They say music spurs creativity. Around the office I would totally agree. It even gives you a great way to escape the noisy office surroundings especially if you have no interest in the latest office gossip round the water cooler. I’ve brought together 7 great options for online listening. I even have slightly odd habit of listening to Mcfly at home if I’m struggling with a article or design project. That’s got to be the WCB shocker of the day a far cry from my uber-cool persona round the office. Just wait for the closet musical tastes to appear round the office. Also follow these tips for office listening.
Bringing music to your ears
They say music spurs creativity. Around the office I would totally agree. It even gives you a great way to escape the noisy office surroundings especially if you have no interest in the latest office gossip round the water cooler. I’ve brought together 7 great options for online listening. I even have slightly odd habit of listening to Mcfly at home if I’m struggling with a article or design project. That’s got to be the WCB shocker of the day a far cry from my uber-cool persona round the office. Just wait for the closet musical tastes to appear round the office. Also follow these tips for office listening.
- Keep it low, not everyone wants to hear your music
- Avoid singing along, whistling and humming can become very irritating for those around you
- If you have slow internet don’t hog it by using Youtube
- Try and control your bass face or air guitar tendencies, head bobs are usually acceptable
Which services beats loudest?
With so many online music services available this article could be very, very long and probably have a new addition every week. If you know of any better options please leave a comment. Even if you have music on constantly in the background at your work, Do you think it helps or becomes a distraction. Most of the services below if not free offer at least a 14 day trial. Check them out find your favourite and most of all enjoy the music.
Soundcloud
I’ve been using soundcloud for years it just works. One drawback not for listeners but uploaders is if your in the habit of uploading mixes it can be pretty good at blocking copyrighted content. On a few occasions I’ve noticed stuff I’d previously listened to had been removed. You can’t really criticize this but if you just want to stick on a long mix and share with your friends or showcase your mixing talent its a bit of a pain. Soundcloud has a really good activity feed feature so you can see what your friends are listening to, whats been uploaded by artists you follow and of courses related suggestions based on previous listening choices.
- Love being able to comment a particular point in track
- Join groups to share with users of similar musical tastes
- Premium features only really affect those looking to upload
Mixcloud
Funnily enough it was soundclouds copyright cleverness that lead me to start using mixcloud. Described as an “extended audio show that is hosted in the cloud” it seems to attract a different sort of artist dare I say it the more nerdy, indie, more purist music lover and electronic dance crowd. Many of the features in mixcloud are very similar to soundcloud. If your facing a particularly challenging day ahead at work you can set your own playlists full of psyched up anthems such as “eye of the tiger” to make you knock that deadline outta the park. The site design doesn’t scream out like many other services and actually as I am writing this I’ve just switched to the new beta design. It’s a little chunky and unaligned in a few areas but its nice they offer a beta to get user feedback. You will find thousands of artists, radio shows, lives shows and talk shows to keep your entertained all day.
- More mellow aesthetic than most
- Delivers large selection of on demand shows
- Discover tab adds a real social aspect for listening to friends recommendations
Itunes Match
A slightly different approach at providing you with music. I tunes match has some awesome features one real highlight being that if you have uploaded some of your old music at low bit rate you can now update all these tracks to beautiful 256kbps. I imagine fairly soon it will go up to 320kbps. One of the biggest problems with I tunes match has to be how temperamental it has been from day one. uploading your whole library can take days and you’d better have a generous internet package. One thing I love about this service if I turn on iTunes match on my iphone, provided I have internet connection I can take my whole music library anywhere I want. You may be wondering how it deals with your messy iTunes library tags, well its more clever than you think it actually matches your tracks using the tracks audio fingerprint. It may struggle to match some songs but thankfully if its above 128kbs you can upload them to your own cloud and then they become available to listen that way. Any time you make a purchase on any of your devices it becomes available to listen to across any device signed into your iTunes account.
