If you listen to a ton of music and the word "scrobble" is part of your vocabulary, you'll get a kick out of Lastgraph. It's a service that generates interesting visual representations of your Last.fm listening history. You can view a sweet line graph of your listening to a given artist, or you can generate some snazzy posters of your overall listening.
The posters are pretty huge and take quite a while to render, but you can actually print them out as some stylish, informative wall art. If you don't need something that huge, there's also a smaller version available through the quick timeline feature. You can also export your data as an Excel file, a CSV or JSON.
It's hard to take a site called Worry About You seriously, especially when they claim that their search engine will direct to you to over 15 million songs. In an attempt to overlook the bizarre name choice, we're just going to refer to it as WAY from now on because Worry About You is possibly the most irrelevant Web 2.0 name in history.
Despite the fact that they might be prone to exaggeration and might need a lesson or two in brand marketing, the site works pretty well. We tried a bunch of different searches, from obscure eighties one-hit wonders to every cover of Wild Horses we could lay our hands on and WAY always delivered.
They give you the choice between streaming the song or downloading it, not that we're encouraging the latter. The site follows in the footsteps of countless other web-based mp3 search engines that are anything but legal, but it doesn't really differ much from its predecessors, apart from offering the service in six languages.
We'll let you in on a little secret: There are a ton of music videos and live performances on YouTube. What? You knew that? Well, then you also probably know how hard it can be to find every song on an album and play it in order. YouTube is really designed for searching for videos one at a time. But Jogli helps organize the mess.
Jogli is basically a search engine and music video player. Search for an artist and Jogli will bring up a list of possible results. Click an artist name and you'll find a list of albums. Click an album and you'll be presented with a list of songs. In many cases not each song is clickable, but many are.
When you hit the play button, a YouTube video will start playing in the corner. But you can also queue up additional songs and even search for new songs without stopping your recording. Jogli is a lot like MyStrands, another site we covered earlier this year. But the way Jogli organizes songs by artist and album sets it apart from the competition.
RealNetworks has launched a DRM-free MP3 music store. The Rhapsody MP3 store has music from all four major labels, with over 5 million tracks available for download. Most songs are priced at 99 cents, and most albums cost $9.99. That's about the same price that Apple charges for DRM-free AAC audio files, but a bit more than Amazon MP3 charges for many songs and albums.
All songs will be encoded at 256kbps, and will be playable on any device that can handle MP3 audio. RealNetworks isn't killing off its DRM-restricted music service, but rather, plans to have the two services peacefully coexist. You can pay $12.99 a month to stream unlimited music to your computer, or you can pay per download to save songs that you can play forever.
RealNetworks is also rolling out a service that will let Verizon Wireless customers download music for their handsets. For $15 a month, users will be able to download an unlimited number of songs (with DRM) on a Windows PC and sync those songs with their cellphone. Currently seven handsets are supported, with several more coming soon.
The Rhapsody MP3 store is offering a $10 credit to the first 100,000 customers who purchase an album by July 4th. You need to sign up for an account and fork over your credit card information to qualify. But hey, free music, right?
There has always been a debate between audiophiles regarding downloadable music. Part of the camp claims that downloaded music will never sound as good as music purchased on a CD. Regardless, you can't deny the convenience of buying music online. Famed loudspeaker manufacture Bowers & Wilkins hopes to change the quality of downloadable music with the launch of the B&W Music Club.
The B&W Music Club is a subscription based service which provides its members with an exclusive album every month in Apple Lossless Compression. The idea is simple, record the album in one of the most advanced recording studio around and distribute it in a lossless format so that you can hear the music as it was intended.
A yearly subscription will run you around $67 which is about $5.50 an album which isn't bad considering the quality you'll be getting. And while we lacked the reference equipment to appreciate the work that went into making the recording, just the thought of having a file that wasn't compressed made is sound better.
Rifflet is the perfect meeting ground for musicians without a muse. The site allows users to upload snippets of music, up to 60 seconds long, and offer them up to the community to do what they want with them.
