Although not a free service, Rhapsody offers 25 free plays per month. This means that you can listen to the entire track of a song before making a purchasing decision. This differentiates Rhapsody's service from iTunes and Amazon, where you can only hear a smal portion of the song before purchase.
In June, 2008 began selling DRM (Digital Rights Management) free MP3 tracks. They now compete with Amazon for your DRM-free MP3 purchases.
Add the website OurStage.com to the list as a good source for new music discovery.
This unique website tries to connect bands, filmmakers, fans, and industry professionals. After a content provider joins up and uploads his video or music track, he selects a “channel competition” to enter.
Then fans (who choose to do so) judge the content by comparing two similar or maybe dissimilar songs or videos side-by-side in sort of a kitten vs kitten way. The results are recorded and ordered by “Peer Relative Ranking.” About that, their FAQ says, “The ranking or judging is done via two patent pending algorithms that serve up top ranking, middle ranking and relatively new uploaded material in a channel in ‘somewhat’ random fashion for someone to judge.”
It is not required that a casual listener interested in music discovery participate in the judging – one can select a channel, click Play, and immediately begin to hear music that you most likely have NOT heard before.
There’s lots more that you can do on OurStage, like setting up a profile that you can share with your friends, listen to music that’s “racing up the charts,” join fan clubs, create your own playlists, and chat with other users and possibly artists, if they are online, as well as judging new music.
After listening to OurStage for several hours, I think that OurStage is the best resource for finding new, fresh music just entering the system. It won’t find music similar to Blue Oyster Cult or songs that you already have in your collection, but it will help you connect with some crisp new music sources that you may really like. You may even get to discover the artists before they’re famous.
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