It's a rough time to be in the music industry, but it's a great time to be a music consumer; there days nearly every album worth hearing streams online for free around its release. Just years ago this was a novelty of the highest order: When a major musician streamed an album for free on MySpace, it was trumpeted with press releases and magazine coverage. These days, though, it's an industry standard, and the only suspense is which site any given album will stream on. MySpace and Lala are old standbys, but increasingly artists are using Spinner.com, which now has a new release listening-party page.
Right now for free you can listen to new albums from Amy Millan, Sea Wolf, Pearl Jam, Rain Machine, Islands, Richard Hawley, Early Day Miners and J. Tillman, among many others, with no fees, no pop-up ads and no registration required. Music consumers have never been better informed than they are right now.
