If you're a music lover and you want to share your favorite tracks with your Twitter followers, you've come to the right place. Below, you will find several cool apps that allow you to syndicate all your music tastes to your Twitter accounts in just a few simple steps.
But before you get started, it's important for us all to remember to be responsible Twitter users. While it's nice to tell friends about our music tastes, we shouldn't do it all day, every day. That's a surefire way to guarantee that I (and probably others) stop following you.
With that out of the way, let's take a look at some of the better Twitter music services.
Tweet your music
Blip.fm Blip.fm provides a Twitter-like service for music lovers.
Blip.fm features an input box to update other users about the many songs you enjoy. To do so, you'll need to search the site for a track. From there, it's automatically populated in the box, giving you the option to send a favorite song to friends. When you "blip" the song, it accesses it from Imeem, giving you the ability to listen to it on the site.
To share your content with Twitter, you'll need to link your Blip.fm account with the microblog. From there, your Blip.fm updates can be syndicated to your Twitter profile, providing users a link to your blip and the option to stream the respective song. It's a nice service, but I think it's a little too much work if you only want to share songs on Twitter.
Blip.fm does some unique things with music sharing.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Imeem Imeem also provides a way for users to share their favorite tracks with Twitter friends.
In order to use Imeem, you'll need to register for the site. It adds time initially, but once you get over that, you can quickly search for songs. You can simply listen to tracks. But if you're in the sharing mood, click the "tweet this" button. Upon doing so, your Twitter tweet-input box is populated with the name of the song, the artist, and a link to the song's Imeem page, allowing your followers to listen to the track. Imeem doesn't automatically update your Twitter stream, so you can modify the tweet as you see fit.
Imeem populates your Twitter page with a tweet.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Facebook most's popular music application comes from iLike, and soon the company will try to turn that social-networking cachet into song sales.
Seattle-based iLike, a social music service, is expected to launch a music download store in coming days, perhaps as soon as Thursday, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. Last month, CNET News reported that iLike was in talks with the top four recording companies about securing licenses for downloads.
The new store will debut as a beta version and will feature songs from at least three of the four top major recording companies, according to the sources. On Tuesday, iLike changed the name of its Facebook app to "Music."
iLike CEO Ali Partovi was not immediately available to comment.
This is a strange time for ad-supported music services, and iLike's foray into downloads comes as skepticism about the business model is higher than ever. Earlier this year, Ruckus shut its doors and Imeem, which is also testing a download store, faced a financial crisis before securing a round of funding and better licensing terms from the big recording companies.
A CNET examination of SpiralFrog, the first ad-supported download site, which went out of business in March, indicates that advertisers just aren't willing to pay these sites premium rates. Music listeners, as it turns out, don't want to stare at ads when they're listening to songs.
As the ad-supported music sites cast about for ways to generate revenue, some of them are turning to selling downloads. This means they hope they can entice iTunes users, which represents the vast majority of the digital music market, away from Apple.
Others have tried this tact, including Microsoft, MTV, and Wal-Mart and all have ended up either scurrying away or scratching out a living by servicing a niche market. By all appearances, Apple continues to be an unstoppable force in music.
Nonetheless, Partovi impresses me as someone who's not afraid of a fight. Last week, I interviewed him via e-mail and while we didn't agree on many of the questions surrounding the ad-supported model, there's no doubt in my mind he thinks he has it figured out.
Partovi on downloads: "Everybody in our business is talking to the major labels almost continuously (about downloads), and for good reason. The licensing landscape has evolved a lot, and it continues to evolve. If and when a deal is available that can offer an even better experience to our users at reasonable costs to us, we'll always be interested. I can't discuss any specific negotiations, product ideas, or rumors."
Partovi on the ad-supported model: "I think the jury is out as to whether ad-supported music consumption will work. However, I think it's important to remember that there's much more to music. At iLike, we've built a self-sustaining ad-supported business (positive cash flow over the past 8-month period), and that's with only one full-time ad sales person."
"What's our secret? It's simple: we're not trying to help consumers get unlimited music without paying for it. Instead, we're focused on music discovery: we deliver all the other things that music consumers love without risking a lawsuit or paying high royalties. Besides sampling music, people use iLike to get concert notifications, recommend new bands to friends, see video messages or tweets from their favorite artists--all of which has built iLike an audience of more than 120 million uniques per month across all our apps and widgets while maintaining very low costs."
Updated at 10 p.m. to correct spelling of iLike CEO Ali Partovi's name.
The jukebox in the sky is a reality. When I started this blog two years ago, it was all but impossible to open a Web browser, type a song name, and have that song start playing immediately. Now, it's commonplace.
Meuzer found Roy Harper's "The Game," while Grooveshark didn't.
