Keeping with the theme of Mike’s Online Photo Editing Overview, I wanted to cover some of the entrants into social music. Music was probably the first type of rich media to really go “Web 2.0″ and it’s become a pretty popular place for startups. As a result, there are some great Rich Internet Applications built around social music. Anyone who makes music a part of their daily lives has no shortage of options when it comes to finding new music and sharing with friends.
FineTune
Finetune is a relatively new application written in Flash. It’s my favorite out of the bunch and I covered it on my ZDNet blog. What makes Finetune stand out is that in addition to the standard “artist radio”, it allows users to build playlists of specific songs. The minimum playlist is 45 songs and you can have up to three songs per artist. With custom playlists, you can make sure you’re only listening to songs you want. Finetune also gets points because in addition to the web version, it runs on the Wii and there is an Apollo-based desktop client.
Pandora
Pandora is the granddaddy of the bunch and it’s one of the Web 2.0 applications that Mike can’t live without. It is built using OpenLaszlo and provides the cleanest experience out of all the applications on the list. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to generate a stream of songs that you’ll like based on how you rate previous tracks. You create stations around artists, songs or albums and you can provide feedback (thumbs up or thumbs down) on the songs Pandora chooses. Tech Crunch’s coverage of Pandora is here.
Last.Fm
last.fm is another Web 2.0 veteran and is more socially-slanted than the others. Tagging is a big part of the last.fm experience and you can tag any song that comes along in addition to being able to listen to “user tag radio” which is based on tracks that users have tagged with a specific genera. last.fm has a separate desktop application that “scrobbles” the songs you listen to and generates a music profile that you can share with friends. See Tech Crunch’s coverage of last.fm here.
MOG
MOG is all about a music community. It’s very blog-centric and revolves around user pages, or “Mogs”. You build your Mog around songs you’re listening too and artists you like. That builds something like a profile for you that users can browse to and comment on. It also uses this profile to suggest other people or music that you might like. Tech Crunch’s coverage of MOG is here.
RadioBlogClub
radio.blog.club is another music service that builds playlists based on an artist or song you specify. I’ve heard the least about it, but the interface is good. When you browse to the site and type in an artist or song, it builds a playlist of 10 songs for you. In my experience the recommendation system for radio.blog.club wasn’t the best, but they do allow you to embed their player on your blog. This seems to be the least robust of the applications but still worth a mention.
MyStrands
MyStrands started off as MusicStrands and is a downloaded desktop application that works with your current music players to build recommendations based on what you’re listening to. In many ways it’s similar to last.fm’s “Scrobbling” but MyStrands ties in with your mobile device and seems to provide a more social recommendation system. By tying in with music on mobile phones, MyStrands is a bit ahead of the others and it helps tie all of your music collections together. Tech Crunch’s coverage of MyStrands is here.
iLike
iLike is an iTunes plug-in that makes your music library more social. It tracks what you’re listening too and recommends songs and people with similar tastes. It hooks in nicely with the iTunes interface and recommends music as you’re playing songs. I listen to some pretty obscure stuff and the recommendations were good. They also have a widget for MySpace that is formatted to sit nicely in the “Music” section of the profile. Tech Crunch’s coverage of iLike is here.
iJigg
iJigg is a digg-esque music discovery service that I had a lot of fun playing with. Users vote on individual songs and the most popular rise to the top of the front page. You can’t do any “related artists” with iJigg, but you can browse by genre so that you can target your music discovery. The iJigg player can also be embedded on other sites so you can share it with friends. As this service gets more popular, I think it will be a great way for bands to get discovered. Tech Crunch’s coverage if iJigg is here.
Ryan Stewart is an expert in Rich Internet Applications. Ryan writes his personal blog here and also writes a RIA blog for ZDNet called The Universal Desktop.
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Not sure if this is “social music” but it definitely seems to be interesting. It looks like it uses the Facebook API and covers social file-sharing as well. It’s called Mosoto and can be found here: http://www.mosoto.com
Not live yet (closed beta) but interesting too: Twones.com - Sync iTunes and iPod library with Twones and discover new music and friends. It concentrates more on finding people with similar tastes in music and finding out that your friends have bad taste in music.
The founder is a friend of mine.
IMHO no discussion of music sharing meets social media is complete without mentioning the mighty Hype Machine. Legally a little gray, I’ll acknowledge, but I can personally vouch for its addictive qualities.
http://hype.non-standard.net/
Hey guys, thanks for the tips. I’m checking them out as we speak.
Why was this moved to the top all of the sudden? Could this have anything to do with PayPerPost? Hmmmm………
Any list on this subject should also include Qloud (qloud.com).
