Traipsing the 'Net

Cassette Musique has never been at the forefront of innovation. We are stringent conservatives that stick to the status quo, and grimace at entertaining the thought of change.

Then we realized that was all a big, fat lie and decided to try and incorporate something new into our stagnant, vintage blog. Aside from the cutting-edge makeover that is currently bombarding your senses, we decided to try out different types of articles to, y’know, spice shit up. Don’t get your hopes up, we’re not that innovative: “Different types of articles” will mostly amount to “doing shit other sites do better than us.” Can’t knock us for our grit and determination.

Here are a few music-related websites that I thought I would share with our rabid, dedicated fan base in a new segment I like to call "Traipsing the 'Net." You’re welcome.

Musicovery– If you’ve ever used Pandora to listen to music, and wished it would pick music based on mood rather than an artist, you are suddenly in luck, my friend, especially with having such a specific request. Musicovery will make a playlist based on the “mood” you choose from a rectangular matrix. Find some mix between “Energetic” and “Calm,” “Dark” and “Positive,” and enjoy. It’s pretty cool if you want to hear music that “feels” relatively similar. The only knock is that if you want to skip tracks, that’ll cost ya. Changing the mood on the matrix ever-s0-slightly will change the playlist, though. If you have a Mac, there’s a cool, free iTunes plug-in that will let you do this with the wonderful pool of songs in your library.

Stereomood– This website basically rips off the concept on Musicovery (or perhaps it’s the other way around?), but with one major advantage: Song control. On the home page is a tag cloud of “emotions.” Pick one, and enjoy quite lengthy playlists (e.g., the “Happy” one has 1,130 songs) that apparently fulfill said mood or emotion. Like Musicovery, you can see the songs queued up next, but unlike Musicovery, you can select these songs at will and for free. It has a pretty nice set-up and some interesting B-sides and remixes thrown into the rotation. Although it doesn’t feature the incremental blending of mood like Musicovery, it still boasts a great selection of music and the ability to sift through songs.

New Normal Music – Remember FM radio? I know, me neither. Well, New Normal Music is attempting to reinvent (rehash?) the idea of radio with this website. It first insists that it is not radio. Oh, okay, sorry. It plays like a radio station, however, with just the current song being displayed on the simple website player. It is run by real people that apparently “love new music,” and like antiquated radio stations of yore, they even take requests. The vow right now is that, since its inception on July 1^st, they will play 50,000 songs in a row, none of which are more than a year old. For sure, it trumps anything you’d ever hear on terrestrial FM radio, and perhaps even satellite. If you’re into that whole radio vibe for listening to music, look no further.

Check this shit out. Or, you know, you could listen to the same seven songs on repeat for the next six months. Because that’s epitomizes keeping things fresh.