My New Friend Dizzler

I've been a fan of music on the Internet since Napster in the mid 90's. Of course the plight to find music online in segments longer than 30 second samples has been one of ups and downs. When I saw them arresting some grandma who's grandson downloaded music to her computer off of Kazaa, I decided it would be best to find alternative sources. While those "issues" have been resolved, now it's not free.

I started using Launch for quite some time and still go back there. I like it because it easily sorts music by genre on it's stations and allows for some good customization of your personal music choices. Even though Yahoo now owns it and muddied it up a bit, I still use it.

Later I jumped to Pandora and liked it because it was easier to set up and manage than Launch was. and gave me a better random exposure to new music that I might like.

Then there are the actual radio stations that broadcast live via Internet. These are good, but the traffic reports from New Jersey aren't real relevant to me.

Finally, just yesterday I came across a new one. This one has some real teeth and goes beyond just music. It covers video, games and live radio as well as music. Dizzler is a free web based application that searches for online streaming media that you can use through it's player.

It allows you to create a play list of your favorites and will cycle through them all for you. While it's maybe not the best way to listen to music like you would a radio station it is great to listen to songs you have stuck in your head, but don't want to buy from iTunes.

It also offers a business application. I'm not exactly sure how it works yet, but I've got ideas on how to integrate pod casting into a player on a website using Dizzler.

So check it out and give me your thoughts on where you get your music.