Dive into a Free Mosh Pit of Music

The variety of paid review requests that come through John Chow dot Com is absolutely astounding. Because this blog is largely about making money online, it makes sense that we get reviews about advertising networks and affiliate programs, but this one came a little out of left field.

If you think about it, though, dot com moguls spend a lot of time in front of their computers, so they need to stay entertained in between sessions on Technorati and Analytics. To fill that void, you can check out the free music at Moshable.com, a site that aims to become the next MySpace specifically for musicians and music fans.

Express Yourself Through Song

From iTunes to Rhapsody, there are countless options on the Internet for buying music, but there are a few problems with this method of keeping yourself entertained. For starters, you have to download the music onto your home computer, meaning that you cannot access your full library of tunes if you happen to be away on holiday. The other issue is that, well, it costs money. When you’re making dot com mogul money, a couple bucks here and there won’t hurt, but you can see how the cost of buying music can add up very quickly.

Moshable Music has several advantages over this more conventional model of music-listening. For starters, it is 100% free and it will never cost you a penny to listen to any of the songs in their library. Secondly, there are no scary downloads to worry about, because all of the music is streamed directly from their website. Third, Moshable helps you discover new bands from all sorts of genres. If you’re tired of hearing the same song on the radio over and over again, Moshable is for you.

By and large, the various artists on Moshable are small label, independent, or no label artists. They’re the up-and-comers, so to speak, so there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of them. Among the collection, you’ll find plenty of fresh faces, new perspectives, and novel sounds. Don’t worry, there’s no Britney Spears here.

Build Your Playlist

Before you can build playlists on Moshable, you’ll need to sign up for a free fan account. The registration process is very straightforward — user name, password, and email — and your account is activated instantly. You don’t even need to verify your email address! Beyond this, you can build up your profile by providing some “about” information and tagging your location. After this, you can search through the Moshable library for songs you like.

When you arrive on an artist’s page — I’m using Jayface as an example — you are initially presented with their bio (home). You can then flip through the tabs for upcoming shows, photos, news, and so forth, but it’s the “songs” tab that is most important. Here, you just click on the play button next to your song of choice and it starts streaming almost right away. If you like it, a simple click on the plus button adds the song to your playlist.

Free Publicity For Unknown Artists

I think that the greater strength of this free music site lies in the ability for low-budget performers to get some free publicity. These guys can turn to Moshable, throw up a profile page and upload a few songs. MySpace already does this, but it’s all mixed in with emo kids and messed up teenagers. Moshable is for musicians only.

You Really Can’t Beat the Price of Free

Moshable has a good thing going and it’s great that they offer all of these great features for free. As far as I can tell, the only monetization method is a very well-integrated Google ad in the sidebar. I hope that they don’t cave and start accepting “donations” in exchange for getting featured on the front page. The beauty of Moshable is that the fans decide who is the best and not the dollars pumped into the artist. Beyond the free music, be sure to also check out the forum and blog. Heck, you can also look for bandmates. Adult FriendFinder better look out!

Click here to get your own free fan account, or
click here to get an artist/band account.