Crave

We swear, there's no reading required to expand your musical horizons these days. Well...aside from this article, at least.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

When you're young, new music is everywhere: radio, Facebook profiles, borrowed iPods, or even burned CDs. It's not hard to find tunes you love. The music appetites of 13- to 21-year-olds are voracious and the consequences of being musically unhip can be punishing.

Then something happens: you get older; work a full-time job; get married; have a mortgage; have children; adopt a particularly demanding parrot; and so on. You wake up one day and realize your taste in music hasn't budged since your early '20s and the prospect of discovering good, new music now seems like an overwhelming chore, fraught with disappointment. I know, I'm living proof.

We're all familiar with the long, depressing list of activities that seemed easy in youth that now take effort. Fortunately, finding good music isn't as tough as working off that middle-age gut. Since its inception, the Internet has helped us--mostly illegally--discover new music. Finally, tools for legal and efficient online music discovery are hitting their stride.

To help you help yourself, we've collected our favorite techniques to help the lazy, hurried, or unhip (or, face it, aging) connect with good, new music.

For music lovers, the Pandora internet radio application for the iPhone and iPod Touch is a welcome addition.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Apple publicly unveiled the Pandora Internet radio iPhone and iPod Touch application during the unveiling of the iTunes App store on Thursday, July 10. Tim Westergren, CEO for Pandora, was kind enough to give me a personal tour of the new application. The following is a synopsis of just about every question I had for Tim. Editors' note: This is not an interview transcript, but a roundup of information on the Pandora iPhone application presented in a FAQ format.

An option key allows you to bookmark artsist or songs, or purchase the current song directly from iTunes.

(Credit: Pandora)

How much will iTunes charge for the Pandora application?

It's free.

Will the iPhone version of the Pandora application stream music over the new 3G cellular connection?

Yes. New iPhones can use the Pandora app to stream music over 3G or Wi-Fi. Updated first-gen iPhones can stream over Wi-Fi or Edge, and the iPod Touch will obviously only stream over its Wi-Fi connection

What's the audio quality like?

Pandora's serves its iPod Touch and iPhone audio streams as 64Kbps stereo MP3 files; however, the quality and file format may be retooled once Pandora's tech team has some time to work with the new iPhone's hardware.

How will Pandora make money off a free application?

Pandora may eventually consider placing short audio advertisements in its streams, but, Pandora's first priority is to grow its user base.

Will Pandora stations I've already created using the Web service be available on the iPhone application?

Yes. Any stations, artist bookmarks, and song like/dislike preferences will be identical between the Pandora Web service and the Pandora application.

You can create and save custom stations directly from the Pandora app.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

What can I do with the Pandora application for the iPhone and iPod Touch?

Most of the features of Pandora's Internet radio Web service will be available on its iPhone application as well. People can create radio stations based around artists or songs, bookmark favorite artists or songs, pause and skip tracks, vote on songs, and view descriptions of why a currently playing song was included in your stream. You also have the option to purchase the currently playing song directly over the iTunes Wi-Fi store.

Pandora's intelligent recommendation engine explains song choices.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Can I stream Pandora wirelessly from my iPhone over Bluetooth?

The iPhone does not currently support streaming stereo audio over its built-in Bluetooth; however, third-party Bluetooth audio adapters are available that fit any minijack audio output.

If I can connect my iPhone to my car stereo and stream Pandora over 3G, why would I listen to music on commercial or satellite radio?

Keep in mind that Pandora is a music-only service, so you'll need to get your talk radio, sports, and traffic reports elsewhere. That said, so long as you have decent 3G reception in your area, streaming Pandora internet radio to your car stereo via your iPhone should work fine.

Pandora's song voting system has made it to its iPhone app as well. Voting on songs helps fine-tune Pandora's personalized song recommendations. People can also pause and skip tracks.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Can I wake up to Pandora radio if I dock my iPhone or iPod Touch into an iPod alarm clock?

Not likely, since most alarm clock docks trigger song playback from your music library. Some iPod alarm clock docks include an auxiliary input, however, so if you kept music streaming from Pandora all night (and somehow managed not to run down your battery), then it's possible. Seems like a pain though.

Will Pandora music streams display album art?

Yes, although some music in Pandora's catalog is still without cover art.

