How far we've come in such a short time. When I began this blog in 2007, finding a particular song online was an exercise in frustration. You could subscribe to an all-you-can-eat service like Rhapsody, but cheapskates and occasional music listeners either had to dig deep, engage with a questionably legal file-trading service, or settle for 30-second previews from iTunes or one of its Web-based competitors.
Search results for "U2 Beautiful Day" earlier today. The box at the upper-right is an embedded version of the Lala player, which let me play the complete song multiple times.
Since then, as readers of this blog know, dozens of sites offering free streaming music have emerged, from the dead-simple like Songerize and its successor Songite (enter a song title to play it now) to the fiendishly complicated Imeem (whose original user interface gave me a headache, although it's since gotten much better).
But, let's face it, most people don't read this blog. Again and again, nontechnical music fans are blown away when I show them a site like Grooveshark, which lets you play any song, any time, and even arrange songs in queues and playlists. "Is that legal?" they often ask. (Answer: it depends.)
Today, that all changes. Google announced the integration of playable songs into its search results yesterday, and is slowly rolling the feature out to U.S. searchers. I finally saw the feature in action this afternoon, when I ran a search on "U2 Beautiful Day." (You can test it here.)
To an experienced online music listener, the feature seems a little bit random because Google is using both iLike (recently acquired by MySpace) and
Some searches also give you links to Imeem, Rhapsody, and Pandora, each of which offers yet another experience--Rhapsody lets you play up to 25 songs per month for free, Imeem is best for finding unusual versions of popular songs (like live takes), and Pandora requires you to create a virtual radio station based on a particular artist or song, which can be useful for discovering other music you might like, but doesn't give you an instant fix.
Whatever. For the average Internet user, this distinction doesn't matter. What matters: when users go to Google to search for an artist's name, song name, album name, or even a snippet of lyrics, they won't just get random text links or YouTube videos. Instead, the first set of links will be to the audio recording itself--in many cases, the entire song. Everybody knows that there's free music available on the Internet, but most casual listeners don't bother to find it. Now, the most-visited site on the Internet will put it right in front of their faces. As awareness spreads, it'll be another nail in the coffin of traditional music media--why listen to the radio?--and a boon for the five companies who signed this deal with Google. Artists and record labels might also get a shot in the arm, as users discover new music for free and perhaps eventually buy a copy to keep.
As for the rest of the online music start-ups out there? They better be on the phone right now, looking for a benefactor.
The first free on-demand music service I ever encountered was Songerize. The page was a simple white box on a red background. Enter the name of a song, and it would scour the Seeqpod database of user-posted content, find the song, and begin streaming it immediately.
Pick a song, any song.
There were no fancy playlist features like Grooveshark, no social-networking features like Imeem, no embedded player or song locker like LaLa, just instant gratification. Unfortunately, Seeqpod declared bankruptcy and around the same time, Songerize became useless.
Now, Songerize creator Will Johnson is back with a second take on the same concept: Songite. The interface looks almost identical to its predecessor, and the concept's the same: instant gratification.
There are two important differences between Songite and Johnson's last work, however. First, you can now arrange songs into playlists, then share those playlists via simple URLs. Second, Songite now draws content from YouTube and Imeem, two sites that have more or less received the blessing of the big record labels and are in no danger of being sued out of existence. Bookmark it for the next time you've got a song stuck in your head and simply have to hear it right now.
I've been checking out a new social-networking site called SuperFan, and I think it could eventually become an interesting resource for music fans. But only if they make it easier to post and share content about favorite bands.
SuperFan is a bit like Facebook, only organized more around your likes and dislikes than around your friends.
If you've used Facebook, MySpace, Imeem, or any of the other countless social-networking sites out there, the drill will be familiar: enter your information to create a profile (here's mine), invite your friends, then engage in various activities like updating your status and uploading video and photos.
The key difference is that SuperFan is organized around the stuff you really like--movies, TV shows, sports teams, and--most relevant to me--music. Once you've created your profile page, you can run searches on particular musicians and albums, and declare yourself a fan. There are multiple different levels, the top being a SuperFan. Once you become a SuperFan of a particular artist--say, Roger Waters--you can embed YouTube videos, upload photos, create quizzes, and so forth. You basically become the maintainer of a fan site about your favorite artists and albums.
The template's pretty simple today--I'd like to see the ability to embed other videos, and even upload MP3 files like I can do on Imeem--but the idea has potential. If enough fans sign up and participate, SuperFan artist pages could become a go-to destination for musical information: instead of going to a band's home page or MySpace page, which tend to be strictly promotional, or to a Wikipedia entry, which tends to be pretty dry, you could go to a page that's lovingly curated by a fan.
But here's the catch. You can become a Fan of as many artists or albums as you want for free, but becoming a SuperFan--where you can actually populate a page with content--requires credits. You get some for free just by signing up, but to declare yourself a fan of a really popular group, like Led Zeppelin, you need to earn additional credits by creating content for other pages, or buy them with PayPal or by such as Netflix.
