Audio & Music 09

Site: Amazon.com/MP3 Category: Audio & Music

Amazon's MP3 store sells DRM-free MP3s of entire musical albums, ripped at a very high bit rate and with digital copies of the cover art. Because there's no DRM, the files can be played on any portable media player, which has helped Amazon become one the top five music sellers worldwide.

Tracks are available for sale individually or by the album. In order to complete a purchase on the store, users must install a small helper program that lets you download several tracks at the same time. It will also … Read more

Site: NexusRadio.com Category: Audio & Music

Nexus Radio (download) is a free music software application that lets users download music and listen to streaming radio stations. It also doubles as a media player, and recording tool which can record in-line audio from your computer, or from the radio streams you're listening to.

Like competing music jukebox software, Nexus Radio has its own plug-in architecture that allows third parties to create their own add-ons. One of the most popular applications of that has been visualizations, which users are able to add or remove from the player.

Site: JamLegend.com Category: Audio & Music

JamLegend emulates console games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band by letting users play the guitar tracks on songs using their QWERTY keyboard. Users can play by themselves or with others, and have their scores tracked on community leaderboards.

For artists, JamLegend is a chance to make your music an interactive experience--and a profitable one, since the service links back to your band's site, or online stores where the track can be purchased.

Site: Pandora.com Category: Audio & Music

Pandora is a music discovery and recommendation service. Users can listen to tracks via a simplistic player, and if they like or dislike a song they can vote yes or no on it. If they don't like it, the service will automatically skip it and move onto something else. If they do like it, Pandora will pull up tracks it thinks are similar in style. With enough use, it can effectively introduce you to all sorts of new music, and users can make their own radio stations based on personal tastes.

The … Read more

Site: Playlist.com Category: Audio & Music

Project Playlist was built to do one thing--stream audio playlists using music found freely online--and it does that fairly well. A cool feature on the Project Playlist site called "music buzz" offers up a range of blog posts about new music that has been culled from around the Web. All of the songs listed on Project Playlist have two prominent buttons: one for playing the track, and another for adding it to your playlist.

Every playlist in Project Playlist lives on its own Web page, with a variety of tools for … Read more

Site: Last.fm Category: Audio & Music

Last.fm is a music discovery and listening service. It's got a wide range of tracks users can listen to and share with others. It also has a recommendation engine that will give you a list of artists it thinks you'll like, based your personal favorites. Users can make their own playlists and even share them with friends using the service's widget-making tool or Facebook application.

One of its more helpful services for music junkies is Scrobbling, which tracks the music you're listening to on your computer and sends … Read more

Site: Apple.com/iTunes Category: Audio & Music

iTunes is Apple's jukebox software and a gateway to Apple's online media store and portable devices like iPods and iPhones. It's currently in its eighth release, and now features a built-in recommendation tool that can create playlists based on listening habits from your library, as well as other iTunes users.

The software started out as Mac-only, but became cross-platform with Windows shortly after Apple realized that it could make more money from music and movie sales than with iPods alone.

Site: Grooveshark.com Category: Audio & Music

Grooveshark is a free online jukebox service. Users can search for tracks and listen to them right inside of a Web-based player. Similar to software jukebox applications, users of Grooveshark can control music tracks as if they were playing them right off a hard drive. It also lets you save and create playlists, and mark songs as favorites.

Grooveshark has two companion applications, a widget creator for sticking the GrooveShark player on blogs and social networking profiles, and a link shortening service for use on microblogging services like Twitter.