Spotify allows users to stream music online without purchasing files. Users can search Spotify's database to build playlists and listen for free with ads or by paying a subscription fee. Vevo is a music video website where users can watch over 45,000 music videos and purchase songs through other services. Shazam is a mobile app that uses audio fingerprinting to identify songs from short music clips and link to related information. Soundcloud is an online platform for artists to promote and distribute their recordings, combining social media with file hosting and download options.
2. Spotify
Founded in 2006 – Spotify allows you to play music
online without buying or downloading the music file.
Create a library of your chosen music by searching the
database built up by other users and save them to your
playlist.
Users can listen to music without paying for it (but with
the option to) meaning a better selection and access to
the music you want.
You can upload your own music for free and it can be
accessed publicly by millions of users so it can easily
promote your work.
3. Vevo
Founded in 2009, Vevo is a music video website with
connections to Sony Music Entertainment, Universal
Music Group, Abu Dhabi Media and EMI licensing.
On Vevo, users can watch more than 45,000 videos.
Once these videos have been previewed, it offers the
opportunity to buy the song through Amazon MP3 or
iTunes.
Vevo links with your iTunes and Facebook likes and
automatically creates a playlist of them on YouTube.
Since 2010, Vevo can be used as a free Apple
iPhone app.
4. Shazam
Shazam is a commercial mobile phone based music
identification service based in London, England. The
company was founded in 1999. Shazam will find a
song’s details that has skipped your memory.
All you have to do is load the app, Shazam will listen
to what’s playing from any other device, match up the
sound and find a result with artist and song name. It
will even automatically load the song on YouTube for
your convenience.
It identifies songs based on an audio finger print
based on a time frequency graph called a
spectrogram.
5. Soundcloud
Founded in Sweden and finally established in
Germany in 2007. Invented by a sound designer
Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss.
Soundcloud is an online audio distribution
platform that allows artists to promote and
distribute artists recordings.
Key features of Soundcloud: Lets artists upload
their music, combined with Twitter and Myspace
to reach a larger audience and lets users
download tracks.
