8tracks

I’ve no doubt I’ve been slow over this, but I recently discovered 8tracks.com, which has quickly become my favourite online music-sharing service. It takes the concept of the mixtape and does a good job of translating it into a web form.

There are several key features about it I like, particularly when compared to its obvious (to me, anyway) rival, Spotify. Firstly, you upload the MP3s you want to put on the tape, so you’re not reliant on a service having an extensive library of music (the converse is also true, of course: you can’t add something to a mix unless you own it, unlike with Spotify). Anyone can listen to the mixes without special software or even subscribing. You have to listen to the mixes in sequence – you can skip tracks, but you can’t see what’s coming up until you get to it, or pick and choose what to listen to.

I’ve already found lots more artists to follow up than I ever have via Last.Fm, say – mixes crafted by people are more likely to throw up interesting gems you’d otherwise miss than any set of algorithms, it seems.

It’s not a straight music player, of course: you can’t use it to listen to specific tracks you select as you used to be able to do with Spotify, and still can if you subscribe – though I’m disinclined to pay for the privilege of listening to music that I mostly own. With its reduced free service, Spotify has shrunk back to ‘try before you buy’ duties only for me. But for sharing music online (completely licensed and legit, of course), 8tracks is my choice.

I’m brewing up some more mixes (Country and Americana, Heroes of Indie, Canada, and the Inevitable Grrl Pop Mix are headings I’ve jotted down so far), but here’s one of only two I’ve managed so far: highlights from the albums I’ve really enjoyed so far this year.

Unfortunately, I’ve just found a snag with it: the ’embed’ code doesn’t work with WordPress – there should be a nice snazzy embedded player below, but it’s just showing a URL (let me know if you can see the full thing). Still, click on it and you should get to the mix.

http://8tracks.com/mixes/321341/player_v3

Best-of compilations 2005-10

I’ve had a bit of a play around with Spotify and recreated the best-of compilations I’ve done for each of the last few years as playlists. In a few places I’ve added tracks from records I only heard after the year finished, and in others most of my favourite records are missing from Spotify entirely (2005 is particularly ill-represented, for some reason). I might keep playing with these for a bit, but here are the links:

• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2010.

The John Kell Vs Satan Best Albums of 2010 Spotify list

I was going to wait until I had a full top ten run-down blog post to accompany this, but I may as well put it up now: here’s my carefully-sequenced Spotify list of tracks from my favourite albums this year.

Note that’s not my favourite songs of the year (check out my podcasts across the year for some more of those), but a track each from my favourite albums, with two caveats: anything not on Spotify isn’t there (I’d haveincluded some Arcade Fire and Loves, the latter from their final album, officially released in 2011 but already available to order); and I limited it to what would fit on a CD, roughly speaking.

I’ll have a blog post of my top 10 albums, another one on my other favourites, plus a third rounding up what I thought of the other records that came my way, before the end of the year.

Enjoy – and if you have an equivalent list, do share it in the comments below.