It’s not uncommon for us here at Crenk to come across web applications that do the same thing, the only differences are that some might do it better or worse than another. In this case, the team has come across a very interesting music listening application called TubeRadio.
Once again for the music lover in all of us, this just astounds me. Now it does not have the capability to tap into your own stored music, but as powerful as this search engine is, this could very well replace my Pandora or Last.Fm efforts, even if only for a little while. TubeRadio calls itself the Youtube for music. After you see the video below, you’ll know what I mean.
So what do you think? They search is amazing and very thorough. I’m surprised at how music it can find, and even more so by how seamless the integration of listening and/or watching your music can be. During the video the speaker mentions it being like your personal MTV. Yeah, MTV, from when it used to actually play music.
My experience with TubeRadio has been a good one. I’ve found what I want to listen to, it streams everything smoothly with little problem. In my opinion the only thing really missing is the ability to tap into my own music, but I can overlook that for now since I’m lining up some great music of my own, and of other recommended playlists.
If you’re a music junkie like I am, chances are you have multiple mp3 players lying around, probably a ton of music on your computer, external drives, and/or stored off-site in cloud storage somewhere. Music for me defines who I am and is attached to a lot of my memories. While some people tie their memories to sights, sounds, and smells, I’ve always tied my memories to music. Which is why when something new makes it easier for me access my music and listen to what I want to when I need to, then I’m all for it.
There’s a web application that I’ve just been introduced to called JukeFly. The concept of Juke Fly is simple, if not multifaceted. For starters it’s a great way to search music. The interface allows you to find your music, but not just the audio, it will pull video from YouTube and a variety of other sources to give you a complete look at the music you’re looking for. It also pulls album covers, lyrics, group information, and other extras that make for an interesting experience. So as a search I was able to find a lot of what I was looking for, and see extras that I have never seen before like live performances, behind the scenes extras, and yes, even other people covering the music. I found this to be an interesting extra to just searching and playing music.
Add on top of that layer the ability to play YOUR music from just about anywhere as long as the main computer you’re pulling from is one and has an online connection. So if you’re traveling and accessing another computer, or if you don’t want to carry your music with you on your laptop, you can simply install the small installer that comes with JukeFly, go through the settings, and that’s it. It will read your music folders, pull the necessary data and you can listen to your music library from wherever you are.
There are some other options out there that offer music search and remote access, so perhaps this is not something entirely new, but I found the interface easy to use, and had a fun enough time finding some old music I had not heard in awhile. Have you used Juke Fly? Maybe you know of another alternative, let me know!
I’m a huge fan of music. I’ve got several versions of the iPod for a variety of occasions, I’ve got streaming music players all over my computer, I’ve got sites bookmarked that stream audio from overseas; for me, there’s just nothing better than paying music for inspiration, clarity, and nostalgia. To increase my music listening abilities I’ve used plugins such as FoxyTunes to give me access to my music straight from my browser, but what if I’m not home or on my laptop. There’s a good chance I’ve got my mobile on me and I can stream from there, but for those of us always changing computers, or using public computers, there’s now an interesting option that we can participate with.
Stereo8 is a new stream audio web app that streams straight from your browser. No downloading, no installing, no problems. Just about any browser should work (I tested on Safari, Firefox, IE6 and IE7, Opera, and Chrome). Simply select a genre of music you want to listen to, and let the music play. You can interact with the music by voting on what you like, and those votes determine what’s played. Stereo8 calls it self a true internet radio with a twist. That twist is that listeners can vote and share music with one another making it a social community of sorts.
As I write this article I’ve picked the video game category and have listened to some of the biggest games from my present and past. In some of the other categories I was listening to songs that perhaps I was not a fan of myself, and some more obscure songs that I never even knew existed, which is not always a good thing. But if you’re looking to be introduced to something new and unique, far from the beaten path you’re used to traveling, then perhaps Stereo8 is for you. A few stations I found really solid, and just now they started playing the Terran theme from Starcraft, so that’s just an idea of the kind of music you’ll be listening to (at least on the game channel).
