me*dia*or

2011: The Year of Music Services | Musicology.fm

By leaving Hypebot for Billboard and taking a non-editorial position, I unknowingly took a backseat to 2011. I published a few essays, but I stopped reporting the news.

This is significant because many of the things that were speculative at the time—such as the launch of Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google Music, iTunes Cloud, and Facebook Music, among many others—actually happened. Going into 2012, many of these services and their activity on Facebook now feel commonplace when they were once press musings.

I’ve never used Google Music or iTunes Cloud, because I don’t buy digital downloads.

But I’ve spent a significant amount of time using other web-based services, such as Spotify, iHeart Radio, Pandora, Songza, Slacker, exfm, MOG, Earbits, and 8tracks.

Interestingly, the future that Spotify lays claim to—accessing music over owning it—is a decade old, yet new to everyone else. What it accomplished is still revolutionary and significant, it’s just a statement to how long it can take new technologies to catch on.

I used to tell people that I wrote about iPods, because no one had heard of Spotify. Now it seems like I could have a conversation about the future of music with almost anyone.

What a difference a year makes.

The Spotify effect is largely due to Facebook Music—another major event in 2011. This may be due to my odd listening habits, the taste of my friends, or the unappealing way in which music activity is displayed on Facebook, but I don’t care about the music on it.

The entire appeal of discovering music through Facebook friends is lost on me, because it’s not a problem that I needed solved. I’ve only clicked on a playlist that a friend listened to once or twice. Surely, younger kids with cooler friends find use in this, but I still don’t.

Exfm remains one of my favorite music services from 2011. I don’t read blogs and rarely find a song to play using their browser extension, but it has a great player and a constantly updated music selection. The service isn’t perfect and a bit chaotic, which is why I love it.

Listening to radio stations on exfm and browsing through their charts allows for music discovery in a way that services powered by recommendation engines—like Spotify and iHeart Radio—don’t provide. The music that The Echo Nest suggests is great, but pretty soon, it seems like every service will be powered by them. I know you can link into their API and utilize their data in many of ways, but I fear every service will start sounding the same. This anxiety may be unwarranted; it’s a concern only a tech-writer could develop.

I also love 8tracks and Songza.

These services have brought contextual and personalized music playlists to a wonderful place, as they deliver a high return on discovery and ask for a low investment of time.

Songza has done a great job at organizing their music, grouping playlists together by genres, activities, and moods, among others. This makes it easy for fans to navigate through the hundreds of playlists and choose their own adventure inside the app.

Lastly, I’ve taken a liking to Earbits. I don’t use it as much as the others, but I love what it aims to achieve. It creates stations based on where you live and plays music by the artists touring in the area. When an artist is playing a show, the details are shown in a green box.

If clicked on, it lets you to share the event info to your friends.

On the web, the service has another great feature: it brings your Facebook friends into the player and suggests which ones may enjoy hearing the song you’re currently listening to.

2011 reigned as the year of music services, and I’ve only listed a handful of them. This is why I don’t buy digital downloads, because of how many great streaming options exist.

If you’re going to write about the future, you might as well live in it.