Indy
One excuse often flaunted by people who frequent file sharing services is the idea that file sharing offers a way to try out new music before wasting money on something they later hate. This idea has merit but is ultimately invalidated by the fact that most of the music available through the popular file sharing services is popular music widely available through legitimate means of acquisition at affordable prices. The true discovery of new music is made by stepping outside the realm of popular music available a mass market retail, instead listening to musicians flying under the radar of popular radio and mass market distribution. This is concept behind Indy, a custom radio app that randomly finds independent music online for you to listen to and downloads it to your hard drive. As you listen to songs, you are provided with the option to rate them. Ratings are used to determine what other tracks you might like based on the preferences of other anonymous users who also rated similar songs highly. So far, in several hours of listening to Indy audio, I've discovered some seriously cool music I previously had no idea existed, ranging from jazz, blues and alternative rock. As a song is playing, Indy integrates a link to the band or musician's Web site, so you can find out more about the artist. Granted my personal listening tastes are a bit more eclectic than most but I can assure you this is one of the best finds I've made in ages. If discovering new music is your thing, Indy will get the job done. If you're an independent artist looking for a way to have people you�re your music, Indy is looking for you. [Windows 9x/2k/XP Mac OS X $0.00]