How to find good music online with social media

In a recent post over at the Future Shop Techb­log I star­ted talk­ing about vari­ous Inter­net Radio ‘sta­tions’. Today I real­ized I did­n’t talk about one of my ‘go-to’ online music sources blip.fm

It’s not your aver­age music service.
Blip.fm is a hybrid social media site and music dis­cov­ery ser­vice, focused around the concept of Blips. To quote the FAQ:

What exactly is a ‘blip’?
A blip is a com­bin­a­tion of 1) a song and 2) a short mes­sage that accom­pan­ies it. The way you cre­ate a blip is to first search for a song that you want to hear (or a song that you want your listen­ers to hear), then add a short mes­sage (under 150 char­ac­ters), finally you sub­mit it. Sub­mit­ting a blip is also referred to as “blip­ping”, so from here on out, when you read “he blipped my favor­ite track” it means “he sub­mit­ted a blip that had my favor­ite song attached”.

When you join Blip.fm, you assume the role of a DJ, run­ning your own ‘sta­tion’ with a playl­ist. As you explore Blip.fm music, you’ll see that songs were ‘blipped’ by vari­oi­us DJs. Check out their playl­ists (here’s mine).

You’ll see a list of blips that they found inter­est­ing, likely from oth­er DJs — a great way to see what tunes they thought were interesting.

Got Props?
If you like a tune you find on the main page, or listen to in someone’s playl­ist, then give that DJ Props:

What are “Props”?
On Blip.fm props are tokens of respect that can be giv­en from one DJ to anoth­er — say for blip­ping a good song or being a good DJ in gen­er­al. Every­one starts with 10 cred­its that they can use to give props to oth­er DJ’s. As you earn props from the com­munity, your props will increase and so will the cred­its you have to give. 1 props earned = 1 cred­it in your bank. The num­ber of props you’ve earned can only go up, but the cred­its you have goes down as you use them through­out the site. Check out our blog entry for a more detailed explanation.

Social Media Integration
Of course, it’s no good to be listen­ing to music without being able to share it. Blip.fm will send your tunes, as you listen to them, to the fol­low­ing Social Media services.

• Twit­ter
• Face­book
• Friend­feed
• Tumblr
• Live­journ­al
• Audi­o­scrob­bler
• Ping.fm

In my case, I don’t usu­ally ‘blip’ tunes I’m listen­ing to my fol­low­ers — it could get annoy­ing after a couple of tunes. But, per­haps in the even­ing, I’ll feel like going ‘all DJ on my peeps’…hopefully they for­give me in the morning.

So check it out, check out my playl­ist, and let me know what you think.