I'm in LOVE with My Music Service

I downloaded a free trial of the Urge Music Service last year, and after fourteen days of unlimited downloads, I liked it well enough to pay for a year's subscription (149$----totally cool for a full year of listening to as much music as I want).

There were several features that aided me in discovering fresh music (fresh to me = from another culture, from way back in the day, or just released yesterday).

• If I like a certain artist, I can click a command that says 'More Music Like Artist XYZ', and 20 songs by various artists will appear based on that choice.

• I could browse by genre, then style (i.e. Hip-Hop, then Jazz-Rap, or Rock, then Psychedelic)
• I could sort search results by Year, Rating, Song Title, and any other property field available.
• Playlists are created by music-junkies, celebs, real musicians, et al. I can peruse these select lists out of curiosity, and sample/download tunes when I agree with the list creator.
• Charts are available that list top 100+ selections, by Genre/Style etc. Billboard charts and web charts are included.
• Radio!!!! The radio stations are slick. There are usually multiple stations for each genre, and........I can skip any song that I don't care for!!!

Here's what I am most excited about right now, though:
A-U-T-O M-I-X!
Auto Mix is superb. To be fair, Urge probably could have gotten the idea from other software/websites previously in existence. My friend Adron showed me one such site. That site remembers your previous selections and create new lists of music based on your history. It is Last.fm. It's also socially oriented, you can link to other listeners and listen to what they like. A few pieces/some, NOT ALL of the music is available for download, but it is a free service. Mine (Urge) costs $ after 14 days, but I download voraciously, and don't want to be blocked.
Another advantage of Urge over the free site I saw? ‘Look and feel’, and ease-of-use. The interface is 'pretty' and clean, and there are multiple jumping-off points for switching to different tunes.

Back to Auto Mix, as implemented by Urge....it allows me to grab a list of tunes based on MORE THAN MY PREVIOUS LISTENING HISTORY! It will grab a set of 20, 30, or 40 tunes, based on: Mood, Style, Artist, My Previous History, or a Single Song. I am totally sprung---this is so slick----I mean, I'm banging out User-Interface screens, and writing code, and I can grab a list of songs that are 'angry' or 'lovey-dovey' and just work away, without playing with my tuner.

Let me expound on my usage of the term ‘fresh’. Every Tuesday, new releases are made available, just like in the record stores! I tend toward older music, as I myself am an old soul, but this is still something I take a gander at every Tuesday. I really get into the Baroque period, and Mozart, and lo and behold…..this service does have A LOT OF CLASSICAL music. Just Lovely.

I must return to my coding adventures. Check out this service if you want to stream/download some music you are already familiar with, and/or expose yourself to entirely new musical compositions.