5 Websites for Music Lovers
1. Bandcamp
Bandcamp is a favorite among independent musicians, and it's easy to see why: the platform is user-friendly, artist-first, and does a great job of encouraging music discovery among fans. Bandcamp has millions of users worldwide, including hundreds of thousands of artists and more than 3,000 labels.
If you have your music on Bandcamp and a website with Bandzoogle, you can take advantage of the easy integration. In just a couple of clicks, you can add your Bandcamp music anywhere on your website, eliminating the need to re-upload tracks or use separate apps or plugins. The Bandcamp music player will automatically adjust to match your website's theme. It looks beautiful on mobile, too!
2. Hype Machine
Hype Machine is sort of a conglomeration of Pandora and last.fm. It aggregates music from mp3 blogs and posts them on the front page, where users can "love" songs and create lists out of those tunes. You can search under different genres or look for the "freshest" music, album premieres and most popular artists. Looking at the most popular tracks is a great way to find new music, and each song links to different ways to purchase the music and various ways to share the song on social media.
3. Soundcloud
Soundcloud started off as a way for musicians to share recordings but eventually spread out to be so much more, now utilizing technology that allows musicians to collaborate, promote and share their music as well as allowing listeners to find new music to listen to. The most unique thing about Soundcloud is the way it displays the songs in waveform, allowing the user to listen to certain pieces or even stop and comment on specific points of a track (timed comments). Recognized more as a distribution tool than a listening tool, Soundcloud still does both magnificently.
4. Daytrotter
They call themselves "The source for new music from emerging bands" but there's so much from established bands here as well. Daytrotter records live sessions with musicians (recently: Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers) and makes them available for you to watch/listen to (you need to be a member to watch videos). You can queue up music in the Daytrotter player on the bottom of your page while you listen to varied playlists from readers as well as artists.
5. Audiomack
Audiomack isn't as widely known as some of the other platforms on this list, but it definitely deserves to be on your radar. You can host all of your music for free - no premium accounts, and no upload or storage limits. You'll also have free access to content sharing tools and an artist dashboard loaded with advanced stats and engagement data.
Even more exciting is that thousands of musicians are currently benefiting from Audiomack's beta monetization program, which offers a competitive per-stream rate for uploaded tracks. They're working to roll out the program to all Audiomack creators by 2021.