2008 was my year of music, with the iPod connector in my new Motability car leading to an iPod for Christmas 2007 in turn leading to an iPhone (and, faithless me, I used to love my BlackBerry). I can watch a movie on my phone, go to youtube to listen to a song track from the film, visit wikipedia to find out about the band, then buy the song on iTunes, all from the comfort of a single digital device. The joys of technological convergence - a perfect storm.
And it's got even better. Credit crunching means spend less and one area to cut back is music. But I want to discover new artists. What can I do other than borrow CDs from the library? Enter last.fm. I remember reading about them ages ago and how they were seen to be the new hot thing in internet start-ups, camping in tents on office roofs, waiting for the big investment. Well, they got their cash, all £140m of it, from CBS as I read here. It's a brilliant concept, a sort-of Sky+ for music. You download the software, it listens to all your tracks then suggests things you might like. If you're into random social networking, it tells you who else likes that music. It tells you about the artist and where they're touring. But I use their "radio station" feature most. You choose an artist, then it live streams songs by similar musicians (with a "buy from iTunes" button). And you can have it on your iPhone. It's a joy.
As is Flixster. It let's you know what films are out, what's coming (on DVDs too), reviews, links to the movie trailers. It also has the social networking side. But their iPhone application has a killer feature: it uses the GPS in the phone to tell you what's on near you and the film times. You can also type in a postcode and it'll do the same for that area. It's quite brilliant.
And they're both free.
