CoreJazz Tech: 8tracks.com

Time magazine just released its top 50 Websites of 2011, and one of the sites listed is 8tracks.com, a music sharing site of interest to jazz fans. 8tracks allows a user to create a mix or playlist of eight or more cuts and share that mix online. The benefit of this approach over something like Pandora is that the playlists have more of a "real person" feel to them.

Other benefits include the following:

• You can tag your mixes and follow those tags to find music that you like. There is, for example, a tag for "jazz", and by my estimate, there are over 6,000 mixes tagged with "jazz." For example, there's a mix entitled "Jazz for getting ready", which features "Willow Weep for Me" (Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson), "Lover Come Back to Me" (Cassandra Wilson), and some other wonderful numbers.
  
• You can find mixes with specific tags ("piano jazz") or specific artists ("Art Tatum") and mixes created by your Facebook friends.
  
• You can also follow other 8tracks members who share your tastes.
  
• 8tracks also lists other mixes that are similar to the one that you are listening to.
  
• You can embed mixes on another site, as I have done below.
  

One final benefit. It's all legal. The folks at 8tracks pay the necessary licensing fees to the music companies.

I have only come across a couple of downsides so far. First, your computer has to support Flash. Second, you are limited to the number of cuts that you can skip in a given mix. So if that mix with Art Tatum at the end starts off with Justin Bieber, well, you'll just have to be patient.

Otherwise, 8tracks.com is a nice little Internet service. I highly recommend it.

Robert