[Music] The 3 music Websites I'd want most on a deserted island

It was around 1999-2000 when I stopped buying new music regularly. I still got a few CDs here and there but I got very selective since they were well over $15 new by that point. And, as just about anyone can attest to, most of them weren't worth it (and still aren't). Classic albums aside, you got two or three killer tracks and about 10 filler tracks. So, not long after college I started falling behind on new music.

Thank God for a handful of sites that have revived my love of new music. I never got too far with the P2P sites like Napster or Kazaa, but now I don't need to risk viruses and junk uploads to hear new stuff. The three music sites that I live by now:

1. LaLa.com -- The concept is so simple yet elegant: List CDs you have. List CDs you want. Trade them. Pay nothing to give away. Pay $1.75 to get new ones (not burned discs) from others on the site. Balance is maintained with karma points. Nirvana is achieved by not paying for filler and being free to explore new music with almost no financial risk. Plus, 20% of money from the site goes back to a foundation for musicians. It also works great in tandem with ...
2. Pandora.com -- This site is like having a personal DJ. Part of a massive project to analyze and categorize music (the Music Genome Project), it's a dream come true considering the pathetic state of most corporate/terrestrial radio. Here's how it works: Plug in a song, album or artist. The site streams similar tracks based on the "musical DNA" of your selection -- and it does a damn fine job most of the time. You can rate the tracks, save them to a favorites list, buy them from iTunes, spin them off to create other stations and share your playlists with friends. And for heaven's sake, the whole thing is free.
3. XponentialMusic.org -- This site just launched not long ago, but what an excellent (overdue) idea, at least around here. There's nothing too revolutionary about college radio stations that stream music, but the shows on Universiy of Penn's WXPN are pretty good. My favorites are Stars' End and Echoes. However, the station just absorbed the popular upstart Y100 Webcast, too. Y100 had been a real radio station before its corporate parent decided Philly didn't  need an alternative rock station. Honestly, I never listened to it much on the radio or online, but I can hear its influence on XPN now and the extra dose of attitude is a welcome addition.

If, like me, you thought that musically your best days were behind you, think again. There are loads of other similar sites, maybe even some that are better. Last.fm is pretty popular, but I haven't tried it out yet since I found Pandora first. And that's the cool part. Instead of feeling like I'm out of the loop with new music, or even old music that I hadn't discovered or gotten around to buying, now it's like a whole new menu of options is available from streaming to MP3s to CDs that bypasses all the gouging of record companies and garbage pumped out by corporate radio. All that's been replaced by a seemingly endless variety of sweet (legal) sounds.