Hands on with Sky Songs
With Spotify dominating the music streaming world in 2009, it surely couldn’t be long before something else was hot on its tail. Indeed, this has come in the form of the new Sky Songs subscription based music streaming and download website and I have to say, it is pretty damn cool!
Having launched in beta on both PC and Mac computers at the end of October, Sky Songs is definitely comparable to Spotify in the sense that is a music streaming model which provides the user with instant access to download or stream your favourite songs. The library comprises of over 4,000,000 tunes and I think one of the main advantages of this site is that it is simple, easy to navigate around and current.
As someone who is a bit of a celeb and music junkie, the best part of Sky Songs for me was the editorial. It has teamed up with the incredibly popular pop music blog Popjustice and the UK’s leading online celeb gossip site Holy Moly which means that not only can you listen to your favourite artists at the click of a button, but you can also read the latest news, information and goss on them. When you click on a band or artist you immediately gain access to a page which documents their biography, an image and then a song selection of their tracks on the right hand side. At the bottom section of the same page you also get snippets of latest news and articles relating to that band/artist which you can click on to view the full article. It’s fantastic to have one hub that fulfils your music and latest music news needs and I think this is what definitely separates Sky Songs from other sites such as Spotify (aside from your music being interrupted by advertisements).
The ways of listening to the music are firstly via streaming whereby your chosen songs can be played immediately through the Sky Songs web player. The second method is through downloading. Once you have found a song or album that you would like to download, you can choose to either use your monthly allocation of songs or use your registered credit or debit card. You can the download your chosen music via the Sky Songs Download Manager which will send your songs straight to your iTunes or Windows Media Player. Simple! There are two packages that you can choose with Sky Songs; £6.49 per month including 10 downloadable songs or £7.99 per month for 15 songs.
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In my personal view, every website should be designed in an easy to navigate manner whereby the user is constantly engaged with interesting content and images. Sky Songs has definitely achieved that. It is a fun, light hearted site that keeps you up to date on the current music scene as well as providing the user with a huge ever growing library of music which you can select via specific artist or browse by genre. The service also allows you to share your playlists with friends, as well as posting links to your favourite tunes and playlists via all the major social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Sky is a renowned, respected and trusted brand and I definitely think for the wide selection of information at your fingertips the monthly subscription is fantastic value for money.
