Junkie
I admit it. I’m an addict. I’ve been hooked since I was young. I’ve pissed away so much money over the years, averaging about $250 a month on my habit. It’s not easy for me to say this, so please... bear with me. My name is Tom and I’m a music junkie.
I collect songs. I scour the Web for new tracks. If it’s not on iTunes, I hit Amazon. I don’t buy entire albums anymore. No no. I am highly selective with my purchases. How do I find stuff? Music sites. PopMatters. Pitchfork. Coke Machine Glow. Then there’s the magazine subscriptions. Rolling Stone. Spin. Filter. I also follow some amazing DJ’s on Blip.fm who help introduce me to stuff I’ve never heard before.
iTunes has its Genius Recommendations, but they’re only 30-second previews. If I like it, I jump over to Lala, though, to hear the full track. I used to have a Rhapsody subscription, but Lala’s free - and better. All you have to do is sign up and they’ll let you listen to any song in its entirety - once. Go back to hear it again and you’ll only get the preview. Fine with me; I just want to know if it’s worth buying or not.
I also use Pandora. You start with an artist you like (or song) and it builds a channel around that sound. It then plays other songs it thinks are similar. If you don’t agree, it never plays that track again and it starts to recognize your taste - channel by channel.
Back to Blip. You’ve seen the updates at the top of the page. Think of it as Twitter for music. There’s a search box. You type out the song you want to hear and it shows results from iMeem and YouTube. You can even paste a URL from YouTube into the search box. Anyway... it lets you preview the song and/or video. At that point, you can “blip” it (i.e. post) to your profile page where all your prior blips show.
So if you’ve ever wondered what I’m currently listening to, you’ll want to check out my Blip profile. You can listen to the songs for free. It’s also free to set up your own “DJ” account. If people like your blip, you get props. If they like your taste in music, they become a listener (i.e. follower). You can post links to Twitter or Facebook, as well.
The great thing about Blip, though, are the DJ’s. When you find someone who has the same taste as you, it’s easy to hear what they’re listening to. You click on the Public stream (think public Twitter updates), show All Blips or Favorites (I typically go with my favorites). It updates every 10 seconds or so to show what they’ve posted. You can view their profile page, as well - if you just want to see what they're playing.
I check out Digitally Imported for Trance and use Radioshift for Internet radio. I've spent a lot of nights listening to live streams from stations in places like Morocco, Paris and Rio de Janeiro. There's tons of killer Roots Reggae and Salsa, too.
There are other sites and services, but it’s how I feed my little habit.
Buddha
Reader Comments (3)
You have a very classy habit, good taste. And I love benefiting from it!
Hey, you started following me on tumblr and i just came over to check out your blog. i've been looking through your music likes and i wanted to recommend (highly) tex perkins and the dark horses. tell me what you think :)
Liked him enough to http://blip.fm/TWBuddha" rel="nofollow">blip some songs tonight. Check it out. Hope I did you proud and thanks for the tip. I love his sound (and your blog, of course).