The Knox Student

Pandora is the most recognized internet music site aside from iTunes, but here are some other music sites with features such as listening to playlists based on moods and activities, social networking with other music lovers or choosing songs through appealing visuals and having a huge selection of music.

www.stereomood.com—Feel like listening to music when you’re “lost in thought” or when “it’s raining?” Check out stereomood.com, whose tagline is “tuning my emotions.” According to its website, Stereomood, “is the emotional internet radio, providing music that best suits your mood and your activities.” Listeners can click on links listed on Stereomood’s homepage that take them to a premade playlist based on the emotion they’re feeling or the activity they’re doing, such as “feeling optimistic” or “having a road trip.” The moods and activities listed range from the expected (“sad,” “angry,” “reading”) to the strange (“high,” “groovy,” “good karma”) to the even stranger (“asleep on my feet”).

Some of the most popular playlists are “relax,” “chillout,” “calm,” “happy” and “dreamy.” Clicking on the playlist “relax,” listeners are directed to a page with a music player near the top with Mogwai, Andrew Bird and Bon Iver listed as the top three artists, with related playlists below. Users can add songs to their library, “like” them, “ban” them or tag them.

www.wearehunted.com— Billed as “the online music chart,” wearehunted.com allows listeners to filter charts of artists and songs by “emerging,” “popular,” “remix” and “genre.” After filtering what you want to listen to, this “online music chart” features the pictures of artists laid out on a large 3 x 3 grid and users can simply click on the images to listen to songs.

Clicking on the arrow on the bottom right corner of the band pictures, listeners can add, buy and share tracks, or view the artist’s profile or find more songs similar to what they’re listening to. Wearehunted.com is an easy way to find new music and has appealing visuals compared to many other Internet music sites. The lists of artists and songs are not as expansive as some other music sites around and some of the songs featured are truncated, so you might have to listen to the full song on another music site.

www.last.fm—Somewhat like the Facebook of music sites, last.fm’s popularity is more dependent on its social networking features than most other music sites and is described as “a music service powered entirely by its community of listeners.”

Clicking on the name of an artist, listeners can find out how many plays they have, how many people have listened to them, a biography, similar artists, top albums, top tracks and the “shoutbox,” where users post comments. Some of last.fm’s social networking features include being able to make groups, tagging artists in journals, posting in forums and browsing its community filtered by music taste, country, etc.

www.grooveshark.com— Grooveshark.com is becoming one of the most popular internet music sites among college students with its appeal of “listen to any song in the world for free.” On its homepage, Grooveshark has directions on how to use the site, featuring text and arrows pointing to icons to listen to “what the sharks”—Grooveshark users—“are listening to.” In the center of the page, listeners can search for music, resulting in a huge selection.

It is easy to build playlists with the icons of albums appearing at the bottom of the screen. Users can also upload music to the site. If you like grooveshark.com, a similar site is www.playlist.com, though it does not have as much music as Grooveshark.

youtuberepeat.com—Not really a music site in itself, but if you want an easy way to loop a song on Youtube, type “repeat” after “youtube” in the URL of a song. Some songs cannot be looped due to copyright.