Social... It makes music, social.

There are now two music-related applications that I've begun using over the last few weeks that I am not so sure I can live without -- Turntable.fm and Spotify (which just launched in the US). Let me tell you quickly why they rock. And then go check them out.

Turntable.fm - This site has gained popularity very quickly and is a NYC born and bred web app. It's pretty simple, login with Facebook and enter a room where there are 5 DJ slots. If one is open, you can hop up. If not, kick back and listen to 5 people play (in a round robin format) whatever is in their playlists. Some rooms have themes like the "Jazz RnB Funk You Know The Good Stuff" and "DJ Woooooooo's House/Dance/Electro" while others are just random such as the "Coding Soundtrack". Either way you get to listen to cool music while "hanging" with your virtual friends. Cool, right?

Spotify - Sure, it's been around in Europe for over a year but it just came to the US today. With the MacOS app it works just like iTunes (but 100 times better) for playing your local music but also lets you stream almost any song you can think of. In addition, you can connect your account to Facebook (see a trend here?) and see the shared playlists of all of your friends. With that I now know that @thatdrew is into Lady Gaga and Ashlee Simpson (on his DrewzBeatz playlist) and that my friend Vivek Sodera has a softer side that likes to listen to Michael Buble (on his slow jams list).

Both of these sites allow me to connect with a lot of my friends in a way that isn't usually possible when they're all the way on the other side of the world or even the other side of town. I can share some music and become a bit more cultured with them in close-to-real-time. That's pretty cool. I can also discover some new things to add my collection.

Why hello there "Bonobo - If You Stayed Over", glad Courtney helped me discover you.