Stream if you wanna go faster

Despite the absence of many of the leading streaming services in Ireland, music fans have a number of options to choose from

WHEN IT COMES to digital music services, we tend to feel in Ireland as though we inhabit a forgotten backwater. Spotify, Rdio, Pandora and Google Music are some of the services getting a lot of attention in recent years. But, as yet, they’re not available here. We even had to wait longer for iTunes Match.

Most of the sites blame licensing restrictions, but that doesn’t mean we have to miss out entirely. There are several streaming services open to Irish users, both free and paid for.

JANGO

Launched in 2007, Jango is free personalised internet radio. You tell it what artists you like and it will create a customised station for you based around the artist, with tracks also drawn from what the system deems similar artists. It’s a great way to find new acts and rediscover old favourites, with some great suggestion coming up in the course of a “station”.

You don’t have the same level of control, however, as you have with services such as Deezer or Spotify. You can’t build playlists and, although you can choose to boot certain artists from the machine-generated radio stations, you’re pretty much at the mercy of the automated system. Rating songs helps – the lower you rate something, the less it will appear in your stations.

On the downside, there’s no ability to fast-forward or rewind songs. There is, however, a free app for iOS devices that links with your account, so you can access your personalised stations on the move – as long as you keep a data connection.

[ jango.com ]

EIRCOM MUSIC HUB

Free if you are an Eircom broadband customer, a paid service for everyone else, Eircom Music Hub offers unlimited music streaming, with bundle downloads as an extra. Prices start from €6.99 a month just for streaming for non-Eircom customers, with bundled downloads costing anything up to €22.99 per month, depending on how many downloads you want to include as part of your package.

You have to sign up for a minimum of three months for the middle-tier package, which Eircom has dubbed “enthusiast”, and a minimum of six months for the top-level “fanatic” subscription. You can also rate music according to your tastes. The service is restricted to the Republic, so if you travel elsewhere, you won’t be able to access your music – unless you download it, of course.

[ eircommusichub.ie ]

DEEZER

A relatively new kid on the Irish block, Deezer fills the gap that Spotify hasn’t filled. Born from Blogmusik, Deezer was launched in France in 2007, and came to Ireland last year. With 15 million songs in its catalogue, the service has got something for everyone. And it has managed to rack up a fair number of users – 20 million, according to the site, with six million unique users every month.

Discovery mode is free and limited, while monthly fees range from €4.99 for premium access, which gives you unlimited, ad-free streaming on your PC or Mac, to premium plus which allows access through mobile apps and other devices too.

Included in that is the ability to store music for offline use – handy if you are on the move and aren’t too sure what will happen to your data access. Equally useful if you are travelling, as the data charges would lead to one hell of a shock when your bill rolls around.

[ deezer.com ]

GROOVESHARK

The streaming music service offers three options: free with advertising; Grooveshark Plus, a premium ad-free option, at $6 a month; and Grooveshark Anywhere, which offers the option to take your playlists offline and listen on your mobile for $9 a month. An update last year brought music discovery to the platform, and it has signed several licensing deals with record labels. The service differs from others in that tracks can be uploaded by users to Grooveshark, sharing them with the community. The terms and conditions of the site state, of course, that no copyright should be infringed by users uploading tracks to Grooveshark, putting the onus firmly on users to do the right thing.

The service shut down in Germany at the start of the year, because Grooveshark said it wouldn’t pay the high fees the Gema music licensing body was seeking. And it has also fallen foul of Universal Music, Sony and Warner Music in the US, where two legal actions were previously filed for copyright infringement.

How much longer the service will stay free for is anyone’s guess. In February, users of the free service were greeted with a pop-up message asking them to pay $4 per month for continued access to Grooveshark.

The quality of tracks varies wildly, with some studio, some live, and some just bad audio quality. Even the metadata has issues, with some artists appearing multiple times with different spellings. Still, the service claims 35 million users and has already lasted about six years.

[ grooveshark.com ]

WE7

Like Pandora and Jango, WE7 gives you your own personal radio station, but it also mixes song requests with the channels. You get 50 “requests” per month, which allows you to request specific songs. The service has about eight million songs at last count and, if you are clever about your requests, you can stretch them out over the whole month.

The internet radio part of the service is free, allowing you to create and listen to unlimited radio stations thanks to an ad-funded model.

We7 also has the music-industry link: it was co-founded by Peter Gabriel.

[ we7.com ]

LAST.FM

Founded in the UK in 2002, Last.fmwas one of the first music recommendation sites to really grab the public's attention. Initially available to Irish users as a free service, these days it sets you back €3 per month if you live outside the US, Britain and Germany, a change that was introduced in 2009.

To get the most out of it, you have to allow it access to your music tastes through the Scrobbler, a small piece of software that keeps a note of the tracks you play and makes recommendations based on this database. That includes everything from internet radio stations and music services such as Spotify and Deezer, to your own digital music collection stored on your hard drive.

The more access you allow it, the better a profile it will build up; eventually you might just get a radio station with songs you actually enjoy.

[ last.fm ]

MUSIC UNLIMITED

One that obviously has the backing of at least one major label is Sony’s music service. Formerly known as Qriocity, Music Unlimited has now been brought under the Sony Entertainment Network umbrella. There are more than 10 million songs in the catalogue, including some independent labels.

It’s designed to work with Sony devices that connect to the internet – Bravia TVs, Blu-Ray players, PS Vita, PS3 – but it also works on your computer and Android devices, the latter through a specially built app.

It syncs your PC library to your Music Unlimited accounted, but doesn’t share your personal library with the world. Then there are music channels you can browse through for inspiration.

Sony has opted for two subscription models: €3.99 for 30 days access to some of the music channels, the ability to browse most of the catalogue with the exclusion of some independent labels, and permission to add tracks to your library; bump it up to the €9.99 plan and you have full access for the month.

You can sync up to three devices for offline mode, but you’ll need adequate memory to store the songs.

[ music.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com ]

ITUNES MATCH

If you are an Apple user, you’ve doubtless heard of iTunes Match. This isn’t really a streaming service as such; rather it allows you to access a cloud copy of any of music you currently have in your iTunes library, whether you bought it from iTunes or not.

All you have to do is subscribe, match your music and iCloud will make it available to your iPad, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, and so on.

It’s limited to 10 authorised devices – which should hold most people – and 25,000 songs. The service excludes songs that have Digital Rights Management built in, unless your computer has all the necessary licences. And if some songs fail the quality test, they won’t be uploaded either.

The service will set you back the princely sum of €24.99 a year.

[ apple.com ]