Spurious Logic

Listen to the music

As I've said before I'm a fairly long time user of eMusic but this has come to an end.

It's a combination of a couple of different factors. I haven't found compelling music with them in the last six months or so and their selection seem to be branching off into more mainstream and conversely, more niche music. Any time I log in now it's punting crappy indie-lite bands or amorphous musical noodlings. Neither of which I mind too much but I'm not happy paying a monthly subscription on the off chance I'll actually find something I like. Also, right now, I need that monthly subscription.

So off into the wilds of yon internet I travelled to find a decent, legal, music supplier. Of course there's always youTube but honestly you spend more time searching for and queueing up music than you do listening. And then halfway through you get rick-rolled.

Next on the list is grooveshark.com. Basically users upload music and anyone can listen to it. It works the same as youTube except that there is some tagging of tracks and organization of albums. It is Ad-supported  which I didn't realise this as I'm running ad-block. Legality aside, my problems with this is similar as with youTube. i.e. You spend more time looking for albums than you do listening. In addition to that, there are often duplicate tracks in albums or mis-tagged tracks. Which leads to all sort of confusion. Though if I want to listen to any chart or popular rap stuff, this the the place to go.

I really, really want to like bandcamp.com, but it just doesn't do it for me. It's got the same problem as jameundo.com in that there's no editorial control. Anyone can put their stuff up there so you get professional musicians rubbing shoulders with someone struggling to play twinkle twinkle.

Looking at my list of complaints, the problem is not finding music. It's finding the music I want to hear. eMusic did that reasonably well until the signal to noise ratio dropped.

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