MySpace
Music made a splash onto the social networking scene in the early 2000s, when MySpace — then, the leading social-networking site — enabled users to explore new music, and bands to make a name for themselves by creating customized fan pages, uploading their music to be streamed and promoting upcoming gigs. While MySpace eventually lost its audience to Facebook, the site is in the process of making a comeback, with a total focus on music under the ownership of pop star Justin Timberlake. It now boasts what Pete Pachal, of Mashable, calls “a top-notch music player,” as well as music discovery tools. Pachal says this makes the site much more engaging than services like Pandora and Spotify, which are primarily for passive listening.

Pandora
With its ability to create customized radio “stations” according to the user’s tastes, Pandora became a popular, web-based streaming service after launching in 2005. Users can give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to songs to provide continuous fine-tuning of their station that is created around a particular genre. The free service is ad-supported, however users can subscribe to eliminate ads. Pandora shows off its social side by allowing users to “follow” friends to learn what they’re listening to, post songs they like to their own musical feeds, and “share” their stations with others.

Spotify
Launched in 2008 by a development team in Stockholm, Sweden, Spotify is a freemium service that includes streaming of full albums (including new releases), and creation of playlists and “stations” by genre. Basic users can stream a limited amount of music for free with advertising. Premium subscribers benefit from higher quality streaming, mobile app use and offline access to their playlists. In 2011, Spotify partnered with Facebook to allow users to share the music they were listening to on their Timeline.

Google
Jumping in with what has been called its “Spotify Killer,” Google launched All Access Music at its I/O Conference this week. Its offering is similar to Spotify’s and its price point is identical. However, All Access Music has no iOs app, no free plan and only allows listeners to share their songs on Google+. If it wants to keep pace with the likes of Spotify, its music collection will need to grow extensively.

Rdio
Rdio is a music subscription service launched by the founders of Skype. It allows you to listen to songs ad-free on your computer, mobile devices and blue-tooth systems like Sonos. Its library contains music from the four major record labels, as well as other sources. Rdio also offers social networking, allowing users to share playlists and follow others to see what music they listen to.

Twitter
Twitter recently launched its #Music app that ties iTunes, Spotify and Rdio services with social networks. The Guardian describes Twitter’s #Music as “a 21^st century version of the mixtape, with a new app that recommends tracks to music fans based on the artists they follow.” Using the app, you can listen to the latest releases from popular artists without ever leaving your social network. A #NowPlaying screen displays lists of songs mentioned by musicians and by the people you follow, allowing you to easily spot trends and jump on board.

SoundCloud
This free and ad-free “social sound platform” claims that its users post over 10 hours of music and audio to the site every minute. Within weeks after the release of #Music, SoundCloud added Google+ to its social media plugins, including Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Foursquare. As a result, social networkers can now log into SoundCloud’s mobile apps (for iOs and Android) and link their Google+ profile with SoundCloud. This makes it as simple for people to share music with their Google+ circles as it has been to share it with their Facebook friends.

EQuala
EQuala, a social radio app for your mobile device, allows you to stream music that comes specifically from what your friends and other music fans are listening to. When your Facebook friends listen to music streaming from Spotify or Rdio, EQuala gathers that data from Facebook and sends you selections from your friends’ music. The drawbacks are that you cannot choose the songs you want to hear and you can skip over only six songs per hour. Even so, EQuala tries to analyze your listening preferences to indicate who might be the best friends for you to follow. EQuala also offers tools that make it easy to share your own music tastes.

The syncing of music services and social networks has made it much easier to spot new trends quickly and to learn about the hottest bands before they’ve become mainstream. To make sure you’re always in the know about the latest breakout artist, a tool like MyLife’s social dashboard can come in handy. It aggregates the contents of all your social streams onto a single screen. This way, you can easily see what music your friends are listening to and talking about on all your networks – and you’ll never be out of tune with what’s cool.

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