@5 Ummm, not so much.
John, thanks for pointing Qloud out.
TechCrunch has written about iLike several times…pretty much the definition of a social music service.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....m-youtube/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....nto-ilike/
Thanks for bringing up MusicStrands. I’m trying it out now and like the ease and quickness of music recommendations. The application works with Winamp nicely. I plan on playing around with the social aspect over the next few days.
Oops, I meant MyStrands. Anyway, you can see what I’m playing at http://www.mystrands.com/infomaniac.
While a little different than the services talked about here, liveplasma’s fun for figuring out what relates to what and how.
That should be http://www.liveplasma.com. Duh.
iLike!!
That is funny, I read it as in social music = working with others to create music. Have you seen RPM Challenge? http://www.rpmchallenge.com
Cool stuff. I did it last year. This year has seen an explosion in participation from bands. All 7 continents covered!
Oh, @ Ryan, the sample engine is coldfusion powered.
What about iLike?
Also a little different, but JamGlue lets you find, create, and share custom mixes.
yeah, iLike is sorely missing.
oops - you forgot http://www.tunefeed.com , here’s an 80’s mix I put together on it:
http://jonathan.faces.com/TuneFeeds/719938/
whilst my selection of music is at best dubious, the service is solid and has undergone a huge revamp in the last 24 hours. I highly recommend it
I’m updating the post to include iLike and iJigg. I don’t use iTunes for my music so I wasn’t familiar with iLike, but it seems like it was a pretty big omission so my apologies.
@Joshua, that’s cool. If I had any musical talent at all, I’d be all over this!
You forgot about http://www.goombah.com/
What about http://www.soundflavor.com ?
Do u still remember the ever famous blogmuzik.net , it is not shut down, and is continue to up and running.
good round up!
Looks likes its forming a pattern for this.First the online editors and now the music.Great stuff
Where does one go for non-English music?
ARgh! My ears are bleeding! Man…The compression is so God awful rancid on these sites. Amazing how low everyone succumbs in the name of “2.0″. Sheesh….first MP3 and now this crap.
Heinous compression … artifacts … panning ….what a dreadful evisceration of the original music. Kill it! Kill it with fire!!!
What about http://www.lala.com which offers CD trading with a social twist? I know I’m addicted.
goombah is similar to iLike. However i recommend not using it.
They add music to your iTunes library automatically so you have to go search and delete any time you are sampling music and you don’t like the samples.
For some reason, Finetune doesn’t work for me. If I try searching for an artist, it just redirects me back to the home page. Too bad, I really wanted to try it out.
A darkhorse that was not mentioned is Qloud. It’s like Sling Box, but for your iPod. In addition, it has interesting social networking overlays that allow users to put playlists together based on tags. These guys are funded by Steve Case, so it’s worth a look.
I use Finetune and Last.fm
Finetune’s player is great and their site makes it great when you’re browsing around and in the mood to build a good playlist. And, the larger, web-based Wii player looks great on a television (even if you don’t have Wii).
I like Last.FM radio style over a playlist though because sometimes, I just like to click once and get music I would like.
i like http://www.musicovery.com
all these are a waste of time.
I’m a huge fan of electronic dance music, as are many others involved in technology, and I was excited to find some new artists I hadn’t heard of. I thought their may be an up and coming artist somewhere in Europe that I had never heard of. So I was very surprised to find that after going to each site, I had a lot of trouble finding an artist I had never heard of, these were all the top 100 dj’s in the world.
All these services (at least in electronic music) seem to largely ignore the long tail of music and those purveyors of it. Popular artists are great, but how do I find out about the new stars? MySpace seems to have figured out how to promote new artists, why can’t these services? I absolutely love the feeling of listening to the latest and greatest, so someone should look into this service.
I think their is a wide open market for a social music service that recommends newly or semi popular artists and integrates them with popular artists. Granted a lot of the long tail sucks, but there must surely be at least one artist that’s great and not huge but growing for each artist that is huge. Why isn’t anyone doing this yet?
Full post on my blog link above
I love FineTune!!*************
the Tunez are Rockin!!****************
in fact Hip Hop is Dead is crankin from my $B Blog right now - very Cool!!
;))
Props also to RadioBlogClub & someone mentioned HYPE which my friend from the UK tuned me into & they showcase more of the Underground Up n Coming Musical Artists*
http://DiSfish.com/ is a Common Net Label which allows U to download Tunez from New Artists & Donate if U wish - Props to Marco Raaphorst of Amsterdam for this one*
Cheers! Billy ;))
I know I’m joining the end of a very long list - but I also want to hype up The Filter - it builds playlists from your iTunes library and uses social music data from across its network of users. The software can also fill your iPod and works on Nokia N-Series - if you’re mad enough to own one of those awful phones.
