Here at Crenk we have talked about music streaming service Seeqpod a huge amount. Seeqpod was a music streaming search engine in which users could search for tracks in the same way at searching on Google. Once finding the track they wanted to play they could add it to a playlist.
Seeqpod indexed music files from all over the internet. However last month the filed for bankruptcy and since Friday of last week they have been offline. “SeeqPod is in the process of moving a few servers… We’ll be back up shortly”, said SeeqPod CEO Kasian Franks on Sunday.
Seeqpod is in acquistion talks with “a large media company that was a competitor to Apple” according to MP3 Newswire. Any suitor would have to be willing to get involved with several pending rights holder lawsuits against the company.
In the last week or so we have been really taking a keen focus on music streaming service and even posted a specific review about MixTurtle. Today we have come across yet another music streaming service that might be worth a look. This new streaming service is called Just Hear It. Just Hear It has been created by two college students Nicolae Ivanescu and Cosmin Panait.
Just Hear It is very similar to MixTurtle, Seeqpod and Songza. It lets the user search for tracks that are online and add them to a playlist. Just Hear It claims to be completely legal, following DMCA guidelines, and paying royalties to all of the major performing-rights organizations, like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. In the future, Just Hear It aims to negotiate licenses to share revenue with labels.
After playing around with the site it still seems to have the same issues as Seeqpod and Songza, every now and then you will find the track that you want to listen to, but it simply wont play or the file is corrupted or incomplete. Im not really too sure if there is anything more annoying than setting up your playlist and half the songs playing.
However, because Just Hear It claims to be completely legal, I’m very curious to see how this business develops. They need to have a very strong business model and I’m guessing that will be based on advertising revenues.
A couple of days ago we put together a great list of the Worlds top 10 free music streaming service. We received a comment that post that lead us to another music streaming service that I thought was worth a review, MixTurtle. MixTurtle is a great music streaming search engine very similar to Seeqpod.
MixTurtle lets users search for a song and then it provides instant results. Then users can play the single track or add it to a playlist. I couldn’t work out for a while how to view the playlist correctly, but all you need to do is right click anywhere on the page and it brings up the playlist you have created. I would suggest that MixTurtle work a bit more on this feature and really make it more predominant.
In terms of the overall design and layout of the site, I think it has great potential. I think it will be easy for them to add sponsored search results into the engine which will be a lot better to look at than display advertising. However, if they are going to go down the display route, it would be advisable to add the display add to the top of the site and have it rotate every couple of minutes.
Overall this is a great site with a lot of potential. It would be adviseable to add a business model sooner rather than later, because im sure their server costs are quite high. In terms of the user point of view, this is a great site! Simple, easy to use and give you with the results in seconds, brilliant!
Im spending a lot of time in the office recently and I’m one of those people who cant work without music playing really loud in the background. I’m sure its not just me who thinks better when music is playing loud, so I thought I would put together a quick list of the top 10 free music streaming service that are currently available. Some of these services can only be used in specific countries, but I’m sure this will change in 2009.
Pandora – Pandora is now just a USA based service. However, Pandora is a great service for those in the USA and im surprised if most people in the USA don’t already use it. Pandora is basically a music radio service which lets you listen to customised radio stations.
Last.fm – I have never really understood Last.fm myself, but they have a great service in which will let you stream music from certain artists. Some have full tracks for free to stream, but others have videos or some nothing at all.
Seeqpod – Seeqpod is basically Google for music. Seepqod is a search engine that allows users to find whatever music they want to listen too. Seeqpod can only find music that can easily be downloaded on the net, so it can be limited with some artists, plus sometimes the tracks might be corrupted and not completely work. However, it is great for making playlists.
Spotify – Spotify is a new music service that has launched out of Sweden. I have been using Spotify for several months now, even though it is in private beta testing. Though the music is streamed, it is played instantly and is partly supported by the famous P2P technology. Currently the service is only available in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and UK. Spotify has to be the best music streaming service I have used in 2008.
Myspace Music – Myspace is of course the worlds largest social network and Myspace Music is just an add-on of this social network. With Myspace Music users can search for pretty much any artist in the world and stream the music they have on their profiles. Remember it is limited to only the music the artist wants you to hear.
Rhapsody – Rhapsody has a nice “listen FREE” search option at the top of its homepage, an excellent way to entice people to sign up for its premium service. Once you find the artist you are looking for then you can play any of the songs in their catalogue for free. However, then I realised streaming is only for the USA.
Imeem – Imeem is a mixture between music streaming service and social network. On Imeem to stream music all you need to do is to search for the artist you want to listen to and then the majority of the time they will already have an Imeem account.
Deezer - Deezer is a mixture between Seeqpod and Imeem. Deezer has some social networking aspects but mainly it is just a great music streaming service that is very easy to find the music you are looking for. All music on there is legal and free and artists actually get royalties from your streams.
Skreemr - Skreemr is very similar to Seepqod and it is just basically a search engine for music online. Skreemr is a free service that picks up free music from across the internet and allows you to play it easily. However, unlike Seeqpod they don’t allow users to make playlists.
Lala – Lala is one of the new music streaming services on the block. Lala provides free streaming to only USA users. There is a limit on how many times you can listen to a track for free, but you also have the option of purchasing that stream for $0.10 so then you have can unlimited plays. Additionally, if you want to take the tracks off the site then there is an option of $0.79 for the download.
Where do you head when you want to listen to music online without having to download anything or more the point pay for music. Either you head to a bittorrent site (which we will discuss later) or you head to a music streaming service.
Here is a list of the top music streaming services according to Compete. Today we are going to talk about a few of these services and what they can offer you.
Imeem – A streaming service that is based around a social network in the same way as Myspace. Although to me it seems that Myspace has every band in the world online, I still find it hard to believe that Imeem which is growing still gets those sort of numbers. Imeem is completely free to use and you just search for your favourite artist and then you are able to stream certain music direct from their profiles. The problem is that the music is controlled by the artist and normally your favourite tracks wont be online.
Seeqpod – This has to be my favourite streaming music service. Seeqpod is basically the Google of music search engines. Seeqpod searches through the world of mp3s and lets you stream them by using their service. Some tracks are sometimes damaged, but they seem to be improving this service over time. Simply type in the artist name or track title and let Seeqpod do the searching for you. Songza is also on the list of top streaming services, but they are using the Seeqpod technology, so please head over to the original site!
Deezer – Deezer is a french based music streaming site that is similar to Seeqpod except they are total legitimate and they pay royalties from streams. Deezer has just signed a deal with Universal publishing, so you will be able to find some of your favourite artists, but there are still a lot missing. Deezer is also trying to build a community around their streaming product, with music news and basic social networking options. Deezer is one service to keep your eye on in the future!
I thought this article was quite interesting, it came from Our Digital Music and it talks about a website called PiraBoogle.com. PiraBoogle is a quite interesting mashup of Google and PirateBay, as you can also tell from the name and logo. PiraBoogle uses Googles own in house tools to provide results on finding easy-to-use Torrent searching. Users can simply type in a song or artist and within seconds it brings back the search results on all available torrents.
The developers were quoted saying, “We thought it fun to showcase how easy it is to provide a really easy-to-use Torrent file search engine with Google’s own tools given all the recent coverage about PirateBay.org being sued and Yahoo removing PirateBay from its search results”.
Now, how does PiraBoogle differ to Seeqpod? Seeqpod is currently being sued by Warner Music, where they allege “SeeqPod directly infringes Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, including by making on-demand and unauthorized digital public performances of those works. SeeqPod secondarily infringes Plaintiffs’ copyrights under the well-established doctrines of contributory, vicarious and inducement liability”.
