The main distinction in this list are those sites that let you listen to the songs you want to hear or listen to the songs they want you to hear. Also, there are even some sites/services that you download those songs for free. Enough talk, let’s get to the list.

Last.fm recommends music based on what you enter as a seed for the site. Their site is pretty easy to surf around and find music, and in most cases you can choose what you want to listen to, you can add songs to your library and some other nice options. They do offer some free music downloads but it’s very limited and probably not the songs you really want.

Songbeat 360 is a very strange to me. They don’t charge you for music but they do charge you to search. So if you use their application, you can download any number of songs you find on your search. The first 25 credits are free and then very cheap after that. If you don’t want to pay for anything you can try the trail and use the 25 credits. It’s a very interesting concept.

Moof.com is a new music site that allows listeners to search for music, add music to their library and listen to this music for free. It semes they are just streaming YouTube videos, but the service is fairly decent. The only issue I had was that some of the sound quality wasn’t up-to par. Also, when searching for a new song as one is playing stops the current song. This is kind of a deal breaker for me, but if it’s not for you then check it out.

Tun3r, If you are looking for live radio stations then Tun3r is the place for you. This site searches stations all over the place to find something you’d be interested in listening to. It’s a pretty nice service if you have that one station you want to listen to for free online. They don’t offer downloads or much of selecting the actual song to play, but they do provide you with a wide variety of stations to listen to.

Spool.fm provides a very nice way to search and share songs. You can skim songs, which some services don’t let you do. It’s a very nice online player that really takes out some of the negatives that other sites have. However, like with most all of these sites you can’t download the music, but overall it’s a nice free player.

AOL Radio is a simple online radio station. Not so simple in the user interface though. It’s pretty complicated, but to make up for that they do have a wide variety of things to listen to. Give it a shot if you’re into listening to the radio. It’s is filled with advertisements though, which is a major drawback for me.

SkeemR allows you to search for musc and listen to that music, which is DRM free, but also it provides you the direct link to download the .mp3 file to your computer. It also ranks the files quality and lets you listen to it before you download it. Everything on the site is free so I recommend you checking here before turning to limewire or kazaa.

Gooveshark is a great site for music streaming. They allow you to search their library for a song, add it to the play list and start playing. You can search for new songs while your music is playing or you can enable auto-play which will play similar songs to what was put in your play list. Overall a great site for listening to music for free. They have a very nice interface as well, but my favorite feature is browsing poplar songs. This keeps me in the loop of what’s hot.

Pandora is one of those services that evolves as you use it. It basically streams songs that it thinks you will like based on songs you have either thumbed up or down. When I first started their matching (what I actuallyed liked instead of what they thought I liked) wasn’t very good, but it gets better and better as you use it. Now most songs that it picks out are pretty accurate. Great service and easy to use. Free of course.

MP3 search allows anyone to search for a song or artist and then download it. Simple and easy.  If you are interested in more online music sites, check out the list here.

If you have any suggestions for listening to or downloading music online please comment below to let me know.