A bunch of us have been trying to build a directory of all of the music 2.0 companies out there. It is at http://music2dot0.wetpaint.com/ . Feel free to stop by and help us add to the list.
Jason Herskowitz at http://globallistic.blogspot.com/ keeps a nice list of the music 2.0 companies. This list includes:
# AjaxAMP
# » All Crazy Style
# » Amie Street
# » Andromeda
# » AOL Music Now
# » ArtistServer
# » Bandnews.org
# » bebop
# » Blogmusik
# » BurnLounge
# » CrackSpace
# » Critical Metrics
# » Del.icio.us Playtagger
# » Embarka
# » FeedYourZune
# » Foafing the Music
# » foosic
# » FoxyTunes
# » Google Music Trends
# » Goombah
# » Grabb.it
# » Grooveshark
# » iConcertCal
# » iJigg
# » JamBase
# » Jamendo
# » Jamglue
# » LaLa
# » Last.tv
# » Magnatune
# » MediaMax (powered by Streamload)
# » Mercora
# » midomi
# » MoodLogic
# » Mp3Realm
# » MP3tunes.com
# » Music 2.0 Directory
# » Musicane
# » MusicBrainz
# » MusicGremlin
# » Musiclovr
# » MusicMap
# » MusicNation
# » Musicovery (LivePlasma)
# » MusicPlusTV.com
# » MusicPortl
# » Musicream
# » musikCube
# » Mytuneslive.com
# » Nextune
# » Orb (MyCast)
# » OWL Multimedia
# » Pandora’s Jar
# » PandoraFM
# » Playlist Radish
# » Podbop
# » Poperti
# » Project Opus
# » Qtrax
# » Radio Protector
# » RADIO.BLOG.CLUB
# » RadioLover
# » Rate Your Music
# » RealAmplify
# » ReverbNation
# » Ruckus
# » Search Inside The Music
# » Sharea
# » Sideload.com
# » SIGamp
# » SnappRadio
# » Song List
# » Songbird Media Player
# » Sonific
# » SoundLoud
# » SoundPedia
# » SpiralFrog
# » SplashCast
# » Splice
# » SpotDJ
# » Spotify
# » Streamripper
# » TagWorld
# » The Art of the Mix
# » The DJ List
# » The Filter
# » The Tripwire
# » tourfilter
# » Track50
# » Tunefeed
# » TuneGlue
# » Twango
# » Upcomingscrobbler
# » Virb
# » WikiMusicGuide
# » XSPF Web Music Player
# » Yes
# » Yoogli
# » Yottamusic
# » Zina
Where is musicovery.com? It’s a very good music website. Maybe social but there’s no doubt it’s web 2.0.
I think MySpace is a part of this list too. Not just for the music people can add to their pages but more for the many artists who find a way to new listeners and old fans through this.
groetjes,
Mirella
Paul called out the wiki and my blog above, you may want to subscribe to my tagroll which I continually add to as well…
http://del.icio.us/rss/jherskowitz/music2.0
Nokia also has one: http://www.musicrecommenders.com
I’m really ashamed that the site only supports IE, not Firefox. Oh, and no Mac either!! What’s with Nokia and Microsoft these days - aren’t they supposed to be big competitors? Nokia also promoted their New Year’s party on MSN.
I know I’m joining the end of a very long list - but I also want to hype up The Filter - it builds playlists from your iTunes library and uses social music data from across its network of users. The software can also fill your iPod and works on Nokia N-Series - if you’re mad enough to own one of those awful phones.
http://www.fiql.com
A popular social network focused on every type of music playlist you can imagine. Friends, Groups, Charts, Tagging, Artists and more.
http://www.redfizz.com features songs from unsigned artists. using the “battle” feature, which pits newly submitted songs against one another, users get to determine whether songs make it to the featured, second stage, or rejects section. plus, redfizz chat radio lets users talk in real time while their favorite rf tunes play on the jukebox.
You should also check out http://www.indiscover.net/ which is in this vein but focused on Indy music.
Here’s my review of iLike
http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=16
musicmobs is a lot like last.fm, but gives some more playlist features in place of radio. very nice site. wish they would get more buzz so they could develop themselves even more. http://www.musicmobs.com
http://www.purevolume.com im not sure what you can consider this but its an impressive site for any new or indie labels