Last month, I published Part 1 of my Guide To Music On The Web, which covered music recommendation sites, Web radio, independent music sites, playlists, and music visualizations. Today, in Part II we’ll take a tour of music search engines, Web players, ways to share music on Twitter, and music mixing apps.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your comments and insights on my previous post and of course, took them under consideration while creating this second part. Please bear in mind that I can’t list ALL the music applications out there. I really tried to find the best and the most used applications that will probably still be here to serve you tomorrow too.
So readers’ main concern was the companies’ business model. You are right. A few of the services might make an exit, and most of them are probably not going to have one, and some are just for fun. I think music services can make money by being innovative enough to get it. Anyway, I don’t want to get into the business model stuff too much, but I will tell you this: The Internet is too competitive, you may be succeed by just being simple, but you may also need to be sophisticated. The era where creating an application first, then two years later thinking how to make money from it, is bygone now, and companies will need to think how to make money sooner than later if they aim for it – This is where innovation comes in and usually wins.
Music Search Engine:
Back in 2007, SkreemR was truly my favorite MP3 search engine. SkreemR locates MP3 files on blogs and webpages, then indexes them on its site, allowing anyone to listen to their favorite music right on the spot. There is no registration required, all you need to do is to search for your desired song/artist, and browse the results. See something that you like? You can play it, rate it, buy it on Amazon, get the song lyrics, watch the video, find related photos on flickr, find concert tickets, download as a ringtone, and finally – yes – you can also share and tweet about it. Unfortunately, now SkreemR has jumping ads all over the site. I understand the need to make money, but did they have to choose the most annoying way to achieve that goal?
I remember the hype around Songza when it first launched… it is a slick Ajax-designed service, which makes it easy to stream music on the web. Well, it still does. Songza became popular for its great usability and the fact that you can easily create playlists, and share music with your friends. At first Songza aggregated music from Seeqpod, then switched to YouTube videos and imeem (where imeem = 30 seconds of a song, and Youtube = full video, low quality). Somewhere around October 2008, the service was acquired by Amie Street for its marketing potential.
Another acquired service is FoxyTunes, this time by Yahoo! in February 2008. FoxyTunes Firefox toolbar extension (launched in 2004) enables control of your favorite music player from the Firefox browser. It supports almost any media player and lets you also find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more – all from the comfort of your browser. Today, it has more than 50,000 weekly downloads, and a cumulative total of nearly 11,000,000 downloads! FoxyTunes also released an additional add-on called TwittyTunes, which allows you to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click. On their behalf I have to say, they where the first to offer that. Their search engine: FoxyTunes Planet, is a mashup Netvibes-like page, that gathers music information from Rhapsody, Yahoo!, Flickr, Last.fm, Youtube, Pandora, Amazon, and more.
I sure noticed the difference when I tried Mufin. Looks like they put an emphasis on the site’s usability and design. The interface is so clean and easy to use. Like other services, Mufin will search for your favorite music and will play it on the spot, via Youtube (what else?) It also lets you create playlists in a snap. But what makes it unique is its visualization tool (vision) that lets you discover more music, based on similar artists. Mufin also provides a player which can be downloaded to your desktop for free. The player will help you organize your music, create playlists, find similar music, share tracks with friends on Last.fm, Twitter or Facebook, and so much more.
Fizy’s search engine has no special feature really, it’s just built really well. The service has a simple look & feel, which allows you to listen to music that streams from Youtube, and create playlists if you are logged in. You can connect your Twitter, Friendfeed or Facebook accounts, and share with your friends’ music in realtime. There’s not much to say other than that.
Qloud has quite an impressive history since they launched way back in 2006; At first, it was just a plug-in allowing you to organize your own library better, so you would be able to find the right song at the right time. Then Qloud released ‘My-Music’: A music app for social networks (Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Myspace, etc), which led them to 1M Facebook users! And finally today, it’s all of the above, plus a real-time music search engine, and a pretty good one. You can search and find music that you like, save and organize your favorites, share music with friends, or find new friends based on shared music taste. You can also import your iTunes or Windows Media Player library, and play your playlist directly from your browser. There’s a rumor that Qloud was acquired by Buzznet last year, but I couldn’t find any formal confirmation about this at either site (Qloud or Buznet).
