St. Patrick's Day: The best free Irish music online

Looking for Irish music? Online services have tons of free songs and videos for St. Patrick's Day. Here are three of the best:

Pandora

Apple's iTunes may be the largest music retailer on the planet, thanks to its massive selection and letting customers buy only the tracks they want instead of entire albums. But iTunes isn't great at introducing people to songs they haven't heard before.

Enter Pandora.com, an Internet radio website that lets you play DJ. Pandora begins with a simple question: What do you feel like listening to? Users can pick an artist, album, or individual song – such as The Dubliners or "Danny Boy" – and the site will start playing music similar to your selection. If you like Pandora's suggestion, give it a thumbs up. If Pandora picks a stinker, give it a thumbs down to end the song immediately and move on to something else. The site learns from your feedback, creating a music profile of your personal tastes.

Come tomorrow, when you're tired of Celtic music, try creating a new "station" based on a different song or band. Pandora will save all of your previous picks, so you can return to Irish music any time you want. The whole service, including its smart phone application, is free and supported by advertisements that pop in from time to time.

LaLa

This MP3 store has an interesting wrinkle. It lets you listen to any song you want for free – but only once per track. After that, people can pay 10 cents for the right to play the song as many times as they want through LaLa.com. If users want to listen to a song offline, they can also download it for about a dollar. Any purchased tunes – whether at the dime or buck rate – automatically follow users from computer to computer. People can then log in from anywhere and listen to their entire collection.

YouTube

If music alone isn't enough to get you jigging, let's turn to video. YouTube has become the go-to source for almost any piece of culture – from traditional folk songs to Thin Lizzy. Here are two videos to kick off your St. Patrick's Day.