I still like the simple approach of Grooveshark--the other night, my brother and I set up a running DJ battle on it to reminisce and introduce each other to new tunes--but Meuzer is an interesting alternative. Search on a song or artist name, and Meuzer pulls results from YouTube--very similar to the Muziic app I looked at earlier this year--as well as Imeem and other third-party sources. Click any of the results, and you get a four-arrow widget that lets you play, share, rate, or add the song to a playlist. Hit "play," and the song begins playing in an embedded window depending on the original source (a YouTube result begins playing a small YouTube video, for instance). Other features require you to log in, and currently the only way to do that is with a Facebook ID.
Meuzer seems to have a broader selection of music than Grooveshark: a search on Roy Harper's "The Game"--a song I couldn't find on Grooveshark for the DJ battle with my brother--got several results from YouTube. But I don't like the forced log-in, particularly for the essential playlist feature, and the search results aren't organized nearly as well. For instance, searching for the dub artist Scientist returned multiple results for "The Scientist" by Coldplay (eww) but no Scientist. On Grooveshark, I simply selected the Artists tab and the top 10 results were all Scientist tunes. Still, Meuzer could be a useful fallback for songs I can't find on other services.
Follow Matt on Twitter.
We all like to share songs with friends, and we all have songs that share meaning with loved ones. Perhaps that's why there are so many music social networks out there. These sites combine both, and make music exploration and enjoyment something that you're not doing on your own.
From the well-known to the obscure, I've been exploring a variety of music social networks that you'll definitely want to check out:
Buzznet is a great way to connect with other music lovers. You can write status updates and view an activity feed that shows what your friends are listening to. You can also tell all your friends what your "song of the moment" is and post it to a profile that can be completely redesigned and themed using built-in tools.
Buzznet has some songs from major artists, but I would have liked to see more tracks. That said, the site makes up for it with music videos from YouTube. That adds a bit more value, as long as the recording quality is good..
Buzznet has a loaded profile page.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Flotones isn't the best looking site in this roundup, but it does a nice job of connecting indie artists with fans. You can choose to sign up as either a fan or an artist. If you're an artist, you can upload music, post to a blog, give out your contact information to schedule gigs, and more. As a fan, you can find artists, follow their updates, and review their music. You can also send them private messages. Not all musicians put their music on the site, but quite a few do.
Flotones has a variety of artists on its pages.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
The music discovery Web site imeem.com officially launched its very own iPhone app on Thursday, May 14. Imeem's app is free and bears a resemblance to similar offerings from Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker, offering the ability to stream, search, and purchase music over Wi-Fi or cellular connections.
But before you write off the Imeem app (download) as some late-arriving Last.fm wannabe, there's one killer feature to be aware of: cloud storage. Apps like Last.fm will go so far as to create personalized radio stations based on a random selection of songs from your collection, but the Imeem app allows you to call up any song or album in your collection and play it without the restrictions associated with most services (i.e. limited skips, and the inability to play songs from the same artist back-to-back).
In order to stream music from your personal collection, you first need to upload your music to imeem.com from your desktop using its free Mac/PC-compatible client. Now before you go thinking that you can upload that 300GB iTunes library to Imeem and stream it anywhere in the world, there's a catch. Imeem won't charge you for the first 100 songs you upload to the site, but anything more than that will require a VIP service ($29.99 per year for up to 1,000 songs, or $99.99 per year for up to 20,000).
Beyond the appeal of streaming your music collection form the cloud, the rest of the Imeem application falls somewhere between the simplicity of the Pandora app, and the more personalized, social approach of Last.fm. The main menu screen offers ... Read more
The Jonas Brothers totally want to add Mark Zuckerberg as a friend now.
The Jonas Brothers, that family of mop-topped teen pop-rockers who seem to be just about everywhere these days, are going to be debuting their new single on Facebook this Thursday.
They'll be performing the new song, "Paranoid," in the first of four Webcasts created with a Ustream app for the Facebook platform. Fans can access it by navigating to the band's Facebook fan page. The Jonas Brothers, who also were poster boys for the debut of the MySpace Music service, also will answer questions from fans and talk about their upcoming tour. That's at 5 p.m. PDT on Thursday; they'll host three more Webcasts on May 14, 21, and 28.
Over a million people have signed up as Jonas Brothers "fans" on the band's official Facebook page, but considering Facebook has over 200 million active users, that's a fairly small number. This promotional effort will undoubtedly shine a brighter spotlight on Facebook fan pages, which the social network has been hyping up a lot with a fresh redesign and prominent placement in the "streams" of members' home pages.
There is, however, a more significant impact to this announcement than just the synergy of one of this decade's biggest music sensations (I guess they're kind of like this generation's Hanson, right?) and one of its biggest tech sensations. "This marks the first time a U.S. musical artist is debuting a new song via a live Webcast series on their Facebook Page," a statement from Facebook read.
Yet song debuts are nothing new to the social-networking world: Debuting the stream of a new single or album on a social music site like MySpace Music, iLike, Imeem, and Last.fm (owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive) has become a regular promotional stop for artists looking to spread the buzz about new releases. Many of these services have a heavy presence on Facebook's third-party application platform, and Facebook even partnered with one of the most popular, iLike, to debut a Thievery Corporation album last year.
