I haven’t listened to music on Spotify or iTunes since discovering mixcloud. I’ve been using it for a number of weeks and am hooked. After stumbling on one of the mixes from somewhere else I found that I can find more of the music I like to listen to so much easier than the other two services. Every mix, track and artist are all tagged so clicking on a track I like displays other mixes which contain the same song. And there are no annoying audio ads to interrupt the music. Simples!

Now if there was only a mixcloud iPhone app.

If you have an Airport Express you have to get Airfoil. The app lets you stream music from your Mac to just about anything that receives a wifi signal, including your iPhone, a Windows or Linux box or even the AppleTV. You select the source application and activate the destination speakers and off you go!

Danger Mouse – DJ, producer, music auteur and one half of Gnarls Barkley – has teamed up with Sparklehorse and produced a fantastic album, Dark Night of the Soul.

There’s quite a quarrel between the artists and EMI so the CD’s distribution is unusual, to say the least. The package looks good, with a beautifully printed booklet with visuals by none other than David Lynch. Oh, and a blank CDR. Yes, you read that right. The CD is blank. The artists encourage you to, uhm, “find” the music online and burn it yourself. NPR is streaming the whole album but it’s available in loads of places if you know where to look.

The album is fantastic. Go get it!

For as long as I’ve had an iPod (and I’ve had one of the originals), I’ve always filled them with songs. My still-going-strong third generation 40GB iPod is full of music I felt I ought to have. I’ve always been averse to buying single tracks off albums and prefer to get the whole lot. But I have a confession to make… I’m afraid of most of my music. To be precise, I’ve been afraid of using that conceptually huge function known as Shuffle Songs.

No more. I’m facing my fear. I just stuck the iPod in the dreaded mode all afternoon and the last five tracks played are:

I know this is almost 8 years too late, but it’s like having my own eclectic radio station! Yes, I know. It is sad.

Oooh, Supergrass is on! Haven’t heard this in years!

Forget iTunes Music, forget Amazon MP3. Spotify is revolutionary.

When I first installed the free app I was underwhelmed. Another iTunes clone, I thought. But as I dug around Spotify I was more and more impressed. It lets you instantly stream any music you want, for free. You can also create collaborative playlists, and by collaborative I mean other people you share the playlist with can add tracks and it all streams, again for free. I also like the fact that Spotify is platform agnostic… Mac, PC or Linux. Just download the app, click on the link your friend sent and listen.

I know Spotify mimics some of Last.fm‘s features but to me it feels more complete. If it keeps going as is, I don’t think I’ll be buying much music from iTunes.