From boingboing.net: Every issue (from 1985 to late 2009) of SPIN magazine is available on Google Books.

Next to Rolling Stone, SPIN is one of the most recognized music magazines. SPIN is known for placing up-and-coming artists on their covers (i.e., REM, Run-DMC, and Prince), covering a wide base of music (from hardcore punk to reggae, college bands to hip-hop) and for devoting time and space to controversial subjects (e.g., AIDS) during times when it was risky to do so.

Read the archives, in their entirety, for free!

Dewey Music basically searches through this entire list from the Archive’s website. You can listen to, download, remix, and share anything you see on this site legally and for free, which is a bonus. Dewey Music allows you to create playlists, share the music with others via Facebook, and music you choose continues to play as you search. In addition to their general search, you can browse by genre, top rated, most played and newest uploads.

So far, I’ve found Dewey Music’s search features a lil’ buggy. Searches were dropped, I had to hit “go” twice in order for results to show, and the search engine didn’t produce recordings that I could find by directly using the Internet Archive’s audio search page. Despite this, Dewey Music offers a lot of promise, however, to unlocking the fabulous goodness of the Archive’s music library.

I’ve heard folks make comments about how MTV and Vh1 rarely show music videos these days, moving to high-quality programming such as Tool Academy, Rock of Love, Parental Control and The Real World (which isn’t really so real is it?)* It makes one wish back to the simpler days of music…

Enter mtvmusic.com – MTV’s database of all their music videos. Fast facts: search by artist, song, genre…search for vintage videos (yeah, Wham is on there… so is C&C Music Factory, Billy Ocean, Milli Vanilli, Run DMC, and so on)…

Of course you can search YouTube for music videos – you can probably find all of the above there too, but mtvmusic.com has a social aspect to it where you can create playlists and share videos via the usual social media sites.

So take yourself back and watch a few vintage gems such as Ah Ha’s Take on Me or Aerosmith’s Crazy…

Or kick back and have some fun with the newer stuff, say, Beyonce’s Put a Ring on It?

I’ll leave you now with a pop-up video of Wham’s Wake me up before you Go-Go. Ah, memories:

*Now I do admit that I have been known to watch these shows on occasion… I work with students, so I need to know about pop-culture, right?

While testing out LyricRat, I tried to stump it with random lyrics from my eclectic music collection. I did stump it a few times, but not everything is perfect! It’s fun and worth a try if you ever need to do a lyrics search.

From their About page:

And then, this morning, I received a tweet from @DDclarke, who I assume is associated with Fimusy!, though his profile doesn’t have a bio nor an identifying picture (just the o_O).

If it is someone from Fimusy!, I think it’s pretty neat that they contacted me via my blog and Twitter, asking for suggestions on how to improve their product. I am impressed that they are contacting folks/customers/users/potential users about their website. It shows they are going out of their way to improve their site and make sure they provide a good product.

In the blog post comment, they asked for suggestions to improve the site. (One suggestion I have is to add an ‘about page‘ to tell more about their product, goals, how they get the information, etc. I can read about it from others, but I’d rather hear more from you guys!)

In the twitter message the next day, @DDClarke told me they had just added the ability to play tracks straight from their site. I checked out the site – did a lil’ search for Arcade Fire – and discovered they really did add the ability to play tracks! I’m listening to Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) right now!

Good customer service, folks at Fimusy! (I hope that’s really you behind o_O!)

KillerStartUps.com has a short and sweet review about it, noting the highs and lows of the site. On a personal level, I say Fimusy has potential – the uploaded videos and pictures were quite original but the site as a whole didn’t overly wow me… I imagine that, over time, Fimusy could grow into something better.

Grooveshark.

Love music? Try it out.

I was listening to my Pandora music stations today at work and commented to myself how much I love Pandora. But this… this is pretty cool because if I want a certain song or want to listen to a certain artist, Grooveshark will give it to me (unlike Pandora, where it’s a surprise what’ll play next). I like the options to find new music similar to what I’ve chosen – Grooveshark provides recommendations. I’ve been trying it out and like what I’ve seen so far.

Photo credit: Musical notes from Wikimedia Commons

For an example of a video from UI, here’s a short clip of Nellie McKay talking about pirating music and the Recording Industry.