In the last couple of days, I've been introduced to a couple new online sites, both calling themselves "radio," that encapsulate very different approaches toward distributing music over the Web.
(Credit:
MTT Radio)
Goom Radio, which entered public alpha testing yesterday, claims to be trying to change the landscape of online radio. One big difference between Goom and other radio services is a radio widget that users will be able to embed in social-networking sites and other Web pages. Goom also makes a big deal about its audio technology, which starts with uncompressed WAV files instead of digitally compressed MP3 or Windows Media files, and then runs them through various boosters and filters equalizers tailored to each genre--sort of how traditional radio stations do it today. Eventually, users will be able to create their own radio stations (and I'll blog about it again when this feature's available), but today it's limited to a handful of professionally curated stations in particular genres.
In our conversation yesterday, Goom CEO Rob Williams emphasized that the company is seeking out the right kind of DJs--folks who truly care about music, and are as bored and fed up with the research-driven pap on mainstream radio as most other hardcore music fans are. Still--a DJ is a DJ, and most of the folks on the station so far come out of the traditional music industry. As a result, the stations on Goom radio today are cool--there's an Eels song playing on the indie-rock Tastemaker station as I write this--but not particularly cutting-edge or risky. This is the music that the pros think you should hear.
Contrast this with another service that launched last week, MTT Radio. MTT stands for Music Think Tank, and it's a relatively new blog and service for indie musicians, staffed and owned by people with ample experience catering to that market. Written content on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons license, and would-be contributors are encouraged to post for the MTT Open site, which is open to all writers. Think of it like a Huffington Post for indie musicians. MTT Radio works the same way as the Open blog site: anybody can contribute a song, and they're listed in reverse-chronological order and indexed by genre.
The two services aren't exactly comparable: Goom is a profit-driven business intended to reach as many people as possible, while MTT Radio is an experimental way for indie musicians to get exposure on the site. Still, the contrast made me think about how online radio is going to evolve. In a world of MP3 players and on-demand streaming services like Spotify, where users are accustomed to controlling every song that plays, and services like Pandora, which create customized radio stations for every taste, I don't know if a DJ-driven online radio station has much appeal. One-to-many, broadcast, top-down: no matter who's driving it, this kind of radio already seems outdated. A service like MTT (or, for that matter, MySpace), where anybody can post their music for the world to hear, seems like a more modern approach.
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Like most online radio stations, Last.fm has been forced by music copyright owners to behave more or less like a traditional radio station. A highly customizable radio station--users could enter a favorite artist and Last.fm would pick a song by that artist, then add in songs from similar artists--but a radio station nonetheless. Content was pushed, not pulled. Users who wanted to pick songs to play on demand either had to download them from a service like iTunes or pay for a subscription service like Rhapsody (which does let you stream 25 songs a month for free).
Starting today, you can listen to this Animal Colletive song--all 12:33 of it--on Last.fm.
(Credit: Screenshot)Today, Last.fm takes a big step forward, becoming the first online service to let users pick nearly any song out of its collection and play it, on demand, for free, three times. After that, users will have to pay download it from one of Last.fm's partners, such as iTunes or Amazon. A forthcoming subscription service that will give you unlimited listens, a la Rhapsody.
Last.fm, which was acquired by CBS last May, is also launching a program for artists without a traditional recording or publishing deal, which will allow them to upload their songs to the service and get paid each time a song is streamed. For small independent artists, this could become an important outlet like CD Baby--only instead of having your work hidden alongside thousands of other relatively obscure artists, it might appear on a user-customizable radio station squeezed between Animal Collective and Arcade Fire. (Although Last.fm will have to be careful to ensure that every band that claims they sound just like U2 actually sounds something like U2.)
The obvious caveats: the three play limit, the fact that these are streamed files and therefore can't (easily or legally) be transferred from a computer for listening elsewhere, and the on-demand tracks aren't presented on each artist's main page (although you can search for them directly, or click through to the album listing on the main artist page for a full list of songs from each album). Also, it's available only in the U.S., U.K., and Germany today, with other countries to be added later.
Still, hats off to Last.fm for delivering the free, on-demand songs to those of us who don't frequent file-trading networks.
When I first read about Jango in an alumni update from my alma mater (go Ephs), my first thought was "how many more streaming online music services does the world need?" We've already got Last.fm, Pandora, Slacker, iLike, Imeem, Ezmo...can I stop now?
But Jango offers a refreshingly clear and simple take on the theme. As with many of these services, you start by entering a favorite artist's name...and a song starts playing. You don't need to sign in, download any software, invite friends, choose other favorite artists, or let anything connect to your music library.
With Jango, the music player's always at the top of the screen.
(Credit: Screenshot)Like Last.fm and Pandora, Jango immediately creates a personalized radio station with songs by similar artists--I picked Led Zeppelin because they've been in the news so much lately, and it immediately suggested guitar-oriented classic rock bands like Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Pink Floyd. But unlike the case with many of these other services, it's super easy to tailor your station--if you don't want to hear a particular artist, click the trash can icon; if you hate a particular song, rate it with a sad face and it'll never play again; if you want to add another main artist around which the station will be built, click "edit station", then enter the name of the artist.
I added Ennio Morricone to see if I could throw it off, but it cleverly suggested Luis Bacalov and Angelo Badalamente, two other soundtrack composers in the same vein. (No Nino Rota, though.) When I added Pink Floyd, it suggested new age stalwart Vangelis, but it was easy to eliminate him by clicking the trash can.
There's a social-networking aspect to the site--isn't there always?--but once again the service offers a clear set of choices in an interface anybody could figure out. You can find people who have a certain favorite band, listen to their customized radio station, invite them to be your friend, send quick messages to friends, and so on. But the social aspect is secondary to the music: the interface always guides you back to artist names (such as "people who like the artist you're listening to now also like...."), and the player's always in the upper-right hand corner, and it's always playing a song (unless you pause it).
Clear mission, simple interface, lots of ways to discover new tunes. Jango's worth a visit.
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