How To Find Music On The Internet

I recently discovered how simple it can be to track down a favorite song thanks to all the music on the Internet - even if you only have a couple of words. Not only can you find the song to download, but much to my surprise, without thinking much about it, there are so many other options that it's phenomenal! I just wasn't aware that there were that many possibilities.

My story starts when I was recently at a swim aerobics class. As we often do, we were going through the gyrations of our workout to tunes on the radio. As my luck would have it, a song came on that I've heard maybe once or twice but just never put a song title or performer to it. I think I may have even seen it on the CMA awards and forgotten about it - but when I heard it this time, I knew I really loved it and wanted to buy it - soon!

Over the next few hours of course, the song played over and over in my mind - with only the couple of words that I could remember! I did a couple of searches through my own IPod thinking since I vaguely recalled it, I must have it somewhere! Of course, it began to niggle at me when I couldn't find it so I gave up and did what I usually do when I got home - I Googled the only couple of words I could remember.

Well, within seconds, I found the song that was playing in my head - Need You Now by Lady Antebellum - and I also found over the next few days a myriad of options where this song was concerned that I had never even thought about! (At this point, the term OCD comes to mind!)

Photo Credit: Flickr by Gramophoto

Needing my song now (no pun intended), I went to iTunes. I have thousands of songs that I've downloaded and then transferred to my iPod.

It was almost too easy as I could buy the song Need You Now for a little over a dollar - or the entire album (coincidentally of the same name). Of course I picked the album - instant gratification!

From my Googling though, I noted of course I could also go to Amazon.com and download the MP3 version of the song for slightly less - or the entire album. (I could also order the CD here as well if I could be patient and wait for it to be shipped to me!)

But not quite satisfied as that was just all too easy, then I decided I'd like to know the lyrics so that when I sing along, I'll actually get them right. After a few minutes of searching, I found the rest of the song that I was missing on elyricsworld.com

Most folks would quit here I have no doubt. But now that I was really on a roll, I decided to check out Youtube and see if they had any videos of Lady Antebellum performing Need You Now that I could watch it and bookmark it for another day. Wow! I hit the jackpot!

My favorite is the first video - Lady Antebellum performing Need You Now at the CMT Awards in 2009 - only 991,906 views or so - the song must be really popular....go figure!

Then I found something else! There happens to be another version on Youtube with the lyrics (with the song playing in the background). It has only about 4,342,662 views! For the hearing 'challenged' such as myself when it comes to lyrics, this a perfect bookmarking site so I can perhaps memorize the words WITH the music and get them right!

As if I didn't have enough to think about, I next stumbled across free ringtones for Need You Now so of course I had to check that out. In short order, I had downloaded the ringtones for my new favorite song to my phone as well. It'll work until I find a new favorite song!

Thinking that I'd pretty much covered everything I needed to cover with my new favorite song, I was going to leave things as is. I had downloaded the album, bookmarked the videos, and had my ringtone in place - what more could I ask?

Something else started to niggle at my brain though - I have a digital piano and I do play - it's good to stay in practice of course by playing every now and again. But I am the kind of piano player who has to have music. So I started to wonder about downloading sheet music. I know you can order music on-line and have it shipped to you. I also heard you could download it on-line to your printer - but I've just never done it.

So after a few minutes of searching, I found Lady Antebellum's Need You Now on musicnotes.com. While you can view the first page of the song and even transpose it to a different key, you have to purchase the song to be able to print the entire 7 pages of the song on your computer.

Well, $5 didn't seem like that much money to pay for 7 pages of a song I really wanted to learn to play and the arrangement looked like something I could handle - so I paid my money and downloaded my song!

I have to interject here that it was written in E major so 4 sharps - I toyed with it for a bit and transposed it with their little tool into the key of C but thought I'd rather have the 'real sound' so went ahead and downloaded it in E major. I could have purchased it twice of course and downloaded it in E major and C - but for my purposes, it's all good.  More brain power necessary and all that!

The neatest thing though was that after I paid the money and printed off my 7 pages to happily plunk away at my piano with, I noticed that the song had downloaded in its own program as well. The program is called Music Notes Player - the entire printed song opens in the program once you click on the .mtd file.  Once you open it, it leads you/plays through the song showing you how to play it. It would be great for things like phrasing, tempo, etc. It has its own controls, etc. so that you can slow it down or play it normal speed. I think it also lets you play along on your computer although I haven't gotten that far yet!

Also from musicnotes.com, another program downloaded called Guitar Guru.  I checked it out as well just because - you can play digital sheet music on it, or any music I imagine - or learn to play the guitar on it! Another day!

So now I have the sheet music and all the forms of this song I can possibly have, right? But I had a feeling there was still more so I went back to Youtube to search again. The next thing I found were some piano tutorials on how to play Need You Now . Some were quite informative about chords so I thought that those were worth bookmarking as well!

On the first tutorial piano version, I have to add the disclaimer that hopefully I will have better hand position and fingering - and perhaps expand the chords a little better! If my mother sees that hand position or the fingering on the tutorial duplicated - yikes - I can see a ruler coming out right quick!

Of course just to satisfy my curiosity, I had to watch and bookmark the tutorials on playing Need You Now on guitar, even though I do not own a guitar nor do I know how to play a guitar. I have to say I just thought it was fascinating and that's what I'm sticking with!

I guess my whole point of this hub is that I can't believe how many choices there are available when it comes to music on the Internet and download potentials.

It's not so much the free download potential market that I'm addressing here of course - it's the concept that no matter what song you might want to listen to or learn to sing or play, the possibilities are endless!

To recap:

• You can first of all find the song, even if you only have a word or two of the lyrics.
  
• Then of course you can find all the artists that ever performed it.
  
• Then you can download either the song or an album in its entirety.
• You can find most likely many supporting videos of someone performing the song.
• You might even find a video that displays the lyrics for you so you can learn to sing along - just like karaoke!
  
• You can download ringtones to play your song on your phone!
• You can find sheet music on line to download in whatever key your little heart desires.
• You can probably find a tutorial video on tips on playing the song on your given instrument!
• If you really want to go overboard and learn a new instrument, you can also download sheet music for another instrument as well as a program to learn it.  Then you can probably find a video on tips on how to play it on that instrument.
  
• I could not find a tutorial on playing Need You Now on accordion so I'm sticking with the piano - for now.

Yes, I do realize that I perhaps went a little overboard on finding Internet media based options for this one song - that does not mean that I'm certifiable. It just means that I'm dedicated. I somehow got wrapped up in it and intrigued by the fact that every time I thought I'd found the last bit of resources to tap where this song was concerned, I seemed to find another. It became a sort of research game - and now I know I can do it for any song.

All kidding aside, it is a remarkable thing that if you hear a song and love it, you can find it almost instantly.  You can get more information on the lyrics and the music itself.  You can listen to folks performing it.  You can also learn to play the song or view tutorials that help you understand how it was written or 'should' be played or sung. Technology in this regard is simply marvelous!

I think as a musician, the sky is the limit and music on the Internet is a great place to find your favorite songs if not a new hobby!