The 'rifflet' can be as simple as a drum beat or bass line - as long as it gives another musician something to work with. When you find a 'rifflet' that appeals to you - you can finish it off, remix it, slap some lyrics on it - whatever you want. Anything uploaded on Rifflet is under the Creative Commons license, so whatever you come up with. Users can also share the final product since the 60 second limitation isn't enforced on the actual upload size. Not only does Rifflet target musicians, it also targets DJs, who can take the bits and pieces posted on the site and put them together any way they like.
The musical elitists in us thought that, since the site is open to pretty much anyone, it would be strewn with sorry excuses for songs, but we were pleasantly surprised with the quality and variety of music on the site.
Let's be honest here. How many of us have gotten on stage to do a bit of karaoke. Don't worry no one is gonna laugh at you. Because when you did get up there, it was only for that moment never to be repeated again. Well that would be true unless you decided to sing it up at Red Karaoke.
Red Karaoke gives you the ability to sing your favorite songs and have it hosted on their site to share with others. Depending on how good you are at karaoke, this could be a good thing or a bad thing because members can comment and do vote on your performance.
The quality of the music reminds us of general midi files, but then again the accompaniment isn't the star here you are. If you want to give your performance a little more pizazz connect your web cam for some video karaoke action! The service itself is fun and easy to use. And Red Karaoke does offer a decent selection of songs ranging from the 1950's to the present in a variety of genres.
Amazon offers one of the most compelling iTunes competitors around right now. The online retailer offers music downloads from all four major labels. And unlike Apple's iTunes, Microsoft's Zune Marketplace and other digital music stores, Amazon MP3 offers DRM-free music at reasonable prices. There's just one problem -- the service doesn't work outside of the US. Yet.
For months, Amazon has been saying that it plans to go international. Now it looks like the company is taking the first steps. The Telegraph reports that Amazon MP3 officials visited London last week to meet with record label execs. It's possible that Amazon could launch a UK version of its MP3 music store by the end of the year.
Looking for an iTunes/Winamp/Amarok killer? No matter whether you're a Windows, Linux, or OS X user, you might want to check out aTunes. This media player uses the open source MPlayer engine and is built on Java, which means you can run it on pretty much any devices that supports Java. There's also a Windows installer which makes running aTunes on Windows a snap.
The program has all the features you'd expect from a modern media player, including the ability to play MP3, ogg, WMA, WAV, FLAC, MP4, RA, and RM files. You can also listen to internet radio streams. There's no support for DRM though, so if you've got restricted music files on your desktop, this might not be the player for you.
One of the niftiest features in aTunes is Last.fm integration. While you can't use the software to play music from Last.fm, you can sign into your account and submit your played song list to Last.fm. aTunes also takes advantage of Last.fm's audioscrobbling service, which means you can see a list of artists that are similar to the one you're listening to in real-time. When available, aTunes will also automatically display album art and song lyrics.
If you've ever played a musical instrument the concept of playing in key is nothing new. But what about DJs? Are there lessons out there that go over majors, minors or even basic chord progressions? Having 2 songs mixed in key gives the impression that the songs were made for each other.
MixedInKey has developed a software for DJs that will analyze your songs to determine what key they are in. That way when you are building your set you can select songs that where performed in the same key or a complementary key.
In order to have your mp3s analyzed add them to MixedInKey. From there, the software will determine its key and display them according to their Camelot Sound keycode. Add songs according to their keycode using your favorite mixing software and start mixing.
We had our reservations about this program, fearing that all your mixes will be in the same key leading to one boring set. But the system itself, teaches you musical concepts and if you follow the system you can move from one key to the next to add chord progressions to your mix.
MixedInKey is available for both Windows and Mac and cost $58.
Qbox is a search engine/media player combo that lets you find and listen to music available from social networking sites including MySpace, Bebo, and YouTube. The interface is a bit more complicated than it needs to be. If you just download the standalone media player for Windows, you'll be told that you need to sign in if you want to search for music.
Search results are displayed in your default web browser, which is odd because the Qbox media player acts as sort of a stripped down browser for playing web audio and video clips. Don't ask us why it won't display search results.
