On salsa streaming

I’m looking for decent salsa streaming options and playlists.

Essentially, I have a massive personal music library but don’t spend much time at home so have never really looked through it (criminal I know). I accumulated so much, so fast and it’s all spread out in such a random order, that it’s difficult to know where to start.

To explain - my salsa music education is a process which starts on the dance floor and eventually filters it’s way to my ipod. Since I don’t own an i-phone or have access to one of those funky programs that listen to a song and provide you with the song and artist name, the route from one to the other is rather more circuitous than it could be.

In the past, I had been using Spotify to discover music, identify well-known and loved songs and then look for them in my music collection once I had found out their names/artists. All slightly long winded, but when you spend more time at work than looking at your external home hardrive, it makes sense (somewhat)… However, in so doing, since I could never find the exact same versions in my music collection, I fell in love with my Spotify playlists and neglected any other means of listening to music.

The reign of free Spotify has however come to an end. Today, users can listen to any song up to five times, but after that are blocked from listening to it again unless they either buy the track or sign up to Spotify premium. This is a big loss in my book! Spotify really contributed to my salsa artist and music education. It helped me associate artist and track names to my favourite songs, and then expand my knowledge by listening to these artists further and understanding the breadth of their contributions to the salsa music world. You could argue that the discovery function is still there. However, a music streaming service needs to provide for active listening (for search and discovery) and for passive listening (for comfort or background music) too.

Online radio is a fallback solution. DJ Fonseca from Switzerland has a good salsa radio online here. Look under: “NuyoricanSalsa DJ FONSECA”. He plays a good mix of 60s-70s mambo/cha cha cha with some boogaloo thrown in for good measure. The station comes with a few adverts, but these, much like with the free version of old-Spotify, are not too bothersome. It satisfies the mid range active/passive listener since you can write down the names of the songs you like and find them on Spotify/iTunes later. Or you can just listen and enjoy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help you to look further into an artist to hear what else they’ve produced, or to listen to that one song that you will greatly enhance your mood.

The other day, I was introduced to Grooveshark. At a first glance, it’s great! It’s Spotify with a different interface and no audio adverts between songs. There’s a website for converting playlists from Spotify (and other players) called Groovylists. Unfortunately, though Grooveshark has some tracks that Spotify was missing (e.g. Dilema by Johnny Ventura, a personal favourite), it doesn’t have many of my other favourites (e.g. La Palomilla by Joe Cuba & Cheo Feliciano) and I haven’t thus far managed to make Groovylists work for me. The interface also appears to be slightly temperamental and I seem to have managed to lose some of the songs that I had happily found.

So the search continues! Please let me know if you have any recommendations for discovering and listening to your favourite salsa songs!