I Realized Something

I have been testing out many new internet services the past month. I figured I would give you readers a run down of the good, bad and awesome services I have been privileged to use.

Let's start with Turntable.fm

This site is pretty rad. You go into a virtual room with up to five dj slots and listen to other folks show you new songs. Choose your room by theme and jump in. I have frequented the Dub-step, electronica, indie and hardcore rooms and they have all been pretty true to genre. The crowd upvotes or downvotes the song and the DJ receives positive points for all the people bobbin' in the crowd. Sounds like a fun time right? Here are some of the drawbacks. It is a chat room for audiophiles. People get obnoxious in the chat box and talk about buzz bands that do not even have music published yet. The site does make it easy for you to connect via last.fm and facebook. It is a blast to get into a room with a group of friends and share tunes and chat it up about life. Be warned, you may feel inadequate at times if your friends start whipping out sweet tunes you are unfamiliar with.

Next, I just started using Spotify. The music sharing/streaming service has been running in Europe for a while and is just hitting the United States. It is invite only at this stage. The invites are fairly easy to get if you follow artists on Twitter. I picked one up from Mos Def and logged in after about 5 minutes. Spotify has a ton of hype behind it and I would just like to confirm it. You have to download a small program to run it off your computer and it streams music unless you upgrade to premium for 5 bucks a month but it sounds like I am listening to itunes. Audio commercials are scarce and the visual commercials on the program are not obtrusive. You can connect via facebook and see playlists published by your friends. Your friends can send you music to listen to and overall it is a fantastic legal way of sharing music with people you know. It also does not matter if you are like me and listen to new music all the time or have your favorites that you repeat. You can listen to your library or stream new stuff. It suggests artists based on what you are listening too and you can open up the artists page and view what they have to offer. I have been using Last.fm for a couple years and am considering breaking up with them for the sexy spotify.

Google+ is all over the place. People are talking about it and you may or may not be on it. Let me point out a few things I have noticed. It feels like facebook but has an easier way of controlling who sees what. They are called circles and you can place close friends in one, family in another and work people in yet another. You do not have to go through and create lists of folks that you may not want seeing everything. You simply add them to a certain circle and problem solved. Google is not revolutionizing anything. They are giving you a chance to start over and are trying to do privacy settings better than anyone else. Google+ has a small learning curve. If you are not on it yet, don't worry. You are only missing a beta testing phase of people who are on the internet too much telling people not in yet that it is the best site ever. We will see...

The internet is a great place. New sites and services popping up every day. What is going to catch on in a big way? Out of these three, Spotify. It is music sharing and radio how it should be. Not to mention it is invading America from Europe which, makes it infinitely more hip than if it had started here.