Searching For Music

[Bigaldoc]

For several years I have occasionally bought music from iTunes and I still do. However, sometimes their preview of just a few seconds is not quite enough for me to decide if I want to buy. I need more than a few seconds.

Googling around for other places from which to buy music is often dangerous or a scam or both, even with WOT activated. Sometimes all they want to do is sell you @#$%& ringtones!

So, the question: does anyone have a reputable link for either free or purchased MP3 music that allows a decent preview of 30 seconds to a minute - something on that order?

Thanks.

[HansV]

Amazon usually provides 30 seconds per track.

[PaulB]

Whenever I want to preview some music, I do a search for artist and track on Youtube. Ninety nine times out of 100 I'll find multiple versions available. And you get to "preview" the whole thing, not just 30 seconds.

I don't know what your taste in music is, but I consider mine pretty eclectic. I just looked up about a dozen tunes from the playlist I am currently playing and found all of them on Youtube, from the Moody Blues to Pavarotti, Bertie Higgins, Marc Cohn, Ronnie Dyson, Il Divo... and, yes, even the Bee Gees.

[Winston]

I use http://listen.grooveshark.com/ to listen to music tracks that cought my intrest. Grooveshark operats in similar fashion to other online services like YouTube and Vimeo. The wikipedia page has more details about Grooveshark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark

Winston

[SteveTetch]

Hi, Big Al,

Spotify is quite good (http://www.spotify.com). Things may have changed since, but I got in to the free version a couple of years ago because a friend who'd subscribed as a paying user sent me an invite. It's like a radio station that you provide the playlist for and their selection is very large and eclectic (although it may not go back as far as you want - I struggled to find a couple of things from the 60s/early 70s that I remembered). You can select individual songs or full albums and the search function allows you to put together themed playlists. You can also save them for repeated use.

The free version intersperses 30 second ads every 3 or 4 tracks while the subscription version (which I think is something like GBP9.99 a month [again, this may have changed since last I looked]), omits the ads. (I'm at work at the mo and the site is locked out by our firewall, so I can't check for you.)

See what you think.

Regards,

Steve

[Bigaldoc]

Thanks Steve. I'll give it a look but I don't think I'm interested in a subscription service since my needs for music are only occasional. Sounds like a good thing/place though.

[PaulB]

Last I heard, Spotify is not available outside of select markets in Europe. Licensing issues...

[BobH]

Hello, Big Al!

Have you tried Pandora?

It is online radio with a rather substantial playlist that can be searched by artist, title, genre . . .

You might run into some titles or artists that you can't find there, but the catalogue is quite extensive.

HTH