For at least two years now there’s been huge speculation and anticipation for the Beatles library to be released on iTunes, and in all this time, with as many teases, it just has not happened. Much to our disappointment we seek out their music elsewhere, having to find a library that has all of the music with the sound quality that can best define the music that defined a generation.
Well in a way, Apple and The Beatles have come together, but it’s not something you can download direct onto your iPod. Instead it’s the Beatles inside an apple. Get the picture?
This this USB stick is filled with the entire Beatles library including all the remastered goodness of the fab four’s Stereo Box Set, including 14 albums in lossless FLAC and 320 Kbps MP3 formats, 13 mini-documentary films, replicated UK album art, rare photos, and expanded liner notes. All of this put onto a 16GB stick for your listening and portable enjoyment.
The green apple is an interesting way to bring the two biggest names in media together, but there’s a limited run folks. Only 30,000 of these babies were made, so if you want it, you better act fast. The cost is $280 and comes out on December 8th, 2009. Sure it’s more expensive then the box set itself, but for collectors this is a dream, and honestly, how cool is the apple idea?
Okay, okay, not that cool, but the content is priceless.
Today finding the music you want, when you want it has been channeled to using sites like the Amazon store or iTunes. Sometimes, when looming for an obscure song that is not mainstream, you’d be lucky to find it. This frustrating experience paired with the perceived greedines of corporate music labels has forced many of us to find our music on peer to peer networks or bitorrent sites such the Pirate Bay.
Songbeat360.com is an amazingly innovative way of integrating a music player with a music search. Now you can listen to your favorite songs while searching for more. You are essentially still building your own station, much like Pandora or Last.fm, but on this music player you have the ability to download your music immediately.
Bypassing the need to go to the likes of Amazon or iTunes may please some, but does the pricing compare? Based on the site, the application is an Adobe Air app, and comes with 25 free credits. Credits are used when a search is done, and searches are supposedly capable of returning up to 500 results, ensuring you will fond what you need. For further credits, those can be purchased via a stored credit card. For $15 you receive 1000 credits for more music, which breaks down to a whole lot less than $.99 per song on the iTunes store. This is of course assuming you find what you want in one search.
Is the next revolution to your music search? I’d say know, but it’s definitely interesting. The pricing alone is attractive, and if the quality is the same, I can see this web app becoming extremely successful.
As the digital music market grows, there are more and more players entering the digital distribution market, getting artists music onto iTunes, E-music, Amazon MP3, Rhapsody and the other big online stores. These aggregators represent a variety of different models, ranging from The Orchard’s more traditional ‘intensively involved’ regime, where they take a hand in promoting their artists through a home-grown press network, but help themselves to a large chunk of the back end (think around 35%) of all sales of their partners’ music, to Tunecore’s flat-rate model, where they take a $0.99 a song, $0.99 a store per album fee, plus a $9.99 – $19.98 annual fee per release. Our favourite of the available digital music distribution products is provided by RouteNote; instead of charging up front or subscription fees to artists who may never make the sales to cover the charges, or gouging large lumps out of the back end profits (they take 10%, which seems pretty modest next to the Orchard’s slice).
Currently their model works out to be the cheapest route to market for artists selling less than 20,000 units online (tracks) annually, which is pretty much everyone starting out in the industry, plus they have a few tools and guides to facilitate artist self promotion. They’re still reasonably small (their artist roster is just over 1,500 at the moment) but we’re looking for them to grow quickly over the coming months, particularly if they get a little more press.
Disclosure: This article was written by Dashiel Munding. Im currently CEO of RouteNote.
Sky Songs is the new music streaming and download service from BSkyB which will be launching on Monday. Sky has been developing this music service for the past nine months and the service seems to be shaping up ok, but there isnt really anything to innovative here!
The Sky Songs service is not free to use, but it does have some decent features which might be useful to a certain type of client.
Sky Songs is web based
For most people services list Spotify aren’t able to be used at work, mainly because it is a downloadable application which most corporate IT departments tend to lock down. However, because Sky Songs is web based it should be a lot more accessible at work, unless your miserable IT department blocks the specific URL.
