( CNN ) -- In the early days of the Web , the mantra `` information wants to be free '' made the rounds . In music circles now , `` music wants to be shared '' seems to be the idea . The big record labels now allow fans to play their songs free on social networking sites . The big record labels , once more prone to awkward lawsuits against individual file swappers , now allow fans to play their songs free on social networking sites like Last.fm that use music as the social glue . And music sharing seems ever more entwined in everyday life , sometimes in subtle ways . Increasingly for instance it 's easy to `` tweet '' to others what you 're listening to . ( A tweet is a post on Twitter , the micro-blogging site where you can broadcast to followers what you 're doing , in 140 characters or less . ) For instance Skype users can opt to display , next to their names , whatever song they 're playing on iTunes . A new site called Blip.fm specializes in this , except it calls the tweets about what you 're listening to `` blips . '' Just as Twitter asks , `` What are you doing now ? '' Blip.fm asks : `` What are you listening to now ? '' Then it lets anyone else hear it . In effect , you get your own DJ space . Along with the song , you can add a comment about it . Many users now have hundreds of listeners on their Blip.fm page . A new service called TinySong.com makes it quick and easy to share music . Just type a song 's name into its search box and it creates tiny URLs linking to various sites where that song can be played right now , for free . Creating a link and emailing it to friends takes seconds . Postcard.fm makes it an easy three-step process to create an email-able postcard combining pictures and songs from your computer . Music sharing is growing not just online , but in the physical space as well . Some bars and clubs now have `` customer DJ '' nights , where a customer can dock their iPods into the sound system and play tunes for everyone else . Copyright lawyers could clamp down on this sort of thing , says Mike McGuire , an analyst with research firm Gartner . Technically , at least . Businesses that play music to a crowd are supposed to pay a performance royalty to ASCAP , BMI or one of the other performance-rights organizations . But they 're not likely to , says McGuire : `` Nobody will bother about that unless and until the clubs engaging in this become really popular . '' A startup called Jook has an interesting approach to bringing music-sharing to the real world . Earphone manufacturers can incorporate Jook technology . With Jook-enabled earphones , you can broadcast what you 're playing ( Us mode ) , and then others sitting nearby can listen in ( U mode ) . You 'll know that they 're listening to your songs by the green indicator light on their earphone cable 's Jook circle , and they 'll know that you 're broadcasting by the red light on yours . Jook is platform-independent , so it works even if you have an iPod from Apple and your listener has a Zune from Microsoft . `` Jook did something amazing by just saying , 'let 's put this social media connection on the lanyard , make it cheap and make it multiplatform , ' '' says Andrew Hawn , a strategist with consumer trends research firm Iconoculture . The way people discover music , he notes , has changed . It 's no longer from a music nerd behind a counter , a la John Cusack in the movie `` High Fidelity . '' Anyone now can be that music nerd -- and there are ever more ways to share the music .
Big record labels now allow fans to play their songs free on social networking sites . Skype users can now opt to display whatever song they 're playing on iTunes . Comment: Some clubs allow customers to dock their iPods into sound system to play tunes .