If there is one thing that everybody uses the Internet for its music. With less diversity on the radio and rising album prices, the Internet has become more popular, less expensive, and a much faster alternative in finding the music you love. In rural America most people have dial up for Internet making buying music online more of a pain then a convenience.

Now with Satellite Internet you can download all of your favorite music at speeds 30x faster then dial up. Satellite will give you all the advantages the Internet has to offer in rural America, as they do in the cities.

So whether rap or rock, jazz or country, indie or classical, no matter what your taste in music is Satellite Internet will make it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for. With new music being released everyday from a countless number of artists the Internet has been somewhat of a gold mind for new and old music. The Internet gives you options when it comes to your music. You don’t want to buy the whole album? No problem, just pick and choose the tracks you want to buy. Can’t find your favorite artist in stores? Just jump online and download their album. Wild Blue can turn your Internet into a stop shop for music. This should get you started.

Finding Music On The Internet

Music downloading services have made it easier then ever to find and listen to your favorite artist. These services offer millions of songs in almost every kind of genre you can think of. As far as finding the right music and finding it fast, the better downloading services let you search for music by artist, song title, or album. Best of all, songs are priced so that they don’t break the bank.

Listen Before You Buy

When you buy a CD at the store you don’t really know if you will like it. With music downloading services they allow you to preview part or sometimes all of a song. This is important to do. This also reassures you are buying the right song, version, or mix that you want.

Playing Your Music

Almost all of the downloading services have a built in music player and organizer. This makes downloading, playing and keeping track of you music very easy. Also if you have a portable music device like an iPod or Zune, you can transfer the downloaded music to your device to take with you in your car, to work, to the gym, or where ever you want to listen to music. This makes it convenient for when you’re on the move.

What Music Download Services Should Have

MP3 Music Selection

Downloading services should have a wide selection of music and artist across all genres. A 6 to 7 million-song library is considered average 8 million would be ideal.

Search Capabilities

A download service should give you the ability to find music fast and easy allowing you to search by artist, album, song title, and even genre. With out those search options it will be very hard to find what you’re looking for.

Features

You should look for a service that offers more then just a place to download. Some features to look for are things like a built in music player, song preview, album covers, and even detail info about the artist you are downloading.

Pricing

Buying an album in stores can set you back $15 bucks. Song prices online start at around 49 cents. 99 cents is the normal going rate when it comes to better downloading services and something you can land a discount when you buy the whole album at once. Anything more then 99cents, you should just go buy the album.

Best Downloading Services

iTunes

Has a great library of songs with more then 8 million available track for purchase. Awesome built in music player. Great features like song preview and a built in organizer for all your music. ITunes also has additional content like TV shows, movies, audiobooks, and more. Songs are to be used on an iPod only, but that’s ok considering the iPod is the number 1 MP3 player out there.

Napster

Has a solid library of songs with a little more then 7 million. Great search engine finding the right song even if you spell the title wrong. Has a built in music player, but it could be better. Songs are compatible with any portable device, great for people who don’t have iPods.

AmazonMP3

Their music library is a just ok having barely 6 million but they are adding new songs everyday. Search engine is somewhat lacking with a single search box giving the most relevant results. They do have compatibility with all portable devices and they are cheaper then other services with songs starting at .79 cents.

Rhapsody

They have a great search engine giving you suggestions on what to search for. Music downloads; player, and organizer are simple, fast, and easy to use. Where Rhapsody fails is their library. Rhapsody, originally a streaming service, has over 5 million song but only 3 million are available for download. The rest of the library is for streaming only.

Way back at the beginning of this decade we’ve come to know as the ‘noughties’, it was The Libertines that first kick-started the new revolution of bands loudly and proudly proclaiming their London roots; name-checking both Caledonian Road in Islington and Vallance Road in Bethnal Green on their debut album, ‘Up The Bracket’. Later, rapper Dizzee Rascal also paid homage to his hometown through his rhymes – “I socialise in Hackney and Bow / I wear my trousers ridiculously low”.

Likewise, during the 1960s and 1970s bands such as The Kinks, The Clash and The Jam penned numerous odes to their hometown, most notably The Clash’s anti-Racism anthem “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”.

