February 5, 2012

Get music and donate to charity

The music industry has always had a strong association with charity, most of us remember Live Aid or if not will of heard songs that support the relief efforts in Haiti or elsewhere in the World. That’s why when we were told about Fairsharemusic.com we thought we had to give it a review.

The concept of the site is very simple, use it to download all your new music and for every purchase you make a small percentage is given to a charity. The money is donated to a charity you nominate from their list or split between all the charities on the site.

Currently there are eleven of the major UK and international charities listed but they are looking to extend this list over time. When you initially register on the site you nominate one or all of the charities you wish to support but this can be changed at any time in the “My Account” section

The cost of downloading a track starts at 79 pence for a single and on average work out to be 99 pence which is fairly standard for most other music download sites so you know that Fairsharemusic is not adding anything extra onto the cost of your track to account for the donation. All tracks are fully compatible with other music players and you can listen to a sample of each track before you buy it.

We found the site very easy to use and it lists most of the top artists, albums and genres so it has something for everyone. We’ve added Fairsharemusic.com to our top rated sites for July because it is easy to use, has a good search facility and best of all you are doing something for charity at the same time as getting all your music.

I’ll name that tune in ……

We’ve stumbled across a site that puts us in mind of an 80′s quiz show ….. basically www.watzatsong.com  is a community based web site that allows users to upload a tune that they want to find the name of. Sounds simple enough except the few ones we listened to were people huming a tune very badly making it hard to identify the track.

This site is OK for a bit of fun but or if you are really stuck trying to find the name of something.

Sorry it’s not top rated but is entertaining (and slightly cringe worthy) just to listen to some of the people who have recorded their own version of a track.

Create, Share and Vote on Playlists

If you’ve got a bunch of friends coming to your barbecue this weekend you may want to check out www.songvote.com  as it’s a great way to stop an argument around the MP3 Player before it even starts.

Basically the concept is pretty simple, create a playlist of your favourite tracks and send it to your friends, they vote on the popularity of the track and you can then create your play list to suit everyone’s taste, simple. Each play list includes a sample of the track which is a good idea.

Chatting in the office we thought this could be a good site to use if you were getting married. So many couples worry about the first dance so why not try this. Create the list with the ones you are thinking of and let everyone who is coming to the wedding decide which you should have … lets face it this site will at least stop every wedding you go to start off with Take That, The Greatest Day.

 Don’t worry if you haven’t got the track on your ipod just yet, with songvote.com you can also buy it if you want to.