Wired has created a monster by listing the ten hottest music sites; inevitably it's a subject that people feel passionate about, and plenty of readers disagree with the selection - or rather the omissions.
In no particular oder:
• Imeem: The music-sharing site is the best site for embedding music, says Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk, but it only allows 30-seconds of each track
• ivideosongs: The guitar tutorials site offers some for free and others for under $10, some of which are taught by the songwriter.
• Omnifone: Unlimited song downloads on mobile for a monthly fee. This is a UK firm but is looking to launch in the US.
• MOG: A community site where fans can listen, blog, add lyrics and watch videos of bands.
Lightspeed Champion at Primavera Sound 2008 Photo by alterna2 on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
• Muxtape: Yes, it does one thing and does it very well - create an online mix tape. So much nostalgia in one URL.
• RDRC LBL: The excellently-named site form the guys behind Engadget and Downtown Records pays indie bands for their music while offering it to punters for free.
• SeeqPod: A specialist search tool for MP3s - it doesn't host music but allows users to compile playlists, and stores the location of files.
• Sellaband and SliceThePie: Similar but different, both sites ask fans to invest in the bands they like, and then use that money to help bands record an album.
• TuneCore: Allows musicians can submit music to the major distribution platforms - iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody etc. A true 'long tail enabler', as Wired says.
• YouTube: Not an immediately obvious choice, but, as Van Buskirk says, hordes of loyal users, a generous embedding policy and an increasing number of deals with labels.
MySpace, Last.fm, Pandora, Qtrax, Hype Machine, CloudTrade, Blogspot and Slacker all get honourable mentions.
For the time-starved, Muxtape takes some beating for its simplicity. But this site is disappointingly US focused because it's hard to imagine Last.fm not featuring in a UK list of ten music sites.
Songkick really deserves a mention too - the Y Combinator-backed project is very sensibly focussing on the resurgence of live music and those guys are headed somewhere very interesting. I'll smuggle them into the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast soon.
So who else did Wired miss?