So it’s not that this was a new trend; it was just that London bands proclaiming their hometown pride had become scarce in music for over a decade. Previously, for example, in the late 1990s, Manchester had stolen most of the nation’s musical limelight, with the emergence of the massively popular ‘Madchester’ scene, as well as the rise of bands such as The Smiths and The Fall during the 1980s.

Today, London again seems to be experiencing something of a renaissance. A handful of recently founded independent record labels have helped breathe some new air into the somewhat smoggy London scene. Founded in 2004, Transgressive Records released early singles by recent Mercury Music Prize nominees ‘The Young Knives’. Its reputation for being synonymous with new cutting-edge British indie music soon saw it snapped up by Warner Brothers as a subsidiary. Likewise, the Angular Recording Corporation was founded in 2003 and gave the likes of Bloc Party their first exposure.

Meanwhile, London girls Lily Allen and Kate Nash were looking to the internet as their means of gaining mass exposure. Both soon took the mainstream by storm with their informal, colloquial vocal style (sample lyric: “You look well nice”) and both saw their debut albums hit the top of the charts.

London’s live scene is a deep ocean of talent, largely made up of acts massively popular in the capital, but yet to really make a mark elsewhere: acts such as Emmy The Great, who sits at the forefront of the London anti-folk scene, was the latest to perform a Black Cab Session, a gig that takes place inside a genuine, moving London black cab and then gets posted on YouTube.

And how about Wallis Bird, whose powerful voice and noisy guitar is sure to have her hailed as “the new KT Tunstall” in nationwide publications before very long; or George Pringle and her unique brand of spoken word electro. All of these musicians and more have healthy representation on the London circuit, and fans from outside the capital can get in on the act too – there are a selection of hotels in London available to suit all accommodation needs (just make sure your room hasn’t been trashed by an over excited rock star!).

In terms of the future of British music, London certainly seems to be a hotbed of talent to keep an eye (and ear) on.

Recently I got in touch with some friends and new indie music anoraks that were able to tell us a bit from the ‘inside’ – so here are the new indie pop music names that are expected to have a huge impact on our ears this year, organised into three neat little categories for your reading pleasure.

New Indie Music with a Touch of Electro

You will have heard teasers of this genre, set for explosion, within the more classic indie and pop songs of 2009. If you liked it, get to know names like:

• Free Energy – inspired by late 1970s-early 1980s classic rock, they’ll give you the type of song you’d go on a road trip to. Think AC/DC, and Thin Lizzy
• Two Door Cinema Club – a young new indie pop music trio who’ve toured with well known names like The Wombats
• French Horn Rebellion – a great new electro-pop threesome featuring two brothers from Milwaukee, who’ve managed everything from recording to releasing themselves
• Wild Beasts – they’ve been compared to the brilliant Maccabees and already raved about for their crazy and playful sounds, plus they’re amazing live.
• Delphic – from Manchester in the UK, these guys have already had numerous appearances in top festivals and on TV. And they deserve it – creating sounds you can play over and over again, Delphic really stand out amongst the genre.

Indie Music Pop Folk – A New Genre

Again, more ‘traditional’ folk styles were even creeping into mainstream music in 2009, but is set to feature heavily throughout new indie music pop and some rock in 2010 and beyond. Hurry up and and get listening to these people for great new indie pop music with folky undertones:

• Owen Pallett – previously going by the name Final Fantasy, Owen Pallett is a composer, a violinist, a singer, and an all-round great artist when it comes to fusing folk music with new indie pop music sounds
• Dan Mangan – Itunes named this guy “Best New Artist” in 2009, and now Vancouver’s newest and favourite indie folk-rock artist is going global – we can’t get enough of his music.
• Vandaveer – Check out the song Marianne, You’ve Done It Now. A great song on a great album, inspired by Dylan (who you’ll probably agree is one of the unofficial founders of new indie music!)
• Twilight Hotel – a Canadian duo producing exciting and varied new indie pop music within their genre. From the slower songs to the more fast paced vibrant tracks, don’t miss their stuff.
• Lindsey Thompson – more of a gentle sound, Lindsey’s clear vocals blend perfectly with soft melodies, and her lyrics complement her style perfectly.

