Brother, can you spare a song?

This is my 500th post.  I know I’ve written over 500, having deleted a few posts from the archives over the years, but as of today I now have 500 and I want to celebrate.  For the first time ever, I’m going to host a giveaway.  Weeeee!

Back in February I posted a meme here that listed the first 10 songs that popped up on my iPod when I set it to shuffle.  This resulted in an admission that my taste in music is eclectic at best and that I would love to be introduced to some new artists.

I’ve been looking at several music related social networks out there and happened upon Simplify Media, a peer-to-peer music program that allows you to listen to your friends’ (or your own) entire music library over the internet.  The service is free, but there are some limitations.  While you can listen to your friends’ songs, you can’t download them.  You also can’t play any songs your friends have downloaded from iTunes or any other files with DRM limitations attached.  Anything that has been ripped from a CD is fair game, and my available library currently stands at over 2200 tracks.

Here’s the part where I start to sound like a dirty slut.  I’d love to hook up with you if you’re interested in hooking up with me.  If you want access to several Baby Einstein CDs and more John Williams soundtracks than you can shake a stick at, simply download the software from the Simplify Media website, create an account and drop me an email with your user name via the “Contact Me’ tab on this blog.  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, though Simplify Media will only allow me to whore my music out to 30 friends total.  Somehow I don’t think that will be a problem.

And here’s the part where I offer to give stuff away.  To celebrate my 500th post and my quest for musical enlightenment, I’m offering one lucky reader a $20 gift card to either the iTunes store or Amazon.com.  Did you know you can download DRM-free music at Amazon?  Well, you do now.

In order to be eligible for the gift card, all I ask is that you leave a comment here between now and Sunday evening August 31st at 5:00pm.  You don’t need to Digg this or Stumble it or Kirtsy it or even link back here to bump up my Technorati rating.  Just post a comment with the name of the last song you either heard or sang along to that day.  You can comment more than once, but please limit your comments to one per day.  So wrote the woman who just listened to “Stairway to Heaven” and is working her way through “Lady Madonna.”

The winner will be chosen at random Sunday evening after 5:00 pm and will be posted here next Monday with the gift certificate of choice being delivered by email shortly after.

Good luck, everyone.  Happy listening.