Soundtrckr – This music Web 2.0 central aims to be your one stop for all your music needs. Soundtrckr is a free music service that allows you to tune in to more than 10 million (!) songs which you can listen to, mix into a customized playlist and share it all round. Other cool features from this free service include real-time music listening with friends in different locations, and finding gigs of your favorite artists near you.

Sign in and be sure to install the mobile version as well so you could enjoy all the Soundtrckr goodness on the go. There really isn’t another music hub with such an emphasis on social networks. Give it a try!

Weezic – This website is a unique take on music practice. Download and print music sheets, choose your own tempo and then play with a whole orchestra (mp3 accompaniments), or even record your interpretation of a known piece and share it on the site.

To learn more about Weezic and how it can be your best online musician friend, see the video below.

Earbits – This super cool website offers an innovative way to consume music freely online, and discover new artists along the way. What starts out as a simple-looking page with 13 music genres to choose from (there’s also a ‘shuffle all’ option) soon turns into a most rewarding experience that not only looks amazing, but also provides high quality music sounds.

To give you the perfect example of what Earbits is about, see the image below, the listening page for Blues. The most eye-grabbing part here is the image of the artist himself (in this case Boo Boo Davis). The name of the artist will show on the bottom left side of the page, and clicking “view more” will pull you down to an informative bio and discography section of the artist you’re listening to.

In addition, Earbits have worked hard to make sure the social aspect of this service is as best as it can be; you can give each song a thumbs up or down, and when connected to the site via Facebook you can share whole songs with your friends, even tweet the track you’re listening to! Now that’s socially rewarding.

UJAM– This innovative website is essentially a “new technology platform which everyone can use to compose, produce, and publish their own music. Share your musical creativity with your friends and music fans around the world!”

Making use of UJAM’s full list of features would take a pro, it seems, but if you’re into music, this is definitely the place for you to practice your DJ and composing talent. As much as I would have liked to create a cool jam, my efforts came out disappointing, to say the least. But I’m sure you could do much better. After you log in, start with the Getting Started section and then proceed to the Application – where the magic happens.

MTVNHD Experience – MTV has created a cool music project that invites you to pick your music style (club, metal, hip-hop, pop and rock), upload a photo from your computer or take one using your webcam, and star in your music video of choice. The high definition video clip is amazing, and it’s always rewarding to see yourself at the center of the action, with the dance girls swirling around you. Can you guess who is my star in the screen shot below? Hint: he loves snow and reindeer.

Hitlantis – Seems like music discovery sites are popping everywhere on the Web, and for a good reason. On the one hand, the Web is supposed to be a bottomless well of information that is just a click away, but on the other hand, it’s almost impossible to reach those new upcoming artists taking a shot at stardom.  Hitlantis belongs to the same overall niche, only it showcases artists in a totally different way.

You start off with the home screen above. No, this isn’t the color pallet at Home Depot, it’s Hitlantis’ amazing approach to showing you what music discoveries are out there. Zoom in using the magnifying glass icon on the left and search for the colors (using the legend) representing your preferred music styles (mine are turquoise and yellow – Electro and Blues, respectively).

To give a more specific example, see the screen shot below showing the artist KSU, a blues band. As you can see, the interface is beautifully designed to allow easy listening to your chosen songs, and you can vote for your favorite tracks as well. Each bubble represents a different artist and displays that artist’s ‘hotness’ rank with a numerical value.

Hitlantis is amazing in every possible way; the music variety is huge, the unique interface is super cool and the sound quality is top notch. I’m adding this one to my personal favorites!

mySpoonful – Playing on the small dose metaphore, mySpoonful introduces small music bites -one independent artist at a time, three times a week- to “busy people.” Each post includes a photo and a bio paragraph about the artist, along with a free mp3 track for users to listen to and download if they wish.

mySpoonful reminds me of another website, One Track Mind, also offering a bite-sized dose of independent music discovery experience. mySpoonful’s content is outstanding, and it’s nice to read meaningful and inspiring paragraphs by professionals who really understand the music industry. This is a must stop if you ask me. Here’s my top pick on mySpoonful, Pepper Rabbit, a band from Silverlake, Los Angeles with their beautiful track Older Brother, which I already downloaded of course!

Bloginity – One of the most prevalent website categories online today is that related to ‘entertainment’. There are hundreds if not thousands of gossip and celebrity sites and blogs, TV and film sources and many others under the entertainment umbrella. Standing out in this overcrowded arena is not only difficult, it’s almost impossible. But one particular site has managed to do just that with tons of style: Bloginity.

TuneCrank – Do you have a band and think it’s time to stop rehearsing in your parents’ garage and expose your music to the world? Check out TuneCrack, a free service that helps independent musicians and artists to reach audiences online.

TuneCrank “finds, ranks and streams the best independent music out there for the whole world to hear.” Visitors can listen to each uploaded track and rank it (you can choose between ‘awesome’ – the hand gesture for rock, thumbs up or thumbs down). In addition, you can see each track’s play count, and if you click the plus sign to the right of each track box, you will see how users have ranked this song thus far. I played some tunes here on TuneCrank and I loved it. See the site’s current #1 song, Sweet On You by Johnny’s Body.

Genero.tv – Feel like making the music video of your favorite artist? Now you can with Genero.tv. a site that picks the songs from artists around the world and then leaves it up to you to make your own music videos for them to express what the songs represent for you. This innovative and creative idea brings together grade A artists (including Royskopp, Moby, David Lynch, Alicia Keys) with video creators to make the best music videos ever. Winning videos score fame and great prizes, so if you know your way around the creative video world, genero.tv is the place for you. To get an idea of the artists listed here who are waiting for cool videos see the screen shot below.

To see an example of genero.tv in action, see this video by thespecialbobo , a finalist for Alicia Keys’ Wait Till You See My Smile song (apologies for not embedding the video, the code failed to work).

Robyn – Are you familiar with this Swedish recording artist, singer and songwriter? I admit I wasn’t familiar with Robyn, but her beat mixing platform We Dance to the Beat made me curious and entertained. Although this beat blender might be annoying to some in terms of sound, I found it to be a unique and creative experience. Make your personalized dance to the beat track by adding/removing sounds as you go along, and share the end result with your social network.

We Dance to the Beat is beautifully designed, and for those of you choosing to explore Robyn’s music project, I say turn up the volume and enjoy it.

Uwall.tv – What an original approach to music consumption and discovery! Uwall.tv’s homepage is amazing in and of itself -see the screen shot below. Simply pick an artist or band from the hundreds of thmbnail images on the page, or simply type in your artist of choice into the search box.

I couldn’t find my favorite, Nina Simone on the Uwall.tv homepage, so I used the search box and voila, here’s what happened (see below). It’s an instant mini player, showing the top music videos of Nina – YouTube videos of all her top hits. The Uwall.tv service is simple, extremely rewarding and beautiful to look at. Sounds like a classic Weekly Fave.