That seems like a bit of a hassle to me. As a music fan, I prefer Imeem's approach--while it's not as well-organized, there's no barrier to posting content, which means that it's easy to find just about anything you're looking for. And as a social-networking user, I'll probably stick with Facebook, where my friends are today.
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You know that old maxim about something being too good to be true? I wondered how my new favorite on-demand music-streaming service, Grooveshark, was able to avoid the record industry lawsuits that plagued its predecessors, such as Seeqpod and Imeem.
Is EMI's lawsuit just a negotiating tactic?
Turns out, it isn't immune. Grooveshark contacted me earlier this week to let me know that its negotiations with EMI were on the verge of breaking down. (You can read Grooveshark's official statement here.)
Yesterday evening, Peter Kafka at All Things Digital uncovered the fact that EMI had actually sued Grooveshark back in May--talk about tough negotiation tactics!
As much as I love Grooveshark's service, I have some sympathy for the labels. It seems that a lot of digital-music start-ups operate under the maxim that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission--they create the technology, launch the service, then count on the licensing details being worked out later.
Although I think that the labels have been incredibly short-sighted about the move to digital music, particularly on-demand streaming, they can't sit back and let every new digital-music start-up dictate its own terms--it's not fair to copyright owners, nor to online-music companies like Rhapsody, Pandora, and (now) Imeem, who are playing by the rules and probably paying higher royalties.
Hopefully, this lawsuit is just a negotiating tactic, and Grooveshark will emerge with the kind of business arrangement that Imeem was able to strike with Warner.
So far, EMI's threat doesn't appear to have had any effect on the service: I was still able to find songs from EMI artists like The Beatles, Radiohead, and--of course--the Sex Pistols.
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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.
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After a rocky start, online streaming service Imeem has raced to the head of the pack, thanks in large part to an effective search engine and the variety and large selection of music that users upload and share via the site.
It also helps that Imeem has deals with the major labels, so it's in no imminent danger of facing a Seeqpod-style shutdown. (However, Warner Music recently wrote down its investment in Imeem and rival Lala.)
I uploaded this live track to Imeem, and now I have access to it from my iPhone--without having to load it directly.
Imeem launched an app for Android last year, but iPhone users were out of luck--until now.
I just downloaded the free Imeem app for iPhone. My first reaction was a definite ho-hum. The main point of the site is the ability to search and play millions of user-posted songs, but conducting a search on the iPhone app only creates a customized radio station based around that song or artist--disappointing, but probably part of Imeem's agreements with copyright holders.
Pandora and Slacker already do a fine job with customizable streaming radio apps for iPhone, so I'm not sure why I'd need another one.
Then I discovered a much better use for the Imeem app: storage in the cloud. If you create an Imeem account on the Web site, you can upload up to 100 songs to Imeem for free. (A VIP Subscription service is available as well--$29.99 per year gives you 1,000 uploads, while $99.99 a year gives you 20,000.)
My 8GB iPhone gives me enough space for some reasonably interesting playlists, but it's far from enough to store my entire music library, which runs at more than 20GB. Imeem's free level of service doesn't change the game, but it does provide a convenient storage place for huge music files that threaten to overload my phone's relatively meager flash drive. For instance, I'd never transfer the MP3 of Roger Waters performing "Dark Side of the Moon" live, which comes in at over 50MB. But I can upload it to Imeem, log in, and listen to it from anywhere with a strong 3G or Wi-Fi connection.
There's also a "share song" option that lets me e-mail a link to any song in my Imeem locker to my friends--a great way to share music you've recently discovered.
Free, on-demand streaming music is a rising tide: since the start of 2009, I've covered relatively new services like Spotify and Just Hear It, and there are plenty of established players like MySpace Music, Imeem, and Grooveshark.
Listen to Michael Jackson's music on Michael Jackson's official Web site. What a novel idea!
(Credit: Sony Music, Michael Jackson)Instead of trying to stop the tide, Sony Music has wisely embraced it: starting today, the company will introduce streaming music players on the Web sites of its most popular artists, including popsters like Kelly Clarkson, John Legend, and Jacko himself. It makes perfect business sense: instead of letting some third party like Imeem sell advertisements against high-demand music, Sony can sell or display its own ads.
Of course, they couldn't make it too easy--finding the audio on Michael Jackson's site took a few clicks, including one that forced me to identify my country, and the songs were embedded in the Sony-specific MyPlay player, which is an interesting piece of technology but only lets you create playlists with songs from other artists with MyPlay players. More generally, I wonder if it's too late for these label-specific initiatives--I'm sure plenty of hardcore Britney fans have her Web site bookmarked, but most music listeners probably prefer to use services that let you compile lists from multiple artists on multiple labels.