New Indie Pop Rock and Punk

If the slower paces of new indie pop music don’t appeal, or your love for indie music stems from straight up punk rock, metal, and rock and roll, make sure you keep an eye on these bands: Screaming Females – although there’s actually only one Female in the band, these guys can deliver a brilliant performance consisting of passionate wailing and Jimi Hendrix inspired guitar playing

• Dinosaur Feathers – you’ll definitely find something unique and lovable in new indie music if you listen to Dinosaur feathers, a trio who simply love experimenting with sound.
• Evan Voytas – a young singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania, this multi-instrumental solo artist has perfected out an EP of rich and classic songs.
• Internet Forever – female lead new indie music with slight rock undertones, this trio is probably the ‘gentlest’ option of the list – check out their single ‘Cover The Walls’.

So Who Is The Favourite?

Previously, bands could only get heard through already established means, such as record stores and MTV. Because of the major costs associated with those channels, new indie bands could not gain recognition. Only indie rock bands on major record labels gained any popularity.

With the rising popularity of MySpace in the mid 2000s, indie bands started gaining momentum and popularity. New bands could add thousands of people as friends, and distribute free mp3s to every single fan connected to them instantly. Suddenly, the playing field for musicians was leveled. Indie bands that had never recorded a full independent album were instantly as popular as major acts who had toured for years.

An excellent example of a MySpace-popularized band is The Arctic Monkeys. The Sheffield band, who built up a substantial fan base through the internet in 2005, saw searches noticeably increase in the weeks leading up to the release of their debut single “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor”, which went on to take the #1 spot in the singles chart the week of 29th October 2005. Since then, Hitwise data reveals that searches on the band had gone into overdrive, increasing by 62% ahead of the release of their debut album, “Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not”.

New bands should pursue every available avenue for promotion. Many free tools are available that will popularize an indie band, such as MySpace, along with Facebook and PureVolume. You can build pages that promote your band and provide avenues for generating a fanbase in areas that were not normally accessible before.

One guy on Twitter recently posted an interesting question. Actually, it was more of a statement. He said, “Who in their right mind would want to be a musician in this environment?” I though to myself, who wouldn’t? I think there’s no better time to be an indie music artist than right now.

Obviously, the thrust of this guy’s question was that a music career isn’t lucrative anymore. I say, but it was never lucrative to begin with. Sure, a few people became megastars and made millions, but what about everyone else? You were lucky if the labels even paid attention to you. And if they did and you happened to get signed, you were extra lucky if you didn’t get totally screwed. At least now, everyone has a shot at making a decent living in music if they put enough effort into it.

Clearly, the author of that tweet isn’t a real indie music person. There’s an interesting anecdote about a magazine editor who asks a millionaire investor why he keeps doing what he does. The editor asks, “You’ve already made millions. Why do you keep risking your money and time trying to make more? I would have quit after I made my first million.” The investor responds, “That’s exactly why you would never make a million.”

The point is that you do something because you love it, not because you care about the money. If you love it, you’ll do it well. And if you do it well, the money will come. Maybe it won’t make you rich, but at least you’ll be doing what you love.

You know what the best part of it all is? If you are a real music person, economics and popular culture are on your side. Pop culture killed Top 40 Radio. In 2005, an average of one U.S radio station went out of business each week. I love the very idea that when Kanye West releases his new single on the radio, nobody really cares.

On March 21, 2000 Jive Records released “No Strings Attached,” the second album by NSYNC. It sold 2.4 million in its first week, making it the fastest selling album ever. That was only eight years ago. My, my, how the world has changed. Now people are exchanging tens of millions of songs on the P2P networks instead. The vast majority of them aren’t top hits. Some of them might be yours. Hopefully.

It wasn’t so much that file sharing made us stop buying music, but that file sharing exposed us to the vast universe of music out there that nobody knew about. The notion that file sharing killed the music industry because it made people stop buying top hits is one of the most persistent myths out there.

Case in point: the other day, I’m typing something up at my computer. And as I’m typing, I’m listening to a song by a New Jersey based band called A Little Affair, which I wrote up a review for recently. Even though they have areas where they could improve, I think their tracks are kinda’ chill. I wasn’t listening to Coldplay or 50 or The Smashing Pumpkins. I was listening to A Little Affair. Why? Because I could.

The Top 40 era is coming to a close, and music is more popular than ever, not less. Take it from Rupert Murdoch. In a 2005 speech he said, “Young people don’t want to rely on a God like figure from above to tell them what’s important. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.”

Their media is your opportunity. Forget the naysayers. If music is your calling, do it. Do it because you love it.