5 Awesome Free Streaming Music Sites (Don’t Tell The RIAA!)

So what are the best sites for free streaming music online? Everyone knows about Pandora, last.fm, and Rhapsody, but here are five far superior websites that you’ve probably never even heard of.

1. Imeem. There are a lot of music social networks online, and a lot of them offer free streaming music, but Imeem is probably the only one that gets it right. You can stream high quality versions of pretty much any song you can think of for free. You can email, embed, and blog songs. Recommendations are more limited than on last.fm, but you can play related songs in a Pandora-esque player.
2. Seeqpod. Probably the most powerful free streaming music search engine on the internet. You can create playlists that can be embedded or sent to others, and often watch videos for the songs you find. There’s also a streaming iPhone version. Because of the flexibility and power of Seeqpod, many other developers have built their sites on top of the Seeqpod engine.

3. Hushie. Based on Seeqpod, but with the ability to download songs in addition to streaming them. You can also view discographies and search by ID3 tags. There’s also a music recommendations system, which isn’t as fancy as last.fm or Pandora, but nevertheless gets the job done. But the main reason to use Hushie is the download feature – something none of the other free streaming music sites have.
4. Favtape. Favtape is like the now-defunct Muxtape, but packed with extra features. For example, you can import your last.fm or Pandora bookmarks, view top songs from every year going back to 1901, view lyrics for every song. And like the other sites on this list, Favtape provides basic recommendations in the form of a “similar artists” list. Oh, and you can create and share “favtapes,” which are playlists/muxtapes.
5. Deezer. A Germany-based social music site. The most fun feature of this site is its “blind tests” – basically playlists where you have to guess the name of each track’s artist as quickly as you can to gain points. You can also make your own blind tests to send to your friends. You can also use the site to host and share your MP3s, and listen to genre-based radio stations. Plus, there’s an iPhone app that lets you access the site from your iPhone or iPod Touch. The downside? The selection of music that can be streamed for free is limited compared to the others on this list.

Each of these sites has something to offer. You could use Imeem for discovering new music, Hushie for downloading that music, Favtape for streaming your Pandora bookmarks, and Deezer for playing “guess the artist” with its blind tests.

But they all offer free streaming music, and features that you just can’t get on other sites.