Now here comes the important part: Qbox is not compatible with Firefox 3. If you conduct a search from the media player or the web site using Firefox 3, you'll get a list of songs. But when you click the play buttons next to those songs, you'll be told that you haven't installed the Qbox media player if you're using Firefox 3. When we logged into the web site with Internet Explorer, everything worked properly. But when we tried to search from songs from the media player interface, the results were again displayed in our default browser, which was Firefox 3. There doesn't seem to be a way to select your prefered browser from within the software.
You can also click on genre tags to browse for songs within the media player itself. Qbox is currently available as a public beta, so it's possible the company could improve the interface and adds Firefox 3 compatibility.
Back in 2006, Microsoft decided to kill its MSN Music store. But MSN Music customers didn't have anything to worry about, because the songs they'd already legally purchased would be theirs to play forever. Sort of. In April of this year, Microsoft announced that it would be pulling the plug on its DRM servers for MSN Music. That meant that once you authorized your purchased music you'd be able to play it to your hearts content on your existing computer. But if you want to buy a new computer and transfer your music collection to the new PC, you're out of luck.
Needless to say, this was not a popular decision. And now it looks like Microsoft has reconsidered. Rather than shutting down the DRM servers in August, the company plans to keep them up and running... through at the end of 2011. Microsoft may decide to keep offering the service after 2011, but nobody's making any promises at this point.
We can understand why Microsoft would want to shut down the DRM servers. The company isn't making money by selling music through the MSN Music store anymore. So why waste the money on keeping the servers up and running? But that's the problem with DRM -- it doesn't go away. So if you're going to commit to selling music that comes with a set of heavy restrictions, you'd better be prepared to offer long term support.
Want to download popular music without paying and without breaking the law? Qtrax is a new advertising-supported service that lets you download music from two of the four major labels, Universal and EMI as well as several smaller labels. The service uses a modified version of the Songbird Media player to let you search or browse for music and download tracks. Some music willbe available through P2P connections while music from Universal and EMI will be hosted on Qtrax servers.
The files use Windows Media digital rights management and are designed to be played with the Qtrax media player. But once you play a song using the Qtrax software and acquire a valid license key, you shold be able to play it using the media player of your choice. The one thing you cannot do is transfer songs to a portable media device like an iPod. That makes sense, since Qtrax makes money by showing ads while you search for and listen to music. There's no particularly good way to do that on a mobile device.
The music selection is somewhat limited at the moment. Not only are Sony and Warner Music Group tracks missing, but there are plenty of albums that show up in the Qtrax interface even though the songs are not yet available for download. But since the service just launched in beta, we're willing to cut Qtrax some slack.
The Qtrax client is Windows only for now, but a Mac version is in the works.
YourSpins is a social network site dedicated to those who love remixes. To start remixing your music, you'll need to download a plug-in for your media player (Windows Media Player, Quicktime and WinAmp are currently supported) as remixes are created from within the player. From there you'll be able to download the completed song with all the associated parts from the site to start your remix.
YourSpins has worked together with musicians to provide you with tracks that you can play with. This means each songs will have multiple instruments for you to choose from. And because all the tracks are provided, you won't run into issues of certain parts not being in tempo or instruments playing in the wrong key.
When you're done, the completed remix will be saved to your YourSpins page where others can listen to your mix. Points are given out depending on how well your mixes are received. Overall points are grouped in levels ranging from "Noob" on up to the "Omnipotent Grand Overlord".
If you want to give it a "spin" without downloading any plug-ins, you can try out their ecardsservice. While it doesn't give you the full experience it does give you a fun taste of remixing.
While Moodstream may be geared towards the folks in the creative department to help them design the next big thing, there's nothing wrong with using it as a screen saver. That is if you like a screen saver that doesn't actually save your screen and displays random pictures with music based on your current mood.
In order to get your mood on, you'll need to adjust a few sliders. Moods range from happy to sad, calm to lively, humorous to serious and so on. If that's more control than you would like, preset moods are also available.
Moodstream pulls in photos from Getty Images' vast database along with music from Pump Audio's Soundtrack. If you like the current mood you can save it to your moodboard (registration required) so you can come back to it later. You also have the option of purchasing any of the images or music on the spot.
So even if you're not the creative type but enjoy having random pictures and music playing give Moodstream a try.