And finally MySpace Music: A massive hub of free music on the web. MySpace Music gathers all of its music accounts into one searchable page by genre. You can see the entire discography of your favorite artists from anywhere on the globe: view the artists’ music pages, listen to their music, track local concerts and much more. You can also search entire collections of free-to-watch video uploaded by artists or users. Read reviews by users, blog posts by both users and artists, and basically dive into an endless amount of content. Addictive.
Worth mentioning: Wearehunted, which is a playable chart of the most popular songs on the Web..
Web Players:
From your Desktop to the Web, Moof allows you to have a full back up of your own music. Export an xml file of your iTunes library, and listen to your favorite music from any computer. If you don’t want to do that, you can still browse through the Moof music library and play any song you like on-demand from the Web. Moof looks and behaves like a desktop player, with the additional ability to share and see music from friends. If your friends are on Moof, you can browse their entire collection of music, and add favorites to your own personal library. Overall, it’s a great way to find new music. Note that Moof has the coolest registration form ever :)
Spool.fm is so awesome, but fails to explain the service to its users. What you see when you enter the site is a Web Music Player that lets you find the music you want, then play it right away. What you don’t see is the powerful feature that allows you to see what your friends are listening to in real-time! How it works: Just sign up for the service, invite your friends to join in, and each time you play music on the site, your friends will be able to see what you’re listening to as you listen to it, and vice versa. The music streams from all kinds of free sources—not Youtube.
Like most of the Web Players, Grooveshark allows users to find any song in the world and listen to it instantly. But there are several things that makes it different than the rest; first off, the application’s UI is stunning, and the experience using this site is absolutely a joy. Other than that, there’s so much that you can do: search, find, organize, favorite and add music that you like. Also interact with people in the community, and discover new music from others’ choices. With a team of 40 people they must have a business model (or a lot of VC cash). Grooveshark has a paid VIP version with some exclusive features, and a special interface for VIP users ($3/month or $30/year)
Youtube probably has the largest music database in the Internet, but finding music can be very frustrating since it’s not well organized. I’ve already recommended Jogli as a service that gathers Youtube music into albums in the first part of this guide. JukeFly does the same but also lets you listen to the music as if it was on your desktop music player, only it’s on the Web. JukeFly prepares everything for you, so you don’t really need to create playlists, you just need to choose from a variety of content already made for you. Additionally, JukeFly can stream music from your desktop, but you’ll have to download their plug-in to be able to do so. The player has more features and functionality, which you may or may not need, so don’t be surprised if eventually you find yourself using it as your new music center on the Web. JukeFly is working on a newer version, which will include an iPhone app, concert information, chat, fan-clubs, and Internet radio.
MixTape.me searches an entire database of songs in addition to the millions of songs indexed by MP3 search engine SkreemR to bring you the best results possible. If you sign up for the service you will be able to save your favorite songs, create playlists by simply dragging & dropping tracks into a box, and share playlists with anyone. Users can upload custom album art to any playlist, then embed the playlist at their blog/site. All from a sexy web interface.
How disappointing is it to find out that Lala works only in the U.S when everyone keeps telling me how great this service is… Anyway, I can give you a brief overview of the service from the information I picked up on the site. Windows users can move their entire music collection from the desktop to Lala on the web. Most of your music will be matched to Lala’s catalog and will be available online in minutes; The rest and unmatched music can be uploaded to Lala. If your personal music collection is not enough, you can play over 7 million songs once for free. If you’d like to add songs to your collection, it’ll cost 10 cents per song, and your first 25 songs are free.