There have been rumors over and over again that Facebook was looking to start a music service of its own, or maybe to acquire one of the popular music apps on its platform. That hasn't come to fruition. But does this new move mean Facebook is starting to compete directly with some of the music applications that have made its platform so popular? Maybe.
We'll see when those totally dreamy Jonas Brothers show up there on Thursday.
Social music service Imeem launched a mobile-advertising platform on Monday that enables advertisers to target consumers through "Imeem for Android," the company's Android-based application.
Imeem said it has already signed up Kia Motors as an advertiser. According to the company, the carmaker will have a branded display presence across Imeem for Android's interface, as well as a Kia-branded radio station on the application. The deal will also see Kia ads placed on media-streaming Imeem pages.
In tandem with its advertising platform, Imeem also released a new version of Imeem for Android that will include location-based streaming stations, more detailed artist biographies, and a seasonal station for holiday music.
Imeem for Android is available in the Android Market as a free download.
An executive from social-music site Imeem told CNET News just days ago that the company would not be going through a round of layoffs.
Well, not quite.
Imeem's vice president of marketing, Matt Graves, said the question was actually "whether we had done layoffs, not whether we were going to," and that he answered accordingly. Sneaky! He proceeded to confirm a report from PaidContent that a quarter of the company has been laid off.
"There's not as much money floating around the market, and we had to cut our costs to accommodate," Graves said. He added that the layoffs are companywide--"finance, marketing, communications, product, technical operations"--clarifying the PaidContent assertion that the layoffs had been primarily "on the technical back-end side."
He would not comment on the other half of PaidContent's report--that Imeem is planning to shop itself to prospective buyers. PaidContent's Rafat Ali added that Imeem's projected valuation is more than $200 million, a figure that many media and technology companies might not be willing to fork over at this point.
Imeem has taken venture funding from Sequoia Capital, a firm that has advocated extreme caution and frugality amid financial panic. Another Sequoia-backed company, Jive Software, cut a third of its employees within days of the now-famous letter from the venture firm to its portfolio CEOs.
This post was updated at 12:23 p.m. PDT with comment from Imeem.
Music service Imeem has released its first mobile application--and it's not for the iPhone. The application is designed for Google's Android operating system, first launching on T-Mobile USA's G1 handset.
The free app, which will be available through the Android Market, doesn't let users stream music on-demand. But they can create customized radio stations, check out recommendations, and buy music from Amazon.com's MP3 service. Because the application is connected to PC-based Imeem accounts, users can see mobile changes they've made, such as marking an artist as a "favorite," reflected on their Web-based profile. Right now, the only revenue stream is from affiliate sales with Amazon MP3, but executives say that will change eventually.
Pick your favorites on the G1 handset's Imeem app.
(Credit: Imeem)"It's the first time we've ever had a mobile version of Imeem, which is pretty exciting for us," Matt Graves, vice president of marketing, told CNET News. "It opens up an entirely new market for us, a new demographic, and a new market of people who may not have been exposed to Imeem before."
He said there wasn't a particular reason why Imeem chose the Android Market over Apple's App Store, currently the hot spot for mobile applications.
"I don't think it was Android over the iPhone. We are interested in reaching mobile consumers," Graves said. "It seemed like a good opportunity for us and a good platform."
While Imeem has "nothing to announce just yet" about an iPhone app, Graves wouldn't rule out the possibility of developing one.
Here's the other news from Imeem: it is not jumping on the Silicon Valley layoff bandwagon, or at least that's what Graves said.
"We started being conservative before it was apparent in the market that you had to be," he explained, adding that the company will have "no layoffs."
That's good news for Imeem, considering that some other companies in the digital-music space are suffering. Cash-strapped Web radio start-up Pandora, which has blamed the royalty fees for online streaming, let go of 20 employees on Friday.
"I can't really speak to Pandora's business," Graves said, "(but) the DMCA radio rates are reasonable, I think. I think that we've got a pretty varied set of revenue streams."
Searchme, a visual search engine, on Monday launched a free music streaming service that allows visitors to search for their favorite songs and listen to an unlimited number of tracks. Each song on Searchme provides a link to buy it on Amazon.com, eBay, or iTunes and can be added to a "search stack" or playlist, which can be accessed at any time. The Searchme Music page also features cover art, which users can flip through to choose songs.
According to TechCrunch, Searchme's Music selection uses Imeem's catalog of licensed songs by employing its widget, which can be embedded anywhere on the Web. Searchme grabs an Imeem widget for each song in the search results page and displays them in a Cover Flow-like layout to help users pick songs.
Unlike some services, like Yahoo's music search, which will only allow users to play 25 streams each month, Searchme's music streaming is unlimited and generally provides a better design for music searching. But with a slew of competitors that offer streaming, like MySpace Music, Grooveshark, and Imeem itself, it won't be easy for the visual search engine to cement itself in the market, given its relatively small audience. But by offering free streaming, the company is doing all it can to capitalize on a growing trend in the marketplace, which could help it funnel more users into its Web search.
