Monday, I downloaded a new iPhone app called iHeartNewMusic that helps you track new music via blogs. If you're the type of listener who scours music blogs regularly to find out about and sample new tunes, iHeartNewMusic will let you do that from your iPhone over a Wi-Fi connection.
None of these results was Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," and I had trouble clearing them.
According to the iHeartNewMusic blog, Apple rejected iHeartNewMusic six times before finally accepting it. The blog doesn't detail why, but the application is pretty simplistic--it's basically a customized version of Safari with a list of bookmarks to dozens of blogs in categories such as Rock, Electro, Indie, and R&B. All of the included blogs feature MP3 samples prominently, and unlike the iPhone version of Safari, the app lets you play the MP3s on demand as streaming QuickTime files (Wi-Fi connection required). The selection is fine--some personal favorites like Brooklyn Vegan, My Old Kentucky Blog, and Stereogum are included, and it turned me on to a cool jazz blog (the only one in that category) called Destination: Out.
Unfortunately, the Search category contained only one link, to an MP3-finder site called Skreemr, and it's not the greatest--several of my searches returned no correct results, and others had a correct result buried under some obvious wrong ones. It's not as good as other play-on-demand sites I've recently discovered like Grooveshark or Just Hear It.
The user interface also leaves room for improvement: it simply throws up Web pages in Safari, without tailoring them to the iPhone's screen size or bringing you directly to a particular portion of the page (say, the search screen for Skreemr or the "play" button for the top MP3 on any blog). You have to scroll and adjust the screen size manually. I also found some performance gaps, such as slow transitions between screens and a bug that made it hard to clear saved search results.
In short, if you regularly check music blogs to find new music, this is a reasonable purchase for $2.99--it's the easiest way I'm aware of to play MP3 samples from blogs on an iPhone. Otherwise, it's probably a pass.
Amazon released a new MP3 Clips Widget today that lets you build playlists with 30-second samples from any of the 5 million+ songs on Amazon's MP3 store, then embed those playlists in any Web page. The process is brain-dead simple: first you run a search of song titles or album titles against Amazon's database, then select from the results. Second, choose the size of the widget. Third, select from a list of 15 popular blogging and personal home page sites (Blogger, Yahoo 360, and so on), or paste the code directly into your page, as I've done below.
Of course, every sample contains a link back to Amazon's store--this is commerce, after all--and Amazon encourages you to become an affiliate to earn money when people click through and make a purchase. (No, I'm not an affiliate, so don't worry about my making money from the widget on this page.) Amazon also lets you post information that's more obviously promotional, such as a list of recent purchases at Amazon, or Amazon MP3 bestsellers in a particular genre. Still, this is a quick and useful way to post music, such as songs running through your head as you're blogging or clever topically relevant music.
If you often link to music files from your personal Web page or blog, and have some control over the code on that page, Yahoo's got an interesting tool for you. With a few lines of very simple Javascript code, you can add small "play" buttons that link to specific songs. When users click those buttons, the Yahoo Media Player launches, letting visitors play the song without leaving your page. There was a previous iteration of the Player, but it worked only on Yahoo Music and linked only to music files from Yahoo's own site.
How does it work? Judge for yourself--these are two songs from old bands on which I played bass (so I have at least a plausible claim to partial copyright). I simply followed the instructions here and here (to insert album covers). Click on the small arrows (after the page break) and they'll play right within the Yahoo Media Player at the bottom left of the page. (Worked for me on Firefox on Windows XP, your mileage may vary!)
Click the 'Read More' button below to listen to the tracks.
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