Sky Songs recommends music
Unlike services like Spotify, Sky Songs has the ability to recommend music too you. Once the Sky Songs interface is loaded you will see playlists created by its team of music journalists They range from introductions to new genres to topical playlists, such as memorial collections for recently deceased celebs. Sky Songs also includes a recommendation engine, powered by Gracenote, which will react to the songs you’re hearing with a decent suggestion of other tracks you might like.
You can mark your own favourites
With Sky Songs you have the ability to build playlists and then mark your favourites with a simple heart icon. Once you’ve picked a few favourites, the service will collate them for you, putting all your favourite artists in one place, as well as your most-loved genres and albums. Think of it as an auto-playlist generator, it’s much quicker than building a list of songs by hand, and means all your favourite sounds are just a couple of clicks away.
Sky Songs integrates with iTunes and Windows Media Player
Sky Songs doesn’t just stream music, you can use it to buy tracks to own too. They’re downloaded as DRM-free MP3 files, and will even drop into the correct place on your computer for iTunes and Windows Media Player to find them.
When you first set up your Sky Songs account, you’ll be asked which music management software you use. From then on, all your downloads will automatically appear in your existing music library, ready to be synced to your iPod, iPhone or MP3 player.
It offers more, for less
This is a biggie, and will certainly be the decider for some people: Spotify is already under pressure from cheaper streaming services, and Sky Songs increases the competition even more. It’s offering unlimited streaming from £6.49 a month which also gives you one £6.49 album or 10 tracks to download and keep. Compare that to Spotify’s £9.99 price tag, with no extras included.
Ever been watching TV, listening to the radio or in the supermarket and you hear a song being played – and it’s a cool song. So cool, in fact; that you would like to download it to your Mp3 player. One problem I’m constantly running into is loving a song but not knowing the name or indeed much of the lyrics. Perhaps it’s just the tune or the chorus that sticks out in your mind – how do you find it?
Well, Musipedia may hold the answer. Basically, its a site that allows you to search for a song by the way it sounds. There are a few ways of doing this. For those with musical talent or can just read music, the piano option is for you. Using either the Java or Flash Piano you can play the part of the song that you remember. This will then be compared to the most similar songs on their database and you’ll be given an answer.
For those who couldn’t hit a note if it was standing right in front of them (like me), you can whistle. Yup, I said whistle.
Using this function, you can use the microphone in you laptop or one connected to your PC to whistle the tune. Then, it will analyse your whistling and find the song for you.
Musipedia if free to use and it’s available right here.
Most people im sure would probably agree that Apple’s iTunes software isnt a lightweight application. I was wanting to put together a great list of free alternatives to iTunes that are actually worth checking out.
Foobar 2000 – A digital music management program for Windows users. It works with Windows 2000,Windows Vists, Windows XP and Windows XP 64 bit edition. To use this program you will need 32 MB of RAM and a display with at least an 800 X 600 resolution. This program is compatible with MP1-4, MPC, AAC, WAV, SND, WMA, Ogg Valis, WavPack, AIFF, CDDA, FIAC/Ogs FLAC and AU. It also supports full Unicode and Replay Gain. Other great features include third party development potential and keyboard shortcut that are fully customizable.
Froddle Pod – Froddle is not as feature rich as iTunes but it provides access to the main features that iPod owners need: It can copy music and videos from and to an iPod which is definitely the main feature that any iTunes alternative should support. The software can also backup and restore all data that is stored on an iPod. Another feature is music normalization for all or selected music on the iPod.
Songbird – Built on the Firefox platform and works with iPods and other media players. In addition to many great features, Songbird has a plenty of add-ons, and because it’s open source, clever programmers will be adding more as time goes on.
YamiPod An interesting iTunes alternative, because you don’t have to install it on your computer at all. Just copy it to your iPod’s hard disk and then you can manage your songs from any computer running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux.
Winamp – Sometimes called the grandfather of Windows music players, Winamp is a full featured music manager, with integrated iPod support and will even play iTunes protected files if QuickTime is installed.
