Music of the Internet

I have recently been playing around with finetune.com, a site that let's you create playlists out a an amazing database of songs, the only catch is that you have to put together a playlist of at least 45 songs and only 3 can be of the same artist. So you cannot play the song you want all the time, just a song randomly selected on by the playlist. Really not a bad deal.

All this playing with music online got me thinking of the history of music on the Internet. My first thought - Napster - I can still remember my days of downloading songs off Napster - when it was "legal". I have curbed my copyrighting infringing habits now that there are other efficient options for my online music needs. Before I veer off on the interesting topic of pirating, I shall mention a few other music websites that I have made contact with over the years.

Pandora.com is a cool site which can help develop your music library by showing you songs you may like based on songs and artists you select. Like finetune, you cannot always play the song you want, but it is definitely worth checking out. Sites like Pandora and FineTunes are currently battling legislation brought on by the CRB (Copyright Royalty Board). I currently don't know a whole lot about this issue, so I won't comment too much, but making these companies pay outrages fees is wrong in my opinion. I think these services are preventing some people from resorting to illegally obtaining music and should be respected by the government, not destroyed.

Another interesting online music tool for those in large networks - such as on a college campus as yours truly was not so long ago.... mytunes redux. A tool that let you take songs other people have on their iTunes playlists and download them - questionably legal... actually probably very illegal - so I recommend not using this tool. Of course there is iTunes which I have only bought a few songs from. There are truly an unlimited number of music sites out there - music can be found all over the web - from people putting songs on their Myspace pages to parodies of songs on YouTube.

As pirating can be a complex issue, I will save it for another time.

Lesson #2: Don't pirate. (Not trying to be Miss Morals, but in the end it's not worth it. I believe a lot of people don't think they would ever get caught - but it can happen, just ask the growing number of people who have been sent notices that they are to be prosecuted/fined) There are other good options out there.