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 looking for a replacement for playable search engine Songerize, and this morning, I stumbled across Just Hear It, which offers a much better experience than Songerize ever did.
Enter a song title or artist's name, and Just Hear It returns a list of possible matches--including not only audio tracks, but also YouTube videos. (Songerize didn't offer choices, but started playing what it thought was the best match, and it didn't have any video content.)
In my tests so far, Just Hear It has always delivered the song I was looking for somewhere in the first-page results, though sometimes, I've had to enter both artist and title--for example, searching "Thrasher" didn't return the Neil Young song of that name until I entered Young's name.
Often, the engine turned me on to alternate versions--live tracks, cover versions--that I didn't know existed. You can play results immediately or compile them into a playlist, but you can't save playlists between searches, unless you're a member, which makes this feature kind of worthless. (Membership is currently available by invitation only.)
The site needs a few tweaks--the "search" button at the top of the page seems to return random results (maybe it's a list of what other searchers are looking for?), so you have to click the logo and return to the home page to conduct additional searches.
The fact that the entire site is a Flash application makes navigation difficult--the "back" button doesn't work, and if you click on "About," you're stuck there with no way to the home page except reloading. The light-gray text on black background isn't the best design choice. Still, this is the best service I've seen so far for hearing that song you need to hear right now.
According to the "About" page, the site is legal--it pays for licenses from the three major organizations, BMI, ASCAP, and CESAC, and it apparently pays publishers royalties based on the number of plays they receive. (I can't imagine how it's accomplishing this, given that the site's free and so far doesn't have advertising.) But although paying publishing rights is sufficient for traditional ("terrestrial") radio, Internet radio stations must also pay performance royalties, which are owned and managed by a completely different group of bodies.
There's been an ongoing debate over the last two years regarding a proposed rate increase for performance royalties--CNET's Greg Sandoval wrote a detailed account of the latest developments in February--but suffice it to say, claiming that you're legal doesn't necessarily make it so.
In other words, enjoy Just Hear It while it lasts.
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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.
Lala.com has a history of coming up with innovative ideas that don't quite conquer the world. The company is best known for its online used-CD trading service, which is an interesting idea but works well only if you have a large list of CDs available to trade.
Lala.com will let you stream any song once at no charge, and an unlimited number of times for $0.10 per song.
(Credit: Lala.com)It also offers a music "locker" service that allows you to upload your music then listen to it from any computer with an Internet connection...but it only works with MP3 files, so you're out of luck if you've been using (for example) iTunes to rip your CDs to AAC for the last four years. The site was also early to experiment with offering free streaming files, but has apparently shuttered that service because the numbers didn't work out.
Now the company's beta-testing another streaming service that lets you select any song to stream once. Then, if you want to stream it again, you can pay a one-time fee of $0.10 and get perpetual streaming rights to it.
Unfortunately, this pay-per-song streaming model occupies a weird space halfway between all-you-can-eat subscription services and the free streaming files available elsewhere. If I'm a hardcore music fan who likes to discover and listen to lots of new music online, I'll probably subscribe to a service like Rhapsody--one monthly payment gets me streaming access to all the music I want. But if I just want instant gratification--say, for example, I need to hear Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" right now--I can turn to Imeem, or Last.fm, or the Songerize site (which uses the Seeqpod search engine to discover music files all over the Web, then provides a simple embedded player).
So who would pay $0.10 for unlimited rights to stream a particular song? Probably people who are already using the Lala.com digital locker and want a cost-effective way to add new music to it without having to seek it out online or rip it from a CD and then upload it manually.
If you've got a song stuck in your head, this is the place to get it out (or make it worse through repeated plays). Go to Songerize, select a song name, artist, and hit play. That's it. No confusing interface, no sign-in screen, no extraneous information, no ads.
Got a song stuck in your head? Listen to it on demand at Songerize.
(Credit: Screenshot)It doesn't find everything--in my quick tests, it had about a 50% success ratio, and completely failed on PiL and Jane's Addiction. But it found just about every pop and classic rock radio title I could think of.
(Thanks to Listening Post for the tip.)
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