Amarok – A great iTunes alternative for Linux and Unix users. It works with a wide variety of portable music players including: iPod, Creative Zen players, iRiver iFP and T players, Nomad players, generic MTP players and generic USB players. Some of the features that this program has that you are going to love include: album covers, wikipedia integration, last.fm integration, superior visual effects, lyrics support and music tracking capabilities.
Banshee – Linux users are going to enjoy what Banshee has to offer. This free download allows you to do everything that you want to do with your digital music. You can import music, organize music, play it back, share it and rip it on a CD. This is a great program for people who love their music and who want to actively manage it.
Cog – Most people using Mac OSX feel that iTunes is the best option because it was designed for this platform. However, Cog is worth a look for Mac users, because it addresses many of the limitations that iTunes has. It can be used with the following file types: Ogg vorbis, Monkeys Audio, MP3, Wavpack, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Musepack, AAC and WAV/AIFF. Some of the features that make it a worthy alternative to iTunes include: gapless playback, auto updating, preferences, Growl support, global hot keys, seeking, feedback forms, last.fm support, and smart shuffle.
ScreenTunes is a free search tool that helps users find where a song has been played in any piece of professionally-produced video content. You just type in the name of the song and it tells you all the films and TV shows in which it’s appeared. You can then listen to the track right from the results (using Grooveshark), or purchase the track on iTunes or Amazon’s online stores.
Along with acting as a search tool for individual songs, ScreenTunes can be used to look up a track by its lyrics. This also works on entire movie titles, so you can type the name to get a quick track list.
ScreenTunes is a very hit and miss service at the moment and I noticed it takes a lot time to actually load the Grooveshark section at times. Additionally, I noticed there are still lots of searches that yield zero results, I guess they will build their catalogue size over time. Clearly you get better results if it’s a mainstream track, but it’s surprising to see how many places any one song can end up.
We all like music. Rock, rap, R&B, metal, rave, trance. What ever your taste sometimes talking about music with other fans is really cool. Discussing favourite songs, artists, concerts or the industry news is what music fans do. iLike is a platform that allows you to do just that.
It’s is about to be purchased by the floundering MySpace – perhaps in some desperation to heal their wounds. Anyway, I’ll give you a quick run down on what iLike has to offer.
Firstly, it combines all of the great music facilities into one profile from across loads of different social networks such as Bebo, Hi5 and FaceBook. So instead of flying around all the different social networking sites to discuss music you can simply go to iLike.
They’re also in tune with the music scene with tons of news and song updates. iLike will also detect what city you’re in and inform you of upcoming concerts and festivals in your area.
And, as expected you can get songs their (well, iTunes). On the homepage there are free Mp3 songs from lesser-known artists that you can download for free. They also have popular songs that you can buy.
iLike also has different arrangements with many different singers and bands. For example, at the time of writing this article they were promoting Creed’s upcoming tour. The smaller things include loads of applications for download and cool pictures and videos for your enjoyment.
Today the news is that Spotify has partnered with with Tom Group a major Chinese media conglomerate to launch the company’s popular digital music streaming service in China. The tie-up will create a localized version of the software to introduce to provide music over computers and mobile phones, Tom said in a statement to Reuters. Spotify’s current services are only available over computers.
“Tom will work toward unveiling a localized version of Spotify in Greater China in the near future,” the statement said.
It’s not uncommon for us here at Crenk to come across web applications that do the same thing, the only differences are that some might do it better or worse than another. In this case, the team has come across a very interesting music listening application called TubeRadio.
Today finding the music you want, when you want it has been channeled to using sites like the 
Ever been watching TV, listening to the radio or in the supermarket and you hear a song being played – and it’s a cool song. So cool, in fact; that you would like to 
We all like music. Rock, rap, R&B, metal, rave, trance. What ever your taste sometimes talking about music with other fans is really cool. Discussing favourite songs, artists, concerts or the industry news is what music fans do. iLike is a platform that allows you to do just that.
