Text adapted from St Clare's, Oxford, OnLine (SCOOL) English Language Newsletter, Monday, 26 March, 2001, written by SCOOL newsletter Guest Editor: Mark Jennings. Mark often teaches the "Popular Music" and "Books, Film and Music" complementary study courses at St Clare's, and in his student days, was a drummer in a rock group!
Listening to music on the Internet
Firstly, if we want to listen and view content on the there are two main ways in which we can do this.
The first is what's known as downloading and the second is streaming. The latter is mostly used when the file to be played is too big to be downloaded. This is common with radio broadcasts.
Streaming is used and it works by playing small portions of the file in succession - so, for example, the first part is stored on your computer and then you hear it as the next portion is being loaded and so on. This means you can listen to a broadcast without interruption. However, one disadvantage of this system is that the quality is not always very good. But, if you are worried about losing your English now that you're back in your own country, it's an excellent way to listen to good music and have the added advantage of being able to listen to native speakers presenting the show.
Streaming
Some excellent sites that use [streaming] are BBC Online (http://www.bbc.co.uk) and Capital FM (http://www.capitalfm.com). Both of these stations broadcast some great music and also provide some interesting discussions related to music.
Other sites to check out:
To play streaming content you'll need to get yourself the right software to run it - and it's available free. For RealPlayer, visit http://www.real.com to download your free player. For Windows Media Player, visit http://www.microsoft.com. For QuickTime, visit http://www.apple.com.
Downloading
The second method is Downloading audio / video and MP3 files. With this system you just download a file from the internet onto your computer's hard drive and then you simply play the file at your leisure with the appropriate audio/video software. You can use the audio player supplied with your operating system or you can use an MP3 player. The advantage of this system is that the quality really is often excellent. However, the files can be huge and will take up a lot of hard drive space. But as the latest computers come with ever increasing hard drive space this is no longer such a big problem.
MP3s
MP3s available on the web are causing a great deal of understandable controversy within the music industry as there are so many illegal MP3s available - and of course the issue is of copyright. One company in particular Napster (http://www.napster.com) has caused the music business a lot of concern and are currently involved in a legal dispute. So, it's probably one to avoid. However, there are sites, such as, http://www.mp3.com, http://www.peoplesound.com, http://www.vitaminic.co.uk and http://www.icrunch.com where you can download legal, licensed music.
Cool music Web sites to visit
Some of the big names in the music industry, not surprisingly, have some really cool sites. You must check out http://www.nme.com - this is England's most popular music paper and it's excellent for the latest music news and gossip. It's also great for gig information and the for the latest news on album release dates etc.
For a more American view of music visit http://www.mtv.com. Once again, this site is full of information: you can also download a huge selection of free music (I recently downloaded an excellent version of Coldplay's Yellow), check out the latest gossip, see tour dates and they also have their own shop where you can buy CDs at reduced rates.
Another of the big players that's well worth a visit is http://www.dotmusic.com - this site is great if you're interested in taking part in discussions as they have live news feeds and a good variety of discussion boards where you can interact with like-minded people.
A few other places worth visiting are:
Sites dedicated to singers and groups
Of course it depends very much on your own personal taste - but some of the sites are very well done and worth a visit for this reason alone.
A good place to start is The Ultimate Band List (http://www.ubl.com) - this site will act as a guide and give you links to your favourite bands by providing you with both official and unofficial sites.
Here's a list of sites dedicated to various artists:
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