that I have not seen yet? Please share in the comments.