The Pandora playback screen looks much like the standard iPod playback screen, complete with cover art.

(Credit: Pandora)

Does the Pandora iPhone/iPod Touch application have the same limitations on track skipping as the Web version of the Internet radio station?

Yes. Because of legal restrictions, users cannot skip tracks on Pandora more than six times per hour. Fortunately, Pandora's Music Genome Project is pretty good at coming up with song selections.

Will using the Pandora iPhone application run down my battery quickly?

Yes. Reports so far suggest that the new iPhone's battery performance is at its worst when using its 3G connection. Streaming Pandora content over the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection should produce better battery performance than using 3G.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The next-generation Zune Marketplace makes a sharp departure from its Windows Media Player roots, embracing a clean, minimalist design with engaging visual imagery. As it's notably different from the standard jukeboxes, it takes a little getting used to, but it will please your eye in the interim. Check out our slide show of the Zune Software and Marketplace for a detailed look at the interface and service.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

(Click to enlarge.)

If you were paying attention to Crave back in March, you may recall my first expedition to South by Southwest. While I was there, I attended a panel titled The Ultimate Music Recommendation Smackdown, which turned out to be much more letdown than smackdown. Based on the description of the panel, I was expecting a competition of sorts between various Internet-based music recommendation engines, such as Pandora and Last.fm. Unfortunately, there was no real competing and, well, that's just kind of sad, don't you think? Me, too. So I decided to take things into my own hands and pit some of the leading Internet radio stations--nay, music recommendation engines--against each other.

As for how I decided what constituted "leading," I'm afraid I wasn't terribly scientific about it. I essentially just chose four online radio services that are generally well-known in the digital music domain. However, there were also a couple of general requirements--necessary for the structure of the competition--that helped considerably in narrowing down the options. First, the service had to actually stream a string of full-length tracks, not just recommend tracks for you to find (as with Audiobaba). It also had to be a standalone engine (unlike MusicIP and iLike) that allowed the creation of stations based on a given artist or track. With those rules in place, I easily came up with the four competitors: Last.fm, Pandora, Slacker, and LaLa.

The Method: Because not all of the services offer track-based recommendations, I selected an artist--Scissor Sisters--to create stations in each player. Some of the services let you "fine-tune" stations with attribute sliders, but I didn't touch these in the hopes of getting the most central results. I used Internet Explorer to stream the resulting stations, allowing each one to play to 20 tracks, which I kept track of in a spreadsheet. If a track really turned me off, I skipped it and marked it with an "X" on the spreadsheet. Luckily, none of the streams inspired me to skip more than five times as Internet radio has a five-skip-per-hour limit.

The Results: Based solely on skips (fewer of them being better), Pandora came out on top with just one skip, or a pass rate of 95 percent. Next came LaLa with 90 percent, then Slacker with 85 percent, and finally Last.fm with 75 percent. That said, Last.fm came out on top in terms of variety, playing just one song per artist. Pandora played the least amount of mainstream music; Slacker played the most. LaLa wasn't so good at shuffling, often playing blocks of two songs by one artist. (View playlists.)

Of course, in the end it boils down to personal preference. I skipped so much of the Last.fm station because it was more mellow than what I was looking for; Pandora, on the other hand, was playing upbeat tracks, which I tend to lean toward at work. Then there's LaLa, which played the highest ratio of my personal favorites. So who's the winner? Well, far be it from me to tell you that. I've re-created the playlists (as closely as possible) over at LaLa.com, where you can listen to them and judge for yourself.

Note: These links will take you to a page hosting the playlist. Click the big red play button near the top to hear the music.

• Last.fm playlist
• Pandora playlist
• Slacker playlist
• LaLa playlist

(Credit: Slacker)

What do you get when you take the ex-CEOs of Musicmatch, Rio, and iRiver America and lock them in a room with a stack of data about the digital-music landscape? How about a revolutionary new music service and a portable device to go along with it?

Enter Slacker, a company chock full of digital music experts (mostly transplants from Musicmatch and Rio), and its two babies: Slacker.com (an online music service) and the Slacker portable device. That's quite a few Slackers, and it's also the point. As it turns out, about 70 percent of music enthusiasts don't want to spend hours creating the perfect playlists, which means most of you are slackers just like me. (Ha!) To break it down even further, 51 percent of MP3 player users update their content only once a month or less, and 46 percent don't update more often because they don't have time. Several services have aimed to address this issue, such as MTV Urge with its Auto-Mix feature and Rhapsody with Channels.

