Saturday, October 29, 2011

Free Music!!!

Yes you read it correctly...FREE MUSIC!  How do you get this?  From spotify.com.  This is a completely free web-based program that gives you free music.  It's very similar to Pandorda in that you create playlists.  However, unlike Pandora you do all the creating no the program.  You search for the artist or song that you want and Spotify creates a list.  You then select and drag the ones you want into a playlist of your choice.  Like iTunes you can have as many playlists as you want.  Spotify will also search through all the music on your computer to add to playlists as well.  You can even sync an iPod, iPad, iPhone or any other mp3 player that you want (however, it does erase the information already on your device -- you then need to re-sync all of the information onto your device). Here are the pro's and cons as I see it:
 Pros:
  • It's free.  There are 2 other pay by month options - $4.99 and $9.99.  The cheaper option allows you to do everything the free version allows and gets rid of advertisements and you get unlimited streaming.  The more expensive monthly option gives you everything from the other options plus putting Spotify on your mobile device (iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone) and also gives you an off-line mode to use with your playlists.
  • Lot's of classical pieces to use.
  • Quick to use.
Cons:
  • Monthly fee to get all of the features.

I tried just the free version for a while and ended up getting the $9.99 version.  Mostly to get rid of the advertisements and be able to use it on my iPhone. The ads really become a BIG issue when using it in school (even though they are only 30 seconds long). OOO, I almost forgot that you do get biographies of the artists as well.  In fact, there is so much that Spotify does that this would be a very long entry.

Spotify also has it's own blog that you can check out.

Here's how you get it for free. You need to start an account and there are 2 ways to do it.  You can like it on "Facebook" and then an email will be sent to you with a link to create an account or you can go to Spotify,com directly (you will need an invite from an current Spotify user for this to work).  When you create your account you will receive 1 free invite to send to a friend.

    Tuesday, October 11, 2011

    Note Grid

    My colleague, Steve Owens, presented an Interactive Whiteboard session at the VMEA conference on October 10th.  "Note Grid" is a very cool was to add music literacy into your program. Click the links for the notes and Power Point from the session.   VMEA Notes   or  VMEA Note Prid Power Point