I'm an Ani DiFranco fan. That's my style of music: literate, powerful polemic set to angular acoustic guitar. I must have seen her play live eleven or twelve times now. Dar Williams, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Thea Gilmore, Jess Klein: all my cup of tea. I saw the Proclaimers at the Great American Music Hall just a couple of weeks ago.

Somewhere along the line, I managed to get into really dirty electronic dance music.

Spotify was my gateway drug. I've got a premium subscription, which allows me to run it on my phone, and I usually listen on the walk to and from work. Because I try and do the mile and a half in twenty minutes or less, I'm after high-tempo music; and because I'm the kind of person that gets sick of listening to the same thing over and over (or walking to work the same way), I've been using the radio function to find tangentially related music to my playlists. It's a bit like Genius mode in iTunes, but I'm not limited to music I actually own.

I guess I might have clicked "thumbs up" to the new Tegan and Sara album, which moves them from guitar folk-pop to eighties-inspired electro. (It's brilliant, by the way.) Somewhere in the mix, Skrillex's Bangarang might have turned up. And late at night, listening to music in a particular frame of mind on the way back from a night out at the Independent, I found Knife Party (of all things) and was hooked.

Spotify's model is pretty great: it comes close to how using Napster felt in the late nineties (except you pay, and don't get to keep the music when you stop subscribing). When I hear something I particularly like, I'll buy it on the DRM-free Amazon MP3 Store. I can try out virtually anything, anywhere, and easily discover new bands. It's one of the handful of paid online services I wouldn't want to do without.

But online music in 2013 goes so far beyond that. Soundcloud is a miracle: a place where anyone can upload and share any audio, and do. The tracks I embedded above are fully-sanctioned, fully-commercial audio that the artists have decided to release in a streamable form for free, because they understand that sharing is great marketing. If you discovered that you like either the Ani DiFranco or the Knife Party track above: you're welcome. And if you didn't, it's no skin off anyone's nose.

I remember listening to the Top 40 chart on BBC Radio One in the nineties, on a Sunday afternoon. I have no idea what's in the charts right now, and I can't imagine caring. I've got a great idea what my friends are sharing, what's being shared among my contacts. It doesn't matter what label they're on or who's doing their PR; it's all about the music. This track by my sister shows up in my feed right next to all kinds of famous artists, and it's available for anyone to discover in the same way.

With the freedom to share and discover, there's a new freedom of genre. I might be bemused by my newfound love of EDM, but I'm not surprised I found it. There's a big, wide, cultural commons out there.