SoundCloud
For ultimate indie cred, SoundCloud is the new MySpace (at least in terms of social music sharing). For users, you can arrange selected tracks into “Sets,” or “Favorite” a couple of key ones to play back to back. The downside is that there aren’t a whole lot of major music acts (most SoundCloud users trend towards electronic music), but if you’re inclined to nifty interfaces and cool points, SoundCloud makes a solid choice.
The Hype Machine
The Hype Machine puts the entirety of the blogosphere at your disposal, allowing you to stream MP3s directly from the gazillions of music blogs out there. Not sure what to play? The “Popular” tab at the top takes you to a freshly-updated list of what the Internet democratically deems popular. You’ll have to register in order to avoid a song listening limit, but other than that, there’s the whole wide Web at your inner-DJ’s disposal. The only other downside is that most of the music featured on Hype Machine is of the electro/dubstep/dance variety, which may prove to be too loud for some (including myself).
Grooveshark
Despite having its application yanked from the Android Store (Apple pulled it from theirs last July), the music search engine Grooveshark is still a great choice for sifting through music from the cloud. In addition to a “Popular” tab (like Hype Machine) and single click playlist updates (like Vupas), Grooveshark also utilizes streaming radio channels similarly to Pandora and Last.fm. It’s a great choice, though with all its legal woes, there’s no telling how much longer the current incarnation of Grooveshark will be accessible.
Any other innovative ways to stream music? Let us know down below.