Mflow music rocks

My obsession of the week is finding steals, deals and new songs to love on mflow. It's a fledgling music downloading site that weaves social networking into your buying and rewards you with smokin' deals for doing so. I'm guessing the deals are so hot because the users act as advertisers, trumpeting their purchases to friends online.

What got me so addicted is the "Easter Egg" promotion, which runs until Easter Sunday. If you link your mflow account to Facebook (you could also use Twitter or Buzz), and press "like" on any album with an Easter Egg logo by it, the price of that album changes to 99p. This includes lots of new albums (many just released this year) as well as loads of great older albums. The idea is that you search around the site to find the Easter Eggs, but of course deal-finders are on this like mad and sharing their finds on hotukdeals.

Hotter yet, if you refer a friend and they sign up through your invite link, you both get £1 of credit. I also found a code online you can input in the "redeem codes" section of your account to gain another £1 credit: REDDITCREDITFROMDAN. Another code makes all individual tracks on the site 20p each for about 12 hours: BIRD20P.

To sweeten the pot -- and get you to promote the site -- new users get five free "flows" of individual tacks during the first week. Each track has a "flow" button by it; click it and it will ask to link your flows to Facebook (or whatever you're using). Once that's done, if you "flow" the song it will appear on your Facebook page as a track your friends can listen to in it's entirety with a link back to mflow. Right after you press flow, you'll be offered the option to download the track for free (up to five songs). I love free things, and I love music, so I'm really digging this deal.

I signed the hubby up, and with the referral credit and credit from the code I input, we each had enough cash in our accounts for two free albums before I even reached for my credit card. We also got five tracks each through free "flows" (Ok, I got 10 tracks as I commandeered his flows). Even if you refer no one and just sign up, you can use the code I mentioned above and get one free album and five free tracks. Very worth the effort.

One small downside: you have to "top up" your payment pot rather than just paying for what you buy as you go. This can be done in £5 increments via credit card, or £10 via paypal. It's not really a big deal as you're sure to find a lot you want (you could get five sale albums for £5), but it could put you in the position of having to put £5 in when all you really want to spend is £1.60. Still, if you buy even a few individual tracks every so often, you'll eventually use it.

Mflow shows the latest buying activity on-site in Facebook-like updates (but using a username rather than your actual Facebook name if you don't want to share that). If anyone buys a song from the link where you recommended it, you get a small percentage of the price.

Just to give you an idea of what's on offer, some of my album buys include: Kings of Leon, Florence + The Machine, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Mad Men Soundtrack, Glee Christmas Soundtrack, Mumford & Sons, The Script, and some compilation albums. I used my free flows for tracks on albums that weren't part of the Easter Egg sale. At these prices, it's been a good way for me to try some new artists. You can listen to all songs in their entirety before buying if you're so inclined.

This deal should also work from the States. I routed my laptop through the VPN I use to watch Hulu, which shows my IP as being in the U.S., and mflow still let me login and download. The normal prices of albums are probably more than you'd pay in the States, but the Easter Egg deal makes them much cheaper than you'll find on Amazon.com. Happy hunting!