THE ALBUM STREAMS PAGE

Ever since Fingertips launched in May 2003, I've kept a page here of full-album streams that I would come across intermittently in my online travels--new CDs by worthy artists that are available to listen to for free in their entirety somewhere (legally!) online. The list was always pretty random and idiosyncratic, which is fine. Just about everything on Fingertips is random and idiosyncratic.

But over the course of 2005 and into 2006, there have grown to be more and more places to go to find full-length album streams, and it's just never been my focus. So instead of offering a page of CDs that I've found, I will simply use this page to point you to the best resources I've found for full-length albums streams.

I may also use this page now and then to highlight a really notable CD that I find is available to stream somewhere. But mostly it'll now be devoted to this short list of album streaming resources. Note that there are two basic kinds of sites here: those that host the CDs themselves, and those that point to CDs that are hosted elsewhere. I'll list the host sites first.



ALBUM STREAMING RESOURCES


Host Sites

3voor12 - Luisterpaal
This is a Dutch site, in Dutch, leaving me with next to no idea what is going on here--except that, clearly, this site at any given time hosts a bunch of cool album streams. It's all very legal and above board, as the Luisterpaal (which might or might not mean "listening pole") is part of something called the VPRO, which is a television and radio network in the Netherlands. As far as I can see you'll find streams here that you won't anywhere else, and they change with unrelenting regularity. Best of all, the people behind this have really eclectic--and excellent--taste. Highly recommended; and thanks much to visitor Tom for the tip!

CNET music.download.com
This catch-all but intermittently valuable free and legal download site does have a few dozen full album streams available at any given time, but they don't make them easy to find. The best way to gather them in one place from what I've discovered is to search for the words "full album stream" in the search box, leaving the "artists" option in the drop-down menu to the right. This might do it for you, but then again, given the weird URL it produces, it might not.

Radio Indie Pop
This is an online radio station with a variety of available "channels"; every month the site features one new album streamed in its entirety. (Registration with an email address required.)

AOL Music - Full CD Listening Party updated
This isn't the greatest place to go to find streams, by any means--the selections are not always very good, the media player device doesn't seem to work too well (at least here in Mac-world it doesn't), and I (pet peeve!) don't like when something automatically loads and starts playing before I select what I want to listen to (which means more often than not some witless, market-hungry rap song thumps out of my speaker once the page loads). Also, they seem lately to have cut back from a couple of dozen albums to five. But it is on ongoing, updated resource so if you're really in the mood for more options, may as well check it out.

VH-1 Hear Music First
If you can put up with the clunky media player and the pungent aroma of commercialism, this can be a decent place to listen to CDs in full that have not quite been released yet. I think the idea here is there are three CDs available that are all due out the following week.


Pointer Sites

Free Albums Galore
This is a blog featuring a daily (or near daily) post linking to a free-to-download album available somewhere on the web.


updated 22 Oct 07







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