JustHearIt plays music over a nicely done application with a great visual experience. The application was created by two students trying to change the stereotype that access to free music is an illegal activity while immersing the user in a unique visual experience. So what can you do at the site? You can listen to music you like, create online music collections & multiple playlists, and hopefully share favorite tracks with friends (it doesn’t say this anywhere, but I presume it does) – not much different from the rest of the services here, except for its nifty UI. BTW, even with their goal to show the world that music can be free and legal, they use Youtube like most services, so I’m not sure what’s unique about that.
Since Seeqpod.com’s service is mostly dead, every service that used them switched to Youtube instead. The pros: Its video ability. The cons: The music quality (but hey, at least we have free music). Same applies to Streamzy, an Ajax-based media player that lives on the web and allows users to create quick playlists from their favorite music. Streamzy says it merely provides search results for media being hosted elsewhere on the Internet – Well, I can’t argue with that. Anyhow, sign in if you want to save playlist, or use it as an alternative music player occasionally.
Post Music on Twitter:
Blip.fm is by far my favorite Twitter music service. It is also the first service that allowed people to send music to twitter in a very easy way, which is what made it what it is today. What makes it so great is that you can use it with or without a Twitter account. Some use it via the Twitter connection, other use it as their main music playlist and enjoy the community within the site only. Anyhow, you can discover new music, and new friends based on your collections. Once you sign up to the site, you can set Twitter to send notifications each time you suggest a new song to friends. It looks like Twitter, it behaves like Twitter, but angled around music only.
Grooveshark’s project Twisten.fm, came out a bit later than Blip.fm and offers pretty much the same service. Sign-up with your Twitter credentials, and share music with your friends on Twitter. The site streams music from Grooveshark, allowing you to enjoy the quality of music played there (blip.fm streams music mostly from Youtube). Overall, it’s a cool place to save your music into playlists, and share directly with your Twitter friends. I wish that both Blip.fm & Twisten.fm would allow people to buy mixed CDs created from their playlist, instead of having to buy each song separately.
Funnel is the new kid on the block, basically the same as Blip.fm and Twisten.fm except with a killer tool—a nifty Bookmarklet! While you play songs on Youtube or Myspace, you can immediately add them to your playlist in Funnel. Another unparalleled feature is the ability to integrate your Twitter account or Tweet only the songs that you want. This way, you don’t feel bad about inundating your Twitter stream with too many of those annoying music updates. Also, you can easily comment on songs that you like.
If you wish to share MP3 links with your Twitter friends, you can do it with the help of Song.ly. Enter an MP3 link, and Song.ly will generate a small player for easy listening over the web. I have to admit that the whole process is somewhat an unnecessary hassle. After all, who’s uploading songs these days when everything is searchable on the web already? On the other hand, you can enjoy a list of songs that’s already been uploaded by others, and are of very good quality, of course. I’d summarize it as a user generated MP3 search engine.
Another successful service, is Twt.fm which finds music that you like and posts it to Twitter in a cool way. All you need to do is to log in via Twitter, type in an artist/track and click preview. Twt.fm then generates a track page using your Twitter page design. Post it on Twitter and your friends will be able to leave you comments on the same page – Example.
Worth mentioning: Listento.fm, and Twones.
Mix & Share:
Not a pure mix service but it still falls into this category, 8tracks allows you to create a Mix (playlist) with your favorite songs. It’s actually very similar to a service that already shut down, Mixwit—so if you missed it, you might as well try 8tracks. Once you sign up to the service you can start searching for music, or uploading it from your computer to build your Mix. You can publish a Mix of no more than 8 tracks and only two of these can be from the same artist. Visitors at the site can listen to Mixes without signing into the service—but for creation and music uploads, you’ll have to become a member.
A fun service to close the list with, Jamglue brings music and fans together. Any artist can sign up for a free Jamglue account and upload music in multi-track format for others to remix. There are several Creative Commons licenses to choose from. These licenses allow others to share and remix work, as long as they follow the artist’s restrictions. Fans can remix other folks’ stuff, and share the results.
