Studying with music? Try out these services for free music streaming

Do you ever study or do homework while listening to music?  I know music helps me focus and keeps me going when I'm studying or doing homework.  You may also love saving money, so I'm going to give brief overviews of the best ways to listen to music for free and legally.

Spotify

• Website: http://www.spotify.com
•  Features: 
• Using the free desktop application, you can listen to any of 13 million available songs.
• The free account gives you unlimited streaming of songs and the ability to make playlists.
• Using the mobile app, you can get free access to the Spotify radio, which acts just like Pandora or Slacker.  The $10 a month plan gives you access to play any songs you want on the mobile app and doesn't limit you to radio only.
• Cons: 
• No access to stream music via a web browser.  You have to use the desktop application.
• Thoughts: 
• I've deleted iTunes and stopped buying music since I started using Spotify.  Any time I have an internet connection, I can listen to almost any song I want to on demand.

Pandora

• Website: http://www.pandora.com/ 
•  Features: 
• You give it a song or an artist and you get to listen to artists and songs that are similar to the one you started with. 
• The songs played for you are based on the research from the Music Genome Project.
• Unlimited listening with ads.  For a while, free accounts were limited to 40 hours per month, but that limit was lifted earlier this year.
• They recently added stations for stand up comedy.
• Has a free mobile app for iOS and Android.
• Cons: 
• Limited to 5 skips per hour with the free account.
• Thoughts: 
• After thousands of hours of listening to Pandora stations, I feel like they have been "played out" and I'm not getting any more new music.

Slacker

• Website: http://www.slacker.com/
•  Features: 
• Similar to Pandora, you give Slacker a song or artist and are delivered a radio of similar songs.
• Has a free mobile app for iOS and Android.
• Cons: 
• Can't play songs on demand. 
• Thoughts: 
• Slacker isn't as polished as Pandora and doesn't play as many lesser played songs from popular artists like Last.fm does, but it does its job well and is a nice alternative to other free streaming music services.

Last FM

• Website: http://www.last.fm/
•  Features: 
• Streaming radio based on artists, songs, or imported music that you give it.
• Using the Last.fm scrobbler, you can import your current music library from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or Winamp and get recommendations for music to listen to based on your current collection.
• Great for discovering new music.
• Cons: 
• Can't play songs on demand. 
• Thoughts: 
• Last.fm has been a great place for me to discover new artists and listen to the lesser played songs from artists.  Pandora and Slacker are similar, but only play the most popular songs, so it is nice to get a little more song variety here.

Google Music

• Website: http://music.google.com 
•  Features: 
• You can upload all of the songs you have on your computer to Google Music and stream that music from your web browser or the mobile app.  
• Has a mobile app for Android and you can use any of these apps for iOS to stream your Google Music.
• Cons: 
• You can't stream music that you don't already own and have already available on your computer.
• Thoughts: 
• It's a great, free way to store all of your music in the cloud and have it available to you anytime you are connected to the internet.