As a music lover you need to check out Spotify. The website says, “Any track you like, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Any artist, any album, any genre – all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.” What I like about the site is your can choose your own music or listen to pre-made channels.

The service is finally available in the United States, however you need an get invite. Sign-up on the site to get notified.

Spotify really looks like it could revolutionize the music industry because it’s virtual. I was searching for a replacement of LaLa and Spotfy could be it. I hope Apple doesn’t buy it up right away.

http://www.spotify.com

Have you been using Apple’s Ping? Their tagline is “Follow your friends. Find new music.” I have been using the services and I think it is nice to discover new music by finding out what your friends are listening to. You can even find even more insight into your friends’ musical tastes through their profile pages. Furthermore you can follow what your favorite musicians and hear their favorites.

At this time, you have login into iTunes to get all this great information. I understand Apple wants to create a closed community and make you register. However, after a couple of months of using this service I really think they should open it up or give the option to create a public or private account like Twitter.

Are you using Ping? What do you think of it?
http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/

How do you find new music? I listen to the radio, see a music video, hear a ringtone, find it on a blog or a friend recommends a tune. However another popular way of finding new music is just shifting through the most downloaded songs on iTunes. Recently iTunes repositioned the most popular tunes into their own music chart.

With now more than half the music being purchased digitally, will iTunes eventually just become the Billboard Music charts?
http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/songs/

The hold out is over! After years of negotiation, one of the last classic bands to be added to iTunes are the Beatles. Last week, Apple and Apple Records struck a deal to finally post John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Star and George Harrison’s music digitally. Enjoy!

http://www.apple.com/the-beatles/

Do you need music in your life? Below is a review of the most popular music sites.

Amazon – The book site started offering mp3s for download a few years ago. The have monthly album download specials and charge .99 cents for most digital singles.

eMusic – They charge you a flat monthly fee. The key is if you do not use all your credits in that month, they do not rollover. Please read the fine print because after a few communications with eMusic they would not bend on this policy.

iTunes – Download the software to your machine. Older songs are .99 and newer songs are $1.29.

Kazaa – They have offer a free 7 Day trial. You have access to unlimited music downloads $14.99/mo FREE and access to unlimited Ringtone downloads $3.99/mo FREE. Their model is similiar to Rhapsody (see below).You can cancel at any time during your trial and your credit card will not be charged.

Napster – Listen to songs on demand from any device. Plans start as low as $5/month; the options are here.

Rhapsody – I checked it out the $14.99 for unlimited downloads deal for Rhapsody. You can access it anywhere. It’s like a subscription, you can transfer, and listen to the songs even if you cancel the subscription. You are physically downloading them, but it’s their own format. You can’t burn them to a CD. The downloaded songs are not supported on iTunes. They have a player that is proprietary to Rhapsody. If you want to physically own each song, it will cost between .89 – $1.29 per song and then you can burn them to a CD.

Walmart – The superstore started offering digital downloads a couple of years ago. They offer songs as low as .79 cents.

Apple recently released Ping as the new feature in iTunes that allows you to create a profile and share your music tastes. For example, if you recently downloaded the hottest tune from Katy Perry, your friends could see what you just bought and add it to their list. Apple is being criticized because the Ping feature is only available inside iTunes and not on the web. Have you used this service? Would you prefer it to online like all the other major social networks?

Will keeping Ping isolated inside iTunes make it fail?
http://woorkup.com/2010/09/12/

The other day I went into a used record store and I haven’t been in one in over a year. I always go over to the bargain bin to find a used CD. As I searched through the titles everything that was on the shelf had a copyright date of before 2002. Most of the listings looked like the same ones I saw there a year before. I suddenly released I haven’t recently been in a record store because I just download song here and there online. You can’t resell used iTunes.

In the past if you bought a record and a month later decided it wasn’t that great, you could take into a used record store and get a couple of bucks. Now if you download a record and decide you don’t like it, what are your options? The fact of the matter is before the purchase you can preview the song online endlessly. After you buy a digital song, there is no way of easily knowing you didn’t make a copy of it.

Has digital downloads caused the end of the used music era?

iTunes change the music industry forever and now they are trying to do it again. If you download the 10th Billion song you will win $10,000 iTunes gift card. The page features a countdown, so if you time it correctly you may win!

http://www.apple.com/itunes/10-billion-song-countdown/