Conclusion:
To summarize this whole guide, I have to admit that I’m somewhat concerned: Let’s say Youtube closes its doors tomorrow or decides to stop streaming music—there goes about 80% of what I’ve listed. Which brings me to my next point, the future of music on the Web doesn’t looks so bright right now. Not if every service depends on Youtube so heavily as its music source. For once, I wouldn’t mind paying a yearly fee if it meant listening to an unlimited source of any music that I like with good streaming & with awesome quality. And, I don’t even need to download the songs to my computer, all I really want is a place where I can play my favorite music based on monthly/year fee. Is it too much to ask? Oh wait, this is exactly what Rhapsody offers; Unfortunately, only in the U.S. . . .
For now, I suggest you try the services above and enjoy them as long as they last. For some reason, music services don’t stay around very long but I guess that’s the way they roll.
Since I can’t list them all, please feel free to add services that I’ve missed in your comments and make them handy for everyone.
Soon, the service I am working on will be added onto this list. I am still developing it at the moment and it will need its own category.
Your service url is..
Coz I see many services for MP3.. these are just scripts!
Yes, please do share. I hope it is something along the lines of the original MuxTape. There have been a few mixtape sites to come along, but so far, none have done it right.
Hello,
So where’s hypem.com then? “It’s this pretty nice service that gets it music from all sorts of places – not youtube.” But honestly, it might not be to everyone’s taste, but you can’t deny it’s a unique service. An attribute which you can’t really apply to many of the websites listed in the article.
For curated content, http://freemusicarchive.org/ might be worth checking out too.
right on about hypem
archive.org live music archive for ‘curated’ open source music in the form of live recordings of thousands of artists (non commercial) and tons of other great non-music related areas throughout the site
lots of space to improve music recommendation engines and encourage people to pay
How you write an article about music on the web without mentioning Spotify?!
1 day..my service will be on the top of this list :-)
and what is your service about?
I got one for you in the mixing category – it’s called Bojam and it is a web-based recording studio. Users can upload or record tracks. Our mixer lets you load mixes in multi-track format and edit audio tracks. Collaborative mixes sit online for other users to remix or add tracks to. You can signup for our beta at bojam.com/signup.htm
A piece of advice: have an English-speaking person proof-read your articles *BEFORE* publishing them.
A piece of advice: loosen up and relax your anal muscles. You’ll live longer.
Moof is up for sale right now. The founders thought it wasn’t worth their time, this service, and have other things to focus on (Dailybooth.com is also by the same team and is growing much faster than Moof).
Smart decision by the founders, I’d say.
Unless I had some kick ass ideas and some really solid relationships with music industry execs, I wouldn’t step into the online music namespace ever.
Here’s another music sharing site that I created, which also uses YouTube like the others http://www.listeningtoo.com
Give it a try, and let me know if you like it.
Shouldn’t this be ‘listeningto’ instead of ‘listening too’? As in, what are you listening to?
I love all this stuff – the key issue is how to build revenue to help developing artists create the music that fuels these engines – the risk of investing in “new” talent is getting steeper as the gadgets get more “free”.
Screw the artists, what do they mean in all of this!
Lala.com is what I use. It works with Mac (not just windows) and their Music Mover app is what makes this service so unique. Also, they offer for-purchase downloads that are cheaper than Amazon and iTunes.
Rhapsody’s new iPhone app needs a lot of work but it has already replaced Pandora and YouTube as my music streaming service of choice. The $15/month subscription fee may be high for some but I have been using the service for over three years now and have been mostly happy.
i have the zune pass, and it’s great also. +10 songs to keep per/month
Hi Guys,
I would also recommend Gogoyoko – they claim fair play in music, giving artists the choice of what to charge for their songs as well as 100% of the revenue.
http://www.gogoyoko.com/
One of my favs is http://www.stereomood.com, music by mood or activities :D
These services are all exciting and all, but none o them are ground ground breaking any shape or form.
