Is there a website where I can listen to a specific song, for free, without a music video attached? We are in the unfortunate situation of being so rural that good internet isn’t available, so I don’t want to have to download a video. I just want the song. Does anyone do that?
I use Pandora, but I want occasionally to listen to (and link to, for a friend) a specific song.
(1) it’s Spotify’s desktop version that allows you to choose exactly what track to play. Unless you upgrade to premium, the mobile app restricts you to shuffle mode.
(2) one should be aware that no streaming site has absolutely everything in its database.
Notably, back in November, Taylor Swift pulled all her stuff from streaming services and I have noticed that none of Van Morrison’s more recent stuff is on Spotify.
In the past few months I’ve tested about two dozen online music services. By far I have found that Spotify has the best free streaming service of popular recordings.
Spotify will nag you to upgrade to premium—and I have friends who tell me it’s worth it—but the free service still is solid.
Most of the other services have some major drawback—(1) small library of licensed recordings, (2) quality service available only to paying members, (3) inability to choose specific recordings to stream (the Pandora model), (4) library has a lot of amateur (“cover”) recordings, (5) allows users to post links to shady/unlicensed/illegal uploads.
SoundCloud, for example, suffers from no. 4 above.
I kind of like Songza as well. Their model is to offer you several options regarding what you are doing (partying, driving, romancing, etc.) and some of your moods or preferences and they choose a playlist for you. If you are in the mood to let someone else pick your music, that’s not a bad way to do it.