Spot The Music Site

I'm not one for recommending web sites on my blog as for one thing, I always assume a site that I've just found is already well known to everyone else and so I'll just come across as a really sad, slow geek.  The worst kind of geek in fact.  One that isn't in the loop.

But I'll maybe bring this one to someone's attention for the first time and so on that basis, here we go.

It's a music site.  A very good music site.  An excellent music site in fact.

Basically you go to the site, register and then download a small program. Then a new world of music is opened up to you - for free.  If you want to use the search option, which is always my first port of call, you simply put in a song title, an artist name or an album name and within a nano second the magic music genie presents you with a list of results that will keep you happily entertained for hours.  It's like YouTube.  It's totally addictive.

Now I know there are loads of 'similar' music sites out there but this is different.  It's free. It has a catalogue of songs that must be in the zillions.  It's so easy to navigate that even I can use it. 

I did a few tests.  

I searched for my first ever bought single "Mirror, Mirror" by Pinkerton's Assorted Colours as if any site has this song, it has everything.  It found it and so it obviously has obscure music.

Then I looked on the BBC site for the most recent album to enter the UK Album Charts this week and found it was from a band called Flo Rada and so I searched for that one and it found it as well and so it obviously has new music.

I finally looked for "Puff The Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul & Mary and no worries, it found that one as well and so it obviously has crap music.  

Only kidding, I quite like that song.

I did try it with the No.1 US album right now by Keith Urban but although it didn't find that specific album, it did give plenty of others by that artist so maybe it's primarily a UK site and in any case, new music is being added all the time.

So how can all this free music be available like this ?  Well you don't download the tunes. They're just played as streaming music from some unknown repository.  That means you can't save the songs off to your hard drive or mp3.  But if you simply want to listen to an album or an individual song that meant something to you 30 years ago, this is the site for you.

It's blindingly fast, simple to navigate and did I say it was free ?  Well it is.  It seems you'll get ads now and then to pay for it all but if you really don't want them, you can give them £10 a month for the 'premium' version and the ads will be removed.

And what is the name and location of this wonderful site ?

Spotify and just take the Free option from the main screen.  When you register, don't worry about giving out your email address and postcode (which I guess proves it's a UK site) as if you put in a false one, it doesn't matter as no registration email is sent to you anyway.  Just put in anything if you like.

So IF you've not heard about Spotify already, enjoy it.  And if you try it from outside the UK, please leave a comment if it doesn't work for you.

Update :  sadly the free version is currently only available in the UK, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and Spain.