Website Reviews   

Perhaps I've been living under a rock, but I've just now discovered AOL's Full CD Listening Parties.

Each week, they bring you a handful of new albums that you can listen to in their entirety. The best part is it's all free, all the time. You can even grab the Full CD Listening Party RSS feed so you'll always know what new CD's they've got on tap.

The Full CD Listening Party is a great way to discover new music for free and see if you like a new CD before you buy it.

Prefer to watch your music? Shop for concert DVDs right here on Jamtopia.

Want to find out what music people are writing about, listening to, watching, and downloading?

Look no further than the BBC's recently launched Sound Index, bringing you the top 1,000 artists and tracks every 6 hours.

A massive index of the hottest bands and tracks that are being talked about right now.

It's basically music charts meets social networking — the Sound Index crawls Bebo, MySpace, Last.fm, iTunes, Google and YouTube — and the more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up they rank.

My favorite part is the “My Index” area. Here you can filter the results by music genre, website, or even the views of people of different ages, genders, and locations to effectively build your own chart.

And if you're looking for something really specific, try the “Profiles” feature where you can search for a specific artist or track to see how they rank.

The site says they're still tweaking the data and algorithms, and I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with it. This is definitely NOT your father's music charts!

P.S. On the surface, the concept sounds similar to The Hype Machine, which I described as a great way to discover new music, but the execution couldn't be more different — and both are worth a look.

I just discovered The Hype Machine and had to spread the word. It's an mp3 jukebox of songs scraped from a huge list of music blogs, with a bunch of ways to discover, listen to, and buy the tunes.

Here's a sampling of what you'll find there:

• Front Page: What's going on right now in the music blogosphere
• Radio + Chat: Popular & newly posted music & a place to talk about it
• Popular: The most popular artists, searches and blogs right now
• Hype Spy: Snoop on what other people are listening to
• 2007 Music Zeitgeist: The best songs, albums and bands through the eyes of bloggers

You could get lost on The Hype Machine for hours, or you could just pop-open the Popular Blog Tracks player and go about your business. Either way, you're sure to discover some great new music.

I learned about the incredibly unique Take Away Shows from French music blog La Blogothèque in a recent issue of Wired Magazine and had to check it out.

You meet a band. You take them outside, in the streets, and ask them to play there, shoot the movie in one unique shot, whatever happens.

Each week they feature a live “concert” session with a band roaming through unusual urban environments, intermingling with passers-by and interacting with the incredible scenery.

Amazingly, they're always filmed as a single shot with no cuts, so of course spontaneity abounds.

Most of the sessions come from lesser-known bands (at least to me!) but I watched a few from familiar names like Andrew Bird, The Arcade Fired, The Shins, and Beirut.

If you want see live concert videos shot like you've never seen before, don't miss Take Away Shows. C'est fantastique! You can also get their podcast on iTunes and RSS for live music videos on the go.

With over 800 exclusive live concert videos from the Paradiso and Melkweg clubs in Amsterdam, Fabchannel is one of the largest concert archives on the web. Best of all, the entire collection is free and on-demand!

I've barely even scratched the surface, but having watched a few names I'm more familiar with like The Datsuns and Black Keys I can safely say this site rules face.

All the videos appear to have superb audio and video throughout, and even in full screen mode these streams really hold up.

And as if 800+ free high-quality live concert videos wasn't good enough, there's also the Fabchannel “vodcast” (link opens in iTunes) featuring free live concert videos for your iPod with a new track every work-day.

Hope you're not busy for like a month!

Find more live concert videos with Jamtopia's Concert DVD Finder.