Share your musical taste with friends and family

Find your favourite music and start a club online

By Liz Eustace

Frank Payne is a Chicago-based music lover and graphic designer who created his own web site to introduce different music to his friends and family.

“I started the web site to keep my friends up to date with some of the music I was listening to,” he explains. “I go through a ton of music and know people’s tastes, so I decided to post music for my brother, my friends, my mom — music they may not listen to otherwise.”

Take advantage of online tunes

You don’t have to build your own web site to tap into the online music community. For example, you can turn your Windows Live Space into a music hub by adding a Windows Media Player module that streams music from a web site of your choice for visitors to listen to.

Sign into your Space, then click Customize > Add Modules > Modules > Other. Choose Windows Media Player; then click Save. You should now see the Media Player window in your space. Click Edit, and enter the URL of the audio files you wish to listen to.

There are also hundreds of forums, message boards and chat rooms where people go to talk about music. Many record labels and artists also provide message boards on their sites, which are usually moderated to ensure the environment stays friendly and focused. Here are a few forums worth checking out:

• Chatelaine has an entertainment forum where women can chat about, amongst other  things, music.
• MuchMoreMusic features music message boards.
• The Internet Movie Database provides a lively music forum.

Start your own online music club

An online music club is similar to a book club. Instead of discussing the author and his or her book, you discuss an artist, which may include sending a link to a sample of a song or planning an outing to a concert with your club colleagues.

Starting an online music club is quite straightforward.

1. Use the Internet to gather information on a song, an artist, an album or an upcoming concert.
2. Instead of creating a web site, manage your communications through e-mail or a social networking site such as Windows Live Spaces. Send a message to interested participants with a link to the sample or song you want your group to hear.
3. Avoid illegally downloading music by “sampling” songs legally from available resources and sites. When you click on an audio file of a sampled song on a web site, you will either be allowed to choose the player or it will detect what kind you have on your hard drive, such as Windows Media Player or RealPlayer. If you listen to the song and do not copy or download it to your hard drive, then you have just sampled this song.
4. Like any traditional discussion group, encourage dialogue and an exchange of thoughts about your musical selection(s). Has anyone heard of these artists and/or seen them live? How do these songs make them feel? Who does this band sound similar to? Etc.

Surf for samples online

“Almost any record label, big or small, has a place where you can hear MP3s,” says Michael Religa, music director at Toronto radio station 92.5 Jack FM. “In fact, almost every single out there has a place where you can sample it, legally and for free.”

Jennifer Krissilas, an editor in Toronto, finds many of her samples at New Music Canada. “It’s great because you can sample a song and, in some cases, the entire album right from the site,” she says, adding that many of the samples on the New Music Canada site are sent in by the artists who want people to listen to their music.

“I love music, I love going to the shows and I love supporting the local artist, which is one of the reasons why I don’t actually download off the Internet. I like to buy the CD,” Krissilas continues. “It’s more convenient to go online and press a couple of buttons than to go into a record store and hear it there.”

Payne has a disclaimer on his web site stating that he will remove any music the artist or record label does not want posted. In Payne’s case, “more than 90 per cent of the music I’ve gotten is freely distributed music — either distributed through the record label or by the artists themselves.” Payne adds that he often receives e-mail from musicians thanking him for the exposure and sending another audio file to post.

Try these sites to experience new music:

Sharing the musical experience

“What is amazing about these sites is that you find artists you enjoy and take the links to their own sites. Then they often refer to artists they really enjoy and slowly you are introduced to an entire scene of musicians,” states Krissilas. “You can keep getting more and more information because, especially on the indie scene, you realize the artists know one another and play on one another’s albums. You can get introduced to similar styles. It’s a great introduction to new music.”