Listen to Music for Free

Everybody loves music. Don’t you? I’ll give you $10 if you can find someone who can honestly say, “I hate music.” (Not really.)

There’s one small problem with music though. It can cost a lot of money — not something you’ll find college students with very often. I’d be extremely broke if I bought the CDs of every band that I enjoy listening to. It’s simply not feasible. That’s why there are things like radio.

Unfortunately, radio sucks. I want to listen to music, not advertisements, and I want a wider variety of music. One alternative is satellite radio, which is nice. A couple of my friends have it, and I’ve enjoyed listening to it while riding in their cars. The only problem is that you have to pay a fee for it. This may be fine for people with full time jobs, but for a college student who is slowly drowning in student loans, it’s like throwing another brick onto a sinking ship.

If only there were some way to combine the price of free radio with the benefits of satellite radio. Fortunately, there is! Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, here are three awesome sites where you can listen to great music for free:

Pandora Radio

http://www.pandora.com/

Type in the name of your favorite artist, song, or composer and Pandora will magically create a radio station featuring that music and more like it. Not only will you get to listen to your favorite music for free, you’ll also discover new music. The best part is that it’s commercial-free and doesn’t cost a dime. In fact, I’m listening to Pandora as I type this.

Last.fm

http://www.last.fm/

Last.fm is music with a social twist. Stats junkies will love Last.fm. Install a small program on your computer, and it’ll track the songs that you play and send the information to Last.fm (a process they call “scrobbling”). Based on this info, it will recommend music and connect you with “neighbors” who have similar musical tastes.

My favorite feature is “Neighborhood Radio” which will play songs that your neighbors have listened to. The biggest downside is that it takes a while to collect enough data for Last.fm to make good recommendations and connect you with appropriate neighbors.

SeeqPod

http://www.seeqpod.com/

SeeqPod is a music search and recommendation site that indexes content from around the Web and allows you to instantly play the songs you find when you search. It’s like Google for music. You can search for whatever music you want, put the songs in a list, and play them immediately. You can even save your playlist and embed it via a widget into your blog or website. Oh, and of course, it’s free.

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