- If you use iTunes already you don’t have to do much
- $24.99 annual fee
- Slow process of uploading your music
- Awesome way to increase quality of your poorer bit rate tracks
Here’s a guide on using Itunes match also if your looking for a good way to tidy up your Itunes library tags and album art I highly recommend you try out TuneUpMedia.
Youtube
Unless you’ve been on the moon you won’t have been able to avoid the music ferocity that can be stirred up by a music video going viral. Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake and even What does the fox say probably show youtube at its worst for music sourcing. On the good side youtube gives you access to millions of unreleased, covers, forgotten classics and live versions that would otherwise never see the light of day. If you need a reminder of just how awesome videos can be take a look at two of my favourites Peter Gabriel- Sledgehammer and Jamiroquai- Virtual Insanity. A major drawback of youtube is the lack of feature to switch off the video which would be great for those not wanting to hog the internet allowance. Best you can do is turn down the video quality.
- Huge Selection
- No way to turn off video
- Good for finding undiscovered talent
- Can slow down internet for everyone else
Spotify
Spotify allows you to import your own music so you can handle all your music from one window. Its’ very bizarre but I’ve noticed is when I import my iTunes library into spotify it actually plays and responds smoother than in iTunes itself. A lot of the features that I’d want to really use are only available with a paid subscription but they gotta make their money somehow. If you don’t mind ads and don’t need mobile access then you can probably happily live with the free version. I didn’t know until today but the free account is only unlimited for the first six months. Its worth signing up for the free trial to see if spotify with all its bells and whistles is for you. The apps are very well set up and designed. The feature of offline mode does let you save music for listening to when you don’t have an internet connection.
- Massive library of music
- Nice design
- Premium features make great way to access music on the go
- Currently not available in Thailand
Rdio
rdio is pretty is as visually pleasing as it is to listen to. Sometimes its nice to just sit back and let someone else choose the music for you. With a huge catalogue of music ranging from forgotten classics to brand new releases. Currently the have over 20 million tracks to choose from. Unfortunately rdio isn’t currently available in Thailand but i’m sure it will be fairly soon. I used it a lot when I used to live in the Uk. Sometimes you can have so much music on your hard drive that a service like this just hitting a random suggestion gives you that bit of musical refreshment or inspiration you need. The social network integration is really well done even suggesting popular playlists within your network of rdio connections.
- Enormous selection of music to choose from
- Beautifully designed
- Probably the best site for social media integration
- Not available in several countries
Beatport
Beatport is one of the biggest sites for dj’s all over the world but that doesn’t mean if your only listening audience is yourself. If your looking for Elvis or the latest pop releases this is not the place for you. Pretty much all the big djs and artists across dance music can be found on here. It’s by no means the cheapest service with songs costing around $2.49. Some bargains can be found for albums and beatport is very involved with the dj community allowing them to upload mixes. This has given djs a new way to earn from their mixes. If you believe your dollars are well spent rewarding talent then Beatport is probably for you. As Beatport has grown it has brought in more genres of music so you can find everything from hip hop, deep tech to glitch hop. Design wise its had a few different looks over the years but they always give you a slick UI to deal with and keep their branding very crisp. For me its not just a site that distributes music, it feels like the best digital answer to the old record shop feel with the guy behind that desk that goes to work and loves hearing and sharing new and old music.
- Best site online for finding new dance music
- Can become pricey if you buy a lot of music
- Higher quality downloads and various formats offered
- No use for pop or older music
Beats by Day
Of course no single service is going to take cake of all your music tastes but over the next few years its going to become very interesting to see what happens with online music. The record industry has to adapt even a very interesting article “Good Example of how albums don’t work anymore” points how they have been to slow to adjust the business model that for years has seen consumers empty our wallets down the local record stores. In terms of monetary value it can only be good news for the online listener who can sit back with a different daily soundtrack while the sites fight for your ears attentions. Overall I’d probably stick with a combo of iTunes match and mixcloud. ITunes for simply being able to access the music I’ve collected over the years anywhere with internet connection and mixcloud for offering me loads of new music.