Sony is also adding lyrics to these artists' sites, provided by the company's own Gracenote subsidiary. Excellent move. I can't believe it's taken this long, given the lack of decent lyrics sites out there. In fact, I still don't understand the reluctance to publish lyrics online--what are people going to steal? What money is the artist or copyright owner losing? Kudos for Sony for taking a baby step toward ending this silliness.
TechCrunch broke the story Tuesday that Seeqpod, a Web search engine for music files, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is facing lawsuits from record company Warner and EMI because even though it doesn't post any material itself--it's just a search engine--it makes no effort to filter out copyrighted material.
Another one bites the dust.
So far, the site itself still up and running, but my absolute favorite name-it-and-play-it service, Songerize, which uses Seeqpod as its back end, appears to be broken. The labels have been targeting independent developers who use Seeqpod's API, so I wonder if the heat got to be too much for whoever was running Songerize. Seeqpod's troubles could also affect plenty of other sites, including Bandloop, an excellent and relatively new live music listing service that I wrote about in January.
If Songerize is indeed gone forever, you can turn to Imeem (although it has business troubles of its own) or, if you're lucky enough to be in a supported geographic region, Spotify. Other services also offer a limited number of streams for free--Lala.com gives you 50 before charging you $0.10 apiece, and Rhapsody lets you stream 25 songs a month without a paid subscription.
Personality tests are fun nonsense, in line with horoscopes and fortune tellers. I've taken a bunch of them over the years, both online and offline, and never learned anything consistent or surprising about myself.
The results are always in vague, yet flattering, language that's impossible to dispute: Hmm, I guess I do like being with people, and I enjoy parties. And yet, I also enjoy quiet time to myself, as well as contemplating the nature of the universe. Oh, and I love taking personality tests!
Signal Patterns offers a twist on the "know yourself" personality test site. In addition to the typical personality survey--which apparently shows that I'm aesthetic, intelligent, and organized (why, thank you!)--it has added a test (available Wednesday) that claims to determine one's "musical personality" based on 40 music samples, each lasting just 10 seconds.
The samples in my test were all by obscure artists, so, in theory, you'll judge them without prejudice. (Although, through a weird coincidence, I used to play with a drummer who also played with one of these artists, Anna Coogan and North 19. I rated the sample a 3 out of 5.)
I don't hate all relaxing music--just the 10-second New Age samples that were played.
The trouble is, you can't tell anything about a song from 10 seconds. I might hate a cheesy synthesized introduction, if the rest of the song is a standard R&B ballad, but I might like it, if it's Beck or Funkadelic, which border on parody. I might hate a rockabilly tune with hiccupy vocals, but love a good Reverend Horton Heat tune or Speedy West instrumental.
Case in point: my Music Patterns result said my most preferred trait is complexity, followed closely by instrumental (rather than vocal) songs. True--I've got a bit of a prog-rock fetish, and love instrumental freak-outs like Battles. But it also said I detest relaxing music--tell that to my totally scratched Bill Evans and Kind of Blue LPs--and don't like sad music, which wouldn't predict that I own every single Pink Floyd recording ever released, mostly on vinyl. (Although I've never personally seen Zabriskie Point on wax, and don't buy used LPs sight-unseen, I've still got the cassette.)
Some of the app's choices for me look reasonable, though--Ornette Coleman and Anton Shoenberg showed up in the top tier.
At any rate, it's fun to go through the process, and there are some clever links with social-networking services--for instance, it will let you post results to compare with your Facebook friends, and it will create an embeddable playlist of songs it imagines for Imeem.
eMusic users awoke Friday to a redesign of the subscription-based download site, which specializes in music from independent artists. The main feature is a recommendation engine provided by MediaUnbound, which uses a combination of computer algorithms and real live music fans to duplicate the services of that one friend of yours who always seems to know about the new bands first. MediaUnbound CEO Michael Papish had this funny exchange with TechCrunch in which he explained why his company's technology is better than Pandora and other recommendation engines, although the TechCrunch reviewer remained unconvinced.
I never get past this step.
It sounds intriguing, and I'm sure that eMusic's 400,000-plus users will enjoy playing with it. But every time I think to check the service out, I'm stymied by its sign-up process. The front page is useless, offering almost no insight into what eMusic offers. It's very hard to browse or search to see what songs are on the service, much less sample them--the only way I could get to the store was by clicking on the "Audiobooks" link at the bottom of the page, then selecting the "Browse" tab. You can't test the new recommendation engine. This page listing reasons to join just doesn't do the trick. Neither does this page listing a handful of free samples, seemingly chosen at random.
This aggressive approach to getting sign-ups may have been OK when free music was hard to come by and when iTunes and other music stores trafficked only in DRM-encrusted files. But with sites like Imeem offering free streaming of entire songs, and Amazon.com letting you search among millions of MP3 tracks from major labels as well as indies, the redirects to the sign-up screen are a real turn-off. I don't understand why eMusic doesn't just make the sample version of the store the front page, then guide users to the sign-up page when they try to download something--just like Amazon or any other Web-based music store.
