Free Music Here!

Just thought I'd put together a post about where to find free music.

And no, I am not talking about downloading illegal tracks! I am talking about legal streaming of music via the internet.



As I see it - and perhaps I will be massively wrong here, although I doubt that - the 'future of music' (an overused term) is that we move from an ownership to a consumption model. In other words instead of buying something like a CD which we then own and can listen to at our leisure, music will be supplied to us whenever we want but will never actually be in our possession.




Compare it to the water that comes from your taps. You don't go to a shop and buy a pot of tap water that you then plug into your taps! No, the water is just sent to you to use as much as you like and you pay not so much for the water itself as the ability to use it whenever you want it.


However, this is where it gets really interesting - you don't have to pay for the music! The music industry reacted late and badly to the advent of the internet and file sharing. More to the point the record labels in particular desperately wanted to retain the income stream they had relied on for so long and so refused to move with the times. Music became easily and freely - but illegally - available to all via napster and its descendants.

So how do the record companies, now on their knees, respond? They only have one choice - make the music available for free legally and try and make money via other routes such as advertising revenue, gigs and 'exclusive' material etc.

What does this mean for us at the moment? It means Last.fm, We7 and Spotify!


Last.fm

For me, last.fm is the cornerstone of the new internet-based way of consuming music. No longer can we rely on CD shelving or iTunes libraries to be 'our music collection'. Since we don't actually collect the music anymore a tool which simply records everything we have listened to, regardless of the method, takes precedence and this is what last.fm does best.


Via something called 'scrobbling' your last.fm profile is updated with all the tracks you have listened to via your iTunes library, iPods, Spotify etc. So now you have your 'collection'. In addition you can arrange playlists, tag music for easy access and get recommendations of other things you might like based on your listening habits. All this builds up your profile which you can then share with other people - see ours here.



Last.fm does have a lot of music available to listen to free. However, it is more based on the idea of a radio so you only have a limited ability to listen to exactly what you want. Whilst this is great for discovering new stuff, you will want to delve deeper into some of your discoveries and this is where We7 and Spotify come into play.



We7

Last.fm generates its income (from UK users at least) from running advertising on all its pages. We7 can offer you the ability to choose exactly what you are listening to right down to skipping about within individual songs and it accomplishes this by also running advertising in front of each song. You will get a 3-5 second mini-advert between every track which, although not ideal, is hardly that obtrusive given that you are not required to pay a penny to listen to almost anything.



You will need to be listening in Firefox (rather than Safari/Internet Explorer etc) to scrobble your tracks to last.fm from We7 but please note that Firefox is also free! Find out how to do that here.



Spotify

So finally to Spotify. Unlike the previous two, Spotify is not based from your web browser but instead is a little program of it's own in a similar way to iTunes. They generate revenue in another slightly different way and one which really does point to the way in which things we be done long term. For free you can listen to as much of their catalogue as you want (and it is very extensive) as long as you don't mind a few visual adverts in the program and about 30 seconds of an audio advert every 20 mins or so. This is very much like normal commercial radio - except that you get to choose exactly everything you listen to.



In addition to this though you have the chance to pay £9.99 a month for 'Premium' access. This removes all the advertising and gives you exclusives, early releases and the occasional chance to win tickets for gigs. In other words, the aformentioned 'other' routes of income for record labels. Spotify is also hoping to soon offer mobile streaming for Premium Subscribers with certain mobile devices - imagine having all the music in the world available to you wherever you go!







Each of the three options mentioned above is free and I defy you to find anything remotely mainstream that you can't listen to on at least one of them!



However, there are of course things that you can't find. Perhaps stuff that hasn't been released in the UK, or bands that haven't yet built up the following to be on a decent sized label. In addition there are still a few labels stuck in the 1990s who refuse to move their catalogues onto these services. Plus, as always, Christian labels have been slow to catch on.

This music is also all for private use only so if you ever play it in public places - as we do in church - then you will need to look elsewhere.



So what does one do in these instances, you ask?!

