See What Are Top Listened Songs Online with We Are Hunted

Finding and listening to new music is one of my favorite uses of the Web. There are a ton of music sites out there that are constantly finding, sharing, and promoting great new music. Countless new artists are being discovered thanks to the Web, and the music world is booming because of it. Well, the record industry might not be booming, but the number of good artists out there sure is.

I’ve shared a few ways to find great new music before here on MakeUseOf, and it’s time for another one! If anyone’s a music junkie like I am, each of these sites just gets more fun than the last.

This one’s called We Are Hunted, and is essentially a user-decided chart for all the best music of the Web. We Are Hunted doesn’t care whether a given song is being played on the radio, or getting tons of spins at clubs – if people on the Web are choosing to listen to it, We Are Hunted will let you know.

The great thing about We Are Hunted is that it doesn’t just get its information from its own users (which hugely limits the usefulness of some other, similar sites). Instead, it looks at blogs, social networks, forums, Twitter, P2P networks, Last.fm, iLike, MySpace Music, and elsewhere to find what people are actually listening to, and then creates a chart of the most popular songs and albums for your listening pleasure.

The popular songs come in the form of a square chart of songs or artists, nine at a time, that you can scroll through to find whatever tickles your fancy. The variety of music on the site is just ridiculous: from hip-hop to country to pop ballads, and everything in between. Some of the featured artists are reasonably well-known (Britney Spears, The Black Eyed Peas, and a couple other popular artists are on the list right now) to the totally-unheard of (Digitalism? Cool band name, never heard of them).

There are a number of different lists you can listen to – “Week,” the most-played songs from the last seven days, “Month” (three guesses what that one is), and “Emerging.” The first two tend to have more popular artists and better- known songs, and look a little more like the Billboard Charts. The Emerging list, my personal favorite, is the spot for the up-and-coming artists that aren’t on the Billboard Charts yet, but are blowing up on the Web.

In every list, all 100 songs can be played in their entirety, and are streamed to you from a few different sources – YouTube and artists’ sites, primarily. One thing to watch for – I found a couple instances of the wrong song being played (Right Round by Flo Rida, currently #1, actually played something else entirely). I only found it twice, though, out of about 100 songs I tried to play. Not a big deal, but something to be careful of.

If you find an artist you like, you can see more information about them (mostly links to reviews and whatnot on other sites) by clicking on the artist name. There’s also a list of Related Artists, to help you find even more good stuff. If you want to comment on an artist or song, it’s easy – either log in to the site, or through Facebook.

The Web is unique in that you’re able to listen to exactly what you want, when you want. By leveraging this, We Are Hunted knows and plays only what other people are actively trying to listen to, not just what’s playing on the radio to no one listening. Whether you want to know what’s hot now, or what’s poised to be hot, We Are Hunted is a perfect source.

Where do you find new music on the Web?

Photo: jmtimages