I big problem about music start-ups is that non of hem truly cater to the artists. it’s all about the USERS USERS USERS. what about those that create content for the users?
There is a Linux and Mac OS client for Lala, too. Please update.
Does anyone try Microsoft SongSmith software? It looks like a automatic music generator which can generates some music according to your singing songs.
G
Member of Amazon Coupons,
http://www.tophotdeal.com
Another really easy way to share music on twitter is http://lastfmlovetweet.com – love a track on lastfm, and it generates a tweet. That simple. Oh, and you can easily customize the format of the tweets it generates!
Moonalice believes in providing all of its live shows to fans via Twitter and Facebook. We invented the Twittercast and have done 49 of them since April 3.
Moonalice is GE Smith, Pete Sears, Barry Sless, Ann McNamee, John Molo and Chubby Wombat.
Check out the band and its music for free:
http://www.moonaliceband.com
https://twitter.com/moonalice
http://www.face...k.com/moonalice
I really don’t see the value in any of these companies. The best way to discover new music is through blogs and retail sampling. Imeem is my favorite streaming service but beware that Spotify is prepared to knock down the walls.
imeem’s great
stopped using it though for no good reason…
facebook / youtube / myspace / soundcloud (new personal favorite) combo has been best for me to share my music with others
soundcloud.com/jgabriel
downloadable lossless streaming aiffs !
Great point on YouTube becoming the biggest music library backend for music startups. This is most definitely not a legit way to play music and thus not sustainable. We need a unlimited music subscription product that can be used via any of these apps to de-couple right-to-access from the music player UI + sharing experience.
Nice compilation, I think I might even start using some of them. Would be nice to know more about the artist at the same time though, pretty much without surfing around too much. With this in mind, I made http://www.onepageartist.com – hope you guys find it useful.
Another way to share your original music is at http://www.clownbasket.com. Unlike any other sites that searches very popular bands and titles this one is just dedicated to the artists. Some of the songs are real great. Give it a try
Qloud was definitely acquired by Buzznet, over two years ago. (Actually it was acquired by Buzz Media, parent company of Buzznet.)
http://www.soci...red-by-buzznet/
Nice compilation, I think I might even start using some of them. Would be nice to know more about the artist at the same time though, without surfing around too much. I found http://www.onepageartist.com pretty useful.
Nice compilation, I think I might even start using some of them. Would be nice to know more about the artist at the same time though, without surfing around too much. I found http://www.onepageartist.com to be pretty useful.
Nice compilation, if you want to know more about the artist at the same time without surfing around too much, I found http://www.onepageartist.com to be pretty useful.
def overall a tricky space from a startups perspective…
but it’s great to have some articles about leisurely pursuits as well! =)
interesting to see where it ends up, but finding, sharing and listening to music on the internet gets better and better; i personally use myspace, facebook, youtube, more recently soundcloud, and used to use imeem (should make a foray back there again)
i think as hi def video becomes cheaper to produce and more artists couple their songs with videos that it will be a growing space long term…
also once people’s finances become more integrated on-line and conveniently paying for whatever media you are consuming hopefully becomes more widely adopted artists can also have direct financial benefits.
my personal tastes lead me to places like
beatport.com
juno uk
traxxsource
these are all great profitable businesses (dance music community)
I use http://dooden.com/ which lists all the music search engines in streaming and mp3 category. If you don’t find the song on one site click on the next icon and in the end you are bound to find the song you are looking for.
Awesome article – I didn’t see part one but will be looking for it as soon as I’m finished here!
It could be a while before I get through all of the above first though – great share Orli :-)
Here is the home of a large handful of DIY musicians: http://alonetone.com – lots of amazing music there.