OK, so maybe I shouldn't readily admit how lazy I am when it comes to foraging for new music. I listen to a lot of online streams (Last.fm, Pandora, and CNET Download.com Music) and whatnot, but then forget to write down the songs I like. And who has time to comb through online music sites or dig through the bins at the local record store (do people still do that?). For precisely this reason, I--the non-iPod user--turn to helpful extras such as Rhapsody Channels and MTV Urge's Auto-Mix feature for my on-the-go music needs. But the majority of MP3 player owners out there use an iPod, which isn't compatible with the aforementioned services. What's an iTunes user to do? Well, don't start feeling sorry for yourself just yet. Goombah Music Discovery is made just for you (and, you know, the millions of other iTunes users out there).

Goombah isn't a brand new service--the software was first available back in November 2006--but the company added a new feature this week, and the announcement reminded me I'd been wanting to bring it up. Goombah is a combination of software and service; that is, you download the software to your computer, but the service uses the Internet to access data--namely, other users' music libraries. It also makes your library data available to other users, so if you're big on privacy, this probably isn't for you. The download takes up a fair amount of space--155MB--and is available for both Windows and Mac systems.

So what's the point of all this library data access? Well, Goombah analyzes all of your music and then uses that info to make song and artist recommendations from other users' libraries. You can then listen to samples of tracks via iTunes, Napster, or Amazon.com. If you decide to purchase a song through one of those mediums, Goombah takes a cut, which is how the service remains free to the user. Goombah even recommends some free tunes (from up-and-coming independent artists) that you can download to iTunes.

Other features include the ability to supress artists that are already in your library from your list of recommendations and the option to blacklist specific tracks, albums, and artists. There's also an "adventurousness" slider, which you use to adjust how close to your musical tastes the recommendations will be. And then you have the new feature that was announced this week: the ability to browse other members profiles, music libraries, and opinions.

Of course, there is at least one questionable move on Goombah's part: the software doesn't distinguish between audio and video files, so my list included several TV shows, which may or may not affect the results. However, you can uncheck the boxes next to any number of your files, and this removes the tracks from the recommendation generator and prevents other users from being able to view them. (Ahem, users with "questionable" content in their libraries might want to note this fact.)

This week, MTV quietly launched a new feature within Urge, dubbed My Auto-Mix. I had a chance to sit down with MTV reps last week to preview the tool, and I was pretty impressed with what I saw. Yesterday, I finally had a chance to start playing with My Auto-Mix, and now I'm hooked. This handy music discovery tool provides you with custom playlists based on several factors that you can adjust. My personal favorite is the Mood Selector, which can be seen in the screenshot below. The experience is entirely visual, with different emoticons representing all 179 moods from which you can choose. Some of my personal favorites include hostile, freewheeling, and rollicking. The actual design of the emoticons is still a work in progress, but even now, some of them are pretty amusing.

There's also an Artist Selector, which lets you chose up to 5 artists (Urge's catalog comprises more than 110,000), then provides a playlist full of those and like artists. And you have the Style Selector, where you can zoom in to each of Urge's 18 genres to choose from the 330 subgenres. The interface itself is Flash-based, so it's graphical, responsive, and fun to use. Within any of the Selectors, you also get three customized slider controls for fine-tuning the outcomes. You can adjust the popularity, freshness, and familiarity, depending on what you're looking for at the moment. Playlist length is also user-determined; choose 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40 track lists.

Once you get a list that you like, you can type a name into the text bar at the top and save it to your playlists, and of course you can transfer it to a compatible MP3 player. The lists are also dynamic--a Refresh button near the top of the screen lets you easily swap out content. The best part of all this, though, is that during the development of My Auto-Mix, MTV really pushed Microsoft to improve the performance of Windows Media Player 11...and Microsoft actually responded (upgrade here). The performance of WMP11 and Urge within it are vastly improved. During testing, many of the Auto-Mixes loaded instantly, while others took just a couple of seconds.