Sweet Sites | Don't Know Much About Music?

In the research section of our Web Guide to Music we’ve touted allmusic, an underrated encyclopedic resource of artist biographies and album reviews. If you’re reading a review of an album on Answers.com or in the iTunes Music Store, it often originates at allmusic.

Stream through your favorites in dozens of genres with Lala, a site that lets you both stream and download music. In a companion piece to this blog post on findingDulcinea, “Enjoying Music on the Web—Legally,” we discussed Lala and a few comparable sites. Lala stands out because of its extensive archive of 7 million songs, including classical, country, classic rock, pop, jazz and indie rock. Artist pages on Lala often include bios, as well as links to similar artists and Lala users who streamed or bought the artist.

Essentials of Music is a classical music destination with composer biographies, MP3 samples of their work and articles on major eras in classical music. The site is based on the W. W. Norton book title, “Essential Classics.”

Parents, get your children educated about classical music with Cincinnati Public Radio’s Classics for Kids, a site with radio shows, audio samples, articles on periods and composers, special features and games.

Mainstream and indie music fans alike will appreciate the new Billboard. The site used to be a hard-to-access database of music charts and news. Now it’s a glossy, colorful, multimedia-filled publisher with interactive music charts, news, interviews, concert coverage and more.

If you like Billboard, be sure to check out “5 Must-Book Music Sites,” a must-read for indie music fans that are just getting their feet wet online. It features five top sites in five categories—concert listings, MP3 blog, music magazine, lyric database and video site—as well as five runners-up.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Comments

[spiele]

This is great place to search for your favorite music charts. It has all the latest about music in it.

[Water damage]

Thanks for that - I have a 3 year old daughter who just loves that type of thing - I can't wait for her to wake up to show her the Classics for kids website.