Also try http://listenapp.com which is a bare-bones browser for alonetone music (will integrate with other artist sites soon)
Thank you for the interesting article but there’s still not enough emphasis on Creative Commons music. Netlabels are a source of free music that can be shared with anyone. You could always visit CTW and find out more. :)
This is a nice pair of pieces, but it only covers a small area of ‘Music’ services – what about a feature on ‘broader’ music services – like Songkick, Bandsintown, Mog.com and our service Gigulate?
http://gigulate.com
And don’t forget Hype Machine, it’s impossible to ignore – agree.
Anda memang benar
I’ve been using grooveshark and myspace music recently, but I’m a bit concerned about the legality of most of the sites you list – personally I’d love to know what sites are actually paying the artists (maybe you should consider this to be part III?).
Does anyone try Microsoft SongSmith software?
If you know what you want to listen to and your’re prepared to sift through the dross and the PRS-blocked videos (here in the UK anyway), Youtube is hard to beat for instant music gratification.
For finding new music, I always go to one of the many, many muso-blogs (the neat http://www.anewbandaday.com , the ubiquitous I Am Fuel You Are Friends blog, etc.) where there is a real grass-roots connection with brand new bands.
I’m still very disappointed by the fact that there’s no Slacker which is still my favorite. I guess that’s the power of social media – publishing biased opinion on topics not fully probed by professional researchers and analysts.
One of the most innovative of all…Jelli
jelli.net
Hello, thank you for the perspective but I think that you missed one amazing source: http://www.awdio.com, although it’s not huge in the US yet, the service offers a quite unique experience, live streams from the best clubs and dj’s in the world. check it out for yourself.
best from Paris
AxB
Very much appreciate both articles. I am surprised that neither accuradio nor iceberg got a mention. A virtue of these two connected services is the sheer breadth of the music genres they cover. You are also able to mix genres and customise the streams by adding or removing gernres, sub-genres and artists “on the fly”.
These products attempt to do something that few if any of the products covered do and that is in essence cover MUSIC in all its genres.
The choice of genre covered by nearly all the products highlighted in both articles is quite narrow and US focused. If you enter a jazz / classical / world (non US) tag into say Pandora or to a less extent Last FM- the result is often quite pathetic.
Can anyone recommend any other Internet sites that handle these other music genres?
check out http://viixy.com too it’s similiar to lala without a few of their restrictions
Heyyyyyyy i imagine you don´t like listen or dance latin music!!! Try http://www.batanga.com it´s my favorite website, you can found more +20 different latin radio stations!
Grooveshark does a lot of that stuff that you mention in the conclusion. Their subscription service is even optional. I love that it doesn’t rely on youtube so if youtube does decide to stop streaming music, Grooveshark will still be going strong. And it isn’t restricted to US like you say Rhapsody is.
here’s an article on techcrunch from a few weeks back about a music site (that i happen to run) that has been for some reason, left off the list(s) – about 8 million people a month come here so quite bizarre it’s not considered.
http://www.tech...ess-on-the-web/
Thanks for the write up Orli!
You have outdated (for several months:)) information about Song.ly – it allows you searching for music to tweet on the web. Entering MP3 url is a supplementary function for rare titles that can’t be found using the search.
Thanks,
Mike
Part III – get a spotify account and then finish this article. If you’re in the “wrong” country, get someone to create it in a “right” one – seems to work for many
-ben
“For once, I wouldn’t mind paying a yearly fee if it meant listening to an unlimited source of any music that I like with good streaming & with awesome quality”
- There’s Spotify and it’s easily the best service out there! Why did Spotify not make the list?!!
There’s an excellent review here: http://bit.ly/No9CE
tkm
I have used hype machine regularly over the last few months for the latest releases and remixes. They should be included in the guide as a source!
No twiturm? I use Twiturm.com to upload my music to twitter and i love it. It’s my music of course as I’m trying to promote my music but I was suprised twiturm wasn’t on the list but song.ly was. Stats is what twiturm gives me over song.ly and they add new features and fix bugs on the regular.
TuneupMedia Is AMAZING. The service is great – it cleans up all your music. I especially love the upcoming concert feature. A must have for any cybermusicphile