There are a number of services which offer some great alternatives. I’ve not tried them all, indeed I couldn’t try some of them such as Spotify as they have a limited membership at the moment.

However, I have tried Grooveshark and I find it pretty cool. It plays quickly, has a nice interface and you can tell it if you like or dislike a song, and it should offer similar music that it hopes you’ll like. In reality, I’ve not tried it out for long enough to know how good it is at recommending sogns, but it’s still a pretty neat service. You can pay an optional $3 a month to remove the ads – which seems fair!

One major downside I’ve noticed so far is the management of music. Songs are not well categorised into albums, so a search for an artist will reveal more than 1 entry of a particular track, with slightly different names (ie 01 Track Name, Track Name, Traack Name etc). This is a bit of a fundamental mistake IMHO – proper management of their library would result in significantly less space on their services, and a much easier to use service.

I have heard that they now offer a downloadable desktop app to manage the process for you, and it’s meant to be a bit faster than the browser version, however, it’s not prominently advertised on the site and I haven’t tried to find it.

Want unlimited music for free, any time? Try Grooveshark.

What does surprise me, is that even though the internet was born through the need to share files, the music industry was amazingly slow to move into this market. The EPI, and similar bodies around the world, should stand up and thank Apple for bringing it into the mainstream. Without iTunes, I estimate that over 99% of music downloaded last year would not have been paid for.

While it’s no secret that I fundamentally disagree with the charging structure employed in the music industry today, I am not against paying for music. On the contrary, I look forward to the day when record labels loosen their protectionist grip on their artist’s media and finally catch up with the obvious raging demand out there today. While iTunes, Amazon, Play.com and some other big boys are now offering music for sale, it’s essentially the same defunct business model in a new marketplace. Apple recently announced that they will now sell all their tracks DRM Free (allowing them to be played on more than just a single iPod linked to the computer they were downloaded on), but quite simply this isn’t enough.

For change to really happen in the way society acquires and uses music, and other media, there need to be some big changes led by the industries involved. Slowly responding to customer demand isn’t going to cut the cheese, they need to look forward with new ideas and new business models if they really want to reduce this figure in 2009. Sites like justhearit allow you to listen to virtually any song in the world, free of charge, whenever you like. I believe this is a powerful insight into the way music is going. I would much rather manage my playlists online, than spend time downloading and managing music on my hard drive…and I would pay for the pleasure.

Cloud computing is poised to be the next big thing, and it would be great to see the people behind some of the world’s most creative songwriters doing something a bit different in the year to come.

PS feel free to ignore my last post…i don’t expect anyone to read it…me included!

Now that my site is sponsored by Amazong…there’s a handy link on the bottom to purchase this fine piece of musicality!! (ha ha ha…sell out i hear you cry…ku-ching i hear my bank manager cry!!!).

Anyway…while i was listening to possibly the best radio station in the world – 1Xtra – yesterday, i entered a competition and won 2 tickets to go see P Diddy and Snoop Dogg in London on the 27th March!!! How cool!

However, sadly, i’m in Edinburgh so am more inclined to go see the show in Glasgow…so if anyone is up for a swap…then please let me know!

Bit gutted about that! I had no idea until now! Great artist.

No idea how it lets you do this…but i’m not complaining! I would like to have more time in my life to allow me to read their policies etc to work out how i can download Coldplay tunes without paying a dime….however i don’t have said time…and i don’t care too much!

Anyway, the site is www.mp3tunes.com and if you sign up for a free locker of 1GB storage, they will upgrade you to a locker with unlimited storage pretty soon! Not bad at all!

However, i’m holding back just now. Sure, having my tunes anywhere would be great, but the time it takes to upload 65GB of music will be rather lengthy, but also the time to download (or stream) any of my songs is just a bit too long.

With my new DAB radio, i’ve been amazed at how quickly you turn it on to get music. Far faster than opening Winamp on the computer and loading some mp3′s, faster than putting a cd into a cd player and definately faster than waiting for enough of a song to download so that you can listen to it without it pausing while it waits for the next bit to download!

Fantastic album by the Queens Bridge rapper with some top drawer songs, including a lengthy appearance from Jay-z on ‘Black Republican’.

Get in!

James Brown still put in a solid performance, but his emphasis was definately on music rather than on his voice. He spent a lot of the time conducting his amazing band and there wasn’t much shouting down the mic (aside from ‘scccrreeeeeeaaaaaaammmmmmm’ing while crouched on one knee!), but he did dazzle the crowds with a few swift jazzy dance moves (stand aside MJ!) and a few classic microphone tricks! Rather strangely he dissappeared towards the end of a popular hit and didn’t return! His band promptly finished up and left the stage leaving the crowd screaming for more…but no encore was given.

All in it was a fantastic concert and a real treat to see the Godfather of soul himself! Somewhat surreal on the small stage of the Carling Academy…but still great!

On this day of musical revalation, i must also point out that it’s iPod’s 5th birthday today! Happy birthday Mr Pod…to really bring back a few memories…and to get a better impression how the iPod literally revolutionised our culture – check out Steve Jobs announcing it 5 years ago today!