As cliche and trite as I might sound saying this, music streaming services are hot right now. For the past week or so I haven't even used iTunes. I've just been listening to the Muxtape playlists of friends and random people. If that doesn't do it for me, I tune into The Feel Good and see what's popular. The list goes on.
While some of these services blatantly violate copyright laws, they are as viral as it gets. Within 24 hours of Muxtape's launch, it had 8,685 users, 19,731 songs, 35,000 visits and a $118.17 Amazon S3 bill.
My point with this post is just to point out some of the more interesting music streaming sites I've come across and use daily. Audiophiles have heard of these I'm sure and if I've left any good ones out, please let me know. There's hardly a time I'm computing that I don't have some background music on, even when I'm very busy. My de facto standard for listening to music used to be various stations on iTunes Radio but I've started branching out and discovering new bands with some of these sites below.
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Band pages on Virb or PureVolume
What music sites do you take advantage of? My other favorite way of finding new music is going to a Wi-Fi dense part of campus where many students are bound to share their iTunes libraries, such as the library or student center.
As for what effects these sites and services have on musicians and artists, well I actually think it helps. I view streaming services as being great for temporary uses, where I'm on the computer. If I like the music, I won't have a problem buying it to toss on my iPod for a run or offline listen while on a flight. I also turn to these services to listen to music that just isn't out yet such as singles I've heard on the radio but just cannot find anywhere on the iTunes Store or Amazon MP3.