Free Music From the Internet

A great choice of free music is available to stream from music services such as Pandora, or Spotify, allowing you to listen to a vast selection without having to rip CDs or copy files.

Spotify (www.spotify.com) is new in this country and offers streaming music from a choice of more than 15 million songs.

Spotify offers several choices: What’s New details newly-released albums, including album art and track listing. Top Lists show the hottest tracks or albums chosen by other users. Feed connects to other users to share new finds or playlists and the latest news from Spotify.

We used the provided free software to build playlists by dragging and dropping tracks. Play for enjoyment, share with friends using Facebook, or sync the playlists with your iPod, iPhone, Android or (soon) iPad.

Spotify’s free version includes ads and a time limit. Premium version ($9.99/month) has no ads, unlimited access, enhanced sound quality and allows streaming to mobile devices.

Pandora (www.pandora.com) takes a different approach. Custom “radio stations” are created after you enter an artist, song or genre that’s used to match more than 100 characteristics to produce a playlist for you.

Refine the selections by indicating those you like or don’t. You won’t see the playlist, and selections are randomized, but when we used Pandora, we were usually happy with their selections.

The free version lets you set up radio stations and stream music, has a time limit, and includes ads. Pandora One ($36/yr) offers unlimited time, no ads and improved quality sound. Mobile versions are available for iPhone, iPad and iPod.                                   

More Life With An iPad

 We keep finding fun and effective ways to use our iPad, but we’re also hearing from readers who found it helpful in other ways. A reader who has a medical condition that made it impossible to hold books for reading or sit without pain when using a computer found the inherent mobility and flexibility of the iPad helped with both problems. The reader said “the iPad gave me back my books, my computer games and Internet!”

The included Internet browser, based on Apple’s Safari, allows searching, surfing and more. Internet uses open a world of opportunities. We can go to our favorite sites from our iPad with touch ease and enjoy all the Internet has to offer--all with us wherever we are. Also bundled with the iPad is Apple’s Mail program, which can support several email accounts, so we each can check our email and reply, print or delete messages. Internet and email do require being logged on at a WiFi hotspot (including your home wireless network) or having the 3G/4G version of the iPad, and printing requires a network connected printer.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of all we can do, and we’re  still learning. Stay tuned.