Find The Right Tunes For You

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Finding music has changed quite a bit over that past 20 years. No longer are we flipping through CD albums at Borders, but rather clicking away on the iTunes store. With this change in music comes a lot more advantages. Here are some popular websites to help you find the right songs for you!

Growing up, I discovered new music by listening to Hot97 and watching music videos during the rare times that MTV and BET showed them. My friends and I copied songs from each other’s digital music libraries and occasionally rifled through albums in indie record stores to unearth beloved oldies like Le Tigre and Sam Cooke.

Now that most music lives on the Web, there are more sounds than ever at your fingertips. But that newfound abundance comes at a cost: It takes a lot more work than flipping through a CD bin to find something you might like.

Luckily, there is help. A host of new tools and services can help you find your new favorite band.

SPOTIFY This popular new streaming music service has one of the most extensive song libraries online. But sifting through its 15 million tracks to find what you want to hear is exhausting. Recently, though, Spotify entered a partnership with Facebook that lets Spotify users who connect to Facebook list each song they’re listening to on their News Feed, serving up a real-time flow of songs to explore. The rival streaming services Rdio, Pandora and Mog also offer this feature.

In addition, Spotify lets you see what playlists your friends have created and subscribe to them. That’s how I discovered that the band XX was the perfect soundtrack for Sunday mornings, and that Beyoncé is a surprisingly good running companion. Pro tip: You can also send albums and songs to your Facebook friends who are using Spotify by right-clicking on the track you want to recommend and typing in their name.

THE HYPE MACHINE Music blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear, Fader, Nah Right and Stereogum post dozens of new songs, mixtapes and albums every day, making them reliable sources for fresh sounds. But those sites number in the hundreds, making it hard to stay on top of them all. The Hype Machine is a Web site and iPhone app that aggregates any song posted to a number of music blogs and streams them in a single place.

Read more at The New York Times