(Photo by Jokin BCN) Like many other humans equipped with a heart, soul, and ears, I spend several hours of every day using music to stimulate and interact with my higher consciousness. Between 1994 and 2003, my music life severed its analog roots and moved almost entirely onto my PC. Now, Web 2.0 is relocating music again -- this time to my web browser, where I can listen to, discover, discuss, label, share, store, broadcast, and even make music right inside Firefox, at home or remotely. For those of us who feel lost among the millions of users on Facebook at any given moment, music-oriented communities like MOG and Last.fm provide more specific social networks, full of people more like me. And these "social music" sites do a lot more than just allow you to create a profile with a photo and witty description of yourself. In addition to offering thousands of free radio stations, Last.fm and the Music Genome Project-powered Pandora track what you're listening to and allow you to rate songs and artists. They then make recommendations in the form of customized radio stations based around your listening habits and ratings, and then (here's the social part) you can share your listening preferences and stations with your online buddies. MOG provides users a platform to publish reviews and thoughts about artists, albums, and songs. Along the same lines, MyStrands allows users to tag songs, albums, and artists with non-academic (but still meaningful and searchable) descriptors like "soaring," "amiable," and "awesome to the maximum" -- an appropriate subgenre for R.E.M., and one more meaningful to me than the generic "college rock." Want to create your own free radio station and share your music thoughts and preferences? Check out our growing Social Music category in the Yahoo! Directory, and watch for the next installment of our series on Music 2.0. Suggested Sites... The Hype Machine - searches music-blog discussions and creates Internet radio stations based on the most-discussed artists and songs. Streampad - listen to your own music from anywhere in the world, stream concerts, create playlists, and see what your friends are listening to. Deezer - listen to albums and songs and share your playlists and musical tastes with the community. Musicovery - recommendation service that allows listeners to create a radio station by selecting genres, eras, popularity, moods, and colors. Lala - upload music, share songs with friends, and discover new music.

Directory categories: Social Music, Internet Broadcasts, Music News and Media, Music Downloads

Archived under: Communities, Entertainment, File Sharing, Internet, Internet Radio, Music, Radio, Social Networking, Society and Culture, Technology, Web 2.0

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