Is music an important part of your life? Do you love listening to music while working or discovering new music bands and artists?
YouTube has a huge database of music clips of all imaginable genres and types. It’s a great source of inspiration – we just need more tools to enjoy it.
The following two tools will add a lot of fun to your YouTube music-listening experience: they will let you endlessly listen to your favorite music genres.
Zebralizer
Zebralizer is YouTube-powered online tool that will play your music as long as you want it to. It won’t work on Internet Explorer, nor will it work on FireFox if you are on Mac. Google Chrome has been the best option to use the tool so far.
The site has a fun search option that will suggest to you results while you are typing:
Once the results are loaded, music will start playing immediately.
While listening, you can browse through the search results to add any clip to the play list. There’s also a “radio” button that will instantly create a play list from the similar music clips to the one currently running.
You can even load the lyrics next to the current song and start singing:
The built-in player controls let you play the music louder, jump to the next track, watch the video in the full-screen mode and shuffle your current play list.
Jukesy
Jukesy is a fun, yet not widely-known web-based app that allows you to enjoy an endless sit-back-and-listen YouTube experience.
To select the genre, you can browse through the vast selection of popular tags (anything from “art rock” to “hip hop” can be found there) or use the search option.
Once the genre is chosen, you can enjoy an endless video and music stream: Just keep the tab open and keep working or browsing the web – the music of your preferred genre will play until you stop it.
The built-in player controls let you easily adjust the volume, toggle the full-screen view or repeat your favorite song.
That’s a great music discovery tool: With its vast search capabilities, you are most likely to come across a new song or band that will become your favorite one. Besides, the tool offers plenty of information about genres and bands (powered by Last.fm).
You can continue searching for music, while the current clip keeps playing. You can add a new clip to the play list or queue video clips right from the search results (without interrupting your current music stream).
If you create an account, you can save your play lists as well.
Are there any other tools for the similar lean-back music experience? Please share them in the comments!
Jennifer Moline writes for the PsPrint Blog. PsPrint is an online commercial printing company.
Last.fm’s mobile application will be paid only from the 15th of February. Their web radio service will remain free in the US, UK, and Germany.
“On the Last.fm website an ad-supported, free-to-listeners model is what supports our online radio services in the US, UK and Germany,” says Mathew Hawn. ”In other markets and on emerging mobile and home entertainment devices, it is not practical for us to deliver an ad supported radio experience…”
This shift brings them in line with services like Spotify that charge users for mobile access. For the price of a fancy coffee, users can continue listening to Last.fm on their mobile without commercials. And yes, scrobbling is still free.
However, it seems like another service that people wont be willing to pay for! I thought Last.fm really would have tried to become the Pandora of the UK.
RIM has started to seed a new application called Blackberry Radio. The aim of Blackberry Radio is to offer streaming internet radio stations, from multiple sources, easier to discover.
Users will find services like Slacker, iHeartRadio and terrestrial sources like Clear Channel and Corus.
Users can organize stations by genre and get links to purchase playing-songs directly from Amazon MP3.
The application is free for Beta Zone users to test; interested parties can can sign up for BlackBerry’s Beta Zone here.
While terrestial radio has suffered severe losses in listenership, satellite radio and applications like Pandora and Slacker have been on the rise. The transition was bound to happen as listeners sought after a la carte style music that played exactly what they wanted. The ability to make your own stations is the next step in this hierarchy of listener ownership of the digital airwaves.
So where does terrestial radio stand these days? Radio stations still maintain an online presence, now offering their streaming content direct from the website. So while advertisers begin to shift with the transition, radio struggles to stay relevant these days as the primary source of information, entertainment and our favorite music.
It was years ago that I was introduced to a little application called Earthtuner. I think it was around 1997 when I came across this application that allowed me to find radio stations from around the world. I remember this clearly because I loved listening to stations directly streamed over the computer from other countries. In the days before iTunes, music apps, and stations with stream content there was Earthtuner, my virtual connector to anything I wanted from around the world.
More recently there is a similar application called Antenna that runs on the Adobe Air platform and offers up similar services to Earthtuner. The application allows users to search a database or interactive map of thousands of stations. User will be able to search by country, genre, or by clicking on any area on the map. Leave ratings for other users as you browse the most popular stations that others have recommended for you.
Do apps like this make terrestial radio interesting again?
Antenna allows you to stream stations from around the world.
