Blog Master G

I’ve long been a fan of Radio Paradise and probably always will be. I’ve thrown the occasional PayPal donation their way, and they’ve helped to expand my musical horizon, which, as Jen often says, is stuck in the ’90s. Our friends like Alex and Justin are much more the music aficionados than I am, and they’re always trying to get me to listen to and discover new music. Now I am.

With Yahoo Music’s LAUNCHcast Plus — there’s also a free service with ads and lower quality streams — you get CD-quality, ad-free streaming music that you personalize to match your tastes. It uses a Netflix-like ranking model to allow you to rate every song, artist, and album you hear. By default, you rate on a 5-star scale (or you can even changed to an advanced rating scale to rate on percentage). Rating is addictive. I’ve caught myself over the past few days since I upgraded to the $3.99/month service (or $2.99/month if you pay yearly) running into the room to rate a song to make sure I do (or don’t) hear it again. It’s amazing how well it works. I noticed after reaching the 100 song or so mark that every single song I now hear on my station — you can listen to my station, too! — is a song I either already know and like or one that I don’t know and really like. It’s an awesome way to discover new music.

There are also more than 100 pre-programmed stations (Plus version) that you can stream. If you’re a hardcore music fan like Justin, you can even subscribe to both the streaming and download version of the service (Yahoo Unlimited) — that is, you can either stream or search for any song (more than 1 million in the library) and download. You can keep the song on your computer or other portable device so long as you subscribe. Subscription-based entertainment really is the future. I now subscribe to both movie and music services. The DVD and CD collections I own are rarely used, though I’m sure I will continue to buy the occasional DVD and/or CD I really love (though downloading via iTunes or other service is more likely).