Well this is where the good old mp3 comes back into play! There is always iTunes, over priced as it is, and 7Digital and AmazonMp3 have good selections at prices that are reasonable, if not good given that they are just sending you a few 1s and 0s.



All in all there really isn't much excuse anymore for flaunting the talent of those that make the music by downloading it in a way that means they get no recompense. Moreover, the swapping between mates that used to be one of the primary ways that people discovered new music in the cassette days is unnecessary as the only thing that needs exchanging now is a web address.



Basically, the only artists that you can't already listen to free are the ones that really need the income!

The greatest day of my life!!

Well on Saturday I went to see Take That (it's Emily not Gareth by the way!)
They were phenomonal, the atmosphere was electric, the effects were brilliant, vocally they were spot on and at one point even played as a full band.

Their reunion has to be one of the most successful reunions of all time, and the reason for this I believe is that they have really updated their music. I know loads of people who now admit to liking Take That who would never have dreamed of saying it first time round. Their music now appeals to female and male alike; granted the wembley gig was mainly women but there was a lot of male presence there too!

The whole concert was great, 2 hours of music, but there was one part that really got me. They opened with greatest day and a surge of emotion welled in me, it just was an amazing feeling to see them just bursting with excitement and so genuinely happy to be on that stage; so many bands fail to convey that they are pleased to be there, as it ruins their sombre reputation (which is really sad!). The whole crowd were cheering and smiling, and it got me thinking that we need to portray that on Sunday mornings; that if the music group are so bursting with excitement and genuine joy, it will radiate to those in the congregation!

My favourite moment however was the encore - the last song; Rule the World.
Gary held up the Mic to over 80,000 people and had them sing the first verse. The sound was overwhelming, people were singing their hearts out, waving their arms.... I just LONG for people to be that excited about Jesus, and it's just got me desiring even more to be one who will speak his truth into peoples lives so that they too can know life to the full!

Yes, i got all that from a Take That concert!!!

Review: Little Boots - Hands

Music is the cure...


During 2008 we were largely treated to a combination of run-of-the-mill guitar bands and post-Winehouse songstresses. 2009 was supposed to be the year of the synthpop girl; Florence & The Machine, La Roux and Little Boots were on a mission to blow away the cobwebs of the Courteneers and Adele.

And yet we reached the end of the first five months of the year with only a stint at #2 with La Roux's killer (cough) tune 'In For The Kill' to show for it. At the turn of the year Little Boots (aka Victoria Hesketh) won the BBC's Sound of 2009 poll and that was the last we heard of her until the last week of May with the release of 'New In Town'. It was a track full of bombast and confidence but also a tinge of the Lady Gaga's about it. Had Little Boots lost it in her hiatus or would the release of her album today be the belated beginning of the promised revolution?


On 'Remedy' Little Boots asserts that 'Music is the cure...' and if this record is any indication the synthpop uprising has indeed finally arrived to cure us all of our The Enemy and Lily Allen inspired sicknesses. In 12 tracks Victoria manages to sound like every successful pop artist for the last 20 years - referencing such opposites as Louise Redknapp and Kate Bush and dueting with Human League's Phil Oakley on 'Symmetry' - whilst also sounding exactly what you have been waiting years to hear.

Personal favourites after the first few listens are the spectacular ‘Stuck On Repeat’ – as monstrous a pop song as you will hear this year – the slightly kooky ‘Ghost’ and the gentle ‘Tune Into My Heart’. The three are all different yet all distinctly Little Boots.

If I had to distil this into one word that word would be 'refreshing'. Little Boots' joy, fear and wonderment are all infectious and her sweetness never becomes saccharine. 'New In Town' is indeed as nakedly commercial as things get and in fact that later half of the record is surprisingly introspective for someone with such a knack for a pop-hook.

Hesketh is at once putting Kylie's Pop-Queen title at risk and letting us see the real her in a way that most of her label-manufactured contemporaries (and indeed predecessors) would never risk.

All in all 'Hands' is a brave statement carried off with just the right amount of confidence and vulnerability to stake a claim as the leader of the revolution. Over to La Roux and Florence in a month's time!