Say hello to Jango. No, not Jenga, though, that’s a bitchin’ game to play when you’re having a few tasty beverages, but I digress. Jango is a fresh and interesting spin on streaming radio. It brings a social networking dynamic that can be found elsewhere, but it sets itself apart from the rest of the pack because of its music-centric nature. The social network is just an added bonus. As you can imagine, you have the option to add friends and listen to their playlists or ‘tune into’ their stream whenever you like. Build a rockin station and see who is listening in, but don’t stalk them. That’s just weird. Well, you can stalk their stations, but not the people. Editing your stations is neat since you can add artists to an existing station or delete suggestions from Jango and then rate songs from each artist so you hear what you want to hear and not what you don’t.
Another outstanding feature is the simplicity with which you navigate and interact with the site. Have an artist you need to look up? Type it in without ever signing up and you’re already streaming. It is really easy to further customize a station by checking off similar artists that you like or don’t like. You can even rate songs individually from each artist. There are 200,000 songs (and growing) in Jango’s catalog, and 10,000 artists from all the major and independent labels. I also like that new windows don’t pop up when you navigate from one page to another and your stream of music is never interrupted
What I like the most about Jango is the ’similar artist’ algo that’s being used. It just works. I get to listen to artists that are ultimately in the same league as the artists I like. For example, I like the Brazilian Girls and Jango spits out artists that are similar unlike Pandora, which gives me music from Brazil. WTF?! I don’t want music from Brazil, you jackass music genome.
Now this isn’t to say that Jango is perfect. It’s pretty damn close and it’s only in Beta so you can see what is possible for the future. The artist base is constantly expanding so bug the Jango folks about artists you can’t find. That’s the gloriousness that is Public Beta. Another thing I’d like to see is a ‘previous list’ of songs, like, the last five tracks, which I’m told is in works as we speak. Because we love you so much Jango, an angel-backed startup based in New York City, has agreed to give us unlimited invites for all TechCrunch readers right here. The general launch is on November 12th, and look for embedded apps for Facebook and Myspace after that.
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This looks awesome. I just set up a channel 5 minutes ago on Rhapsody and was annoyed at how inflexible it is. Looks like these guys saw that. There is a lot more control over who is on your channel.
I love how it suggests more artists each time you add one. And you don’t even have to register to make a channel/
Nice job!
These sites are going to find it ever harder to get people to make the switch as time passes and they become more ‘bought in’ to other services. It’d take a lot to get me to forego all the information I’ve scobbled to Last.fm for instance.
I signed up almost an hour ago. Love each and every feature. I particularly like the ability to navigate without interrupting a music session.
If it can kill iTumbs, I like it!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Wow! I’m really impressed. It quickly matched me with a bunch of artists that I already knew and I could add them immediately, no waiting to listen to a song at a time and adding them to my preferences like Pandora. I think this will help find new similar artists much more quickly and accurately. The implementation of the site is also very slick. My only request is that they make the player pop into a separate small window frame.
Sounds a lot like FineTune
I’ve been using Jango for about a week. For me, the Jango artist recommendations does not work as well as Pandora. I’ve had to sift through more disliked recommendations than I ever did using Pandora. That said, Jango has some interesting features and I’m going to stick with it, for now.
It’s pretty cool I have to say. I’ve been using it for a few days now and it sure as hell beats most of the Shoutcast stations I used to listen to.
Doesn’t recognise many obscure or British acts, sadly, even ones with 5+ albums under their belt. Great for the pop majority, a bit rubbish for big music fans.
Jango sounds cool, but I just discovered Social.fm. It has thousands of customized internet radio channels so you can listen to what you like. It’s different from Jango because every user can become a DJ!!!! All you do is download the app from the website and quickly add all your digital music files. Then anyone who goes online can search by artist or DJ and play music for free. It also has a cell phone application, so you can take all the music from your PC PLUS the collections of your friends and family on your buddy list wherever you go on your phone: no “syncing” required! Social.fm is AWESOME!
Sounds like Social.fm may have some copyright issues from the Digital Millennium Act.
Anyway, I’ve been using Jango since the private beta a few months ago, and it stole me away from Pandora and Last.fm — where I split my time.
I listen at work all day, and it is smack on with playing the music I actually like. And it’s kind of wild to see the faces of other people listening to the same artists, or your own stations. I’d never poke a stranger on Facebook, but I am messaging people all the time on Jango. Really cool!
I love Jango and I’m totally addicted to the site and rating all the different songs in my stations!!!!
Its super easy to use and unlike Pandora, it actually plays the music i want to hear and suggests cool music that I can get into!
I’ve already discovered tons of bands and met some really cool people with same tastes as mine through the site!
I am def. telling all my friend about Jango!