Webware

Jelli.net, a Total Request Live-esq Internet radio station, is coming out of beta on Monday night and is expected to announce that it's inked a syndication deal with Triton Digital Media that will get it played in actual terrestrial FM radio stations across the U.S. beginning next year.

The service revolves entirely around a playlist of songs that's managed by users in real time. Users can vote songs up or down before they ever hit the air, as well as when they're playing. If enough people downvote a song while it's in the middle of playing, it's pulled before it even finishes, something that can be either deeply satisfying or disappointing to those listening.

Jelli let susers vote on tracks to be played next, and are able to yay or nay a video out of playing live on air.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Up until about four months ago this music had existed only on the Web, where Jelli streams as a 24/7 radio station. This changed in June when Jelli nabbed a two-hour spot Sunday nights on Live 105 KITS, a local San Francisco FM radio station. The company says the trial run has been such a success it made it much easier to sell the idea to other stations. And sold it has.

Jelli's deal with Triton will put Jelli's user-picked station on FM radio, twice a day on around 4,500 stations across the U.S. This won't start until early next year though. In the meantime, the company has done a deal with Australian media broadcasting company Austereo to get Jelli played as a daily show, both in FM and digital radio beginning next month in five Australian cities.

One very important detail here is that with all of these affiliate stations across the world, the playlist will continue to be controlled by Jelli users at large. This means the playlist can change drastically based on who's awake and where they're from.

Also worth noting is that Jelli users are not going to be working off the same catalog they do when it's streaming versus when it's on a real radio station. About 10 minutes before Jelli makes the FM switchover, the catalog changes to broadcast-friendly songs, which include things like the shortened and/or censored version of the tracks. It also cleans the slate for users to start up or downvoting the tracks.

As part of the beta, Jelli is introducing multiple stations that will let subsets of users control the content.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

As part of the beta, there will also be multiple stations, so users can continue to control the streaming Web version without having to worry about the aforementioned catalog changeover. This also gives a minority of users a better chance of controlling what's played.

Speaking of which, Jelli continues to work on are countermeasures to keep a group of users from completely dominating the listening experience. For instance, each user is given a limited number of "rockets" and "bombs" each day. Rockets let you jump your song, or someone else's to the head of the queue to give it a chance at playing next. To even those out, bombs (which are given out a little more sparingly) are able to wipe the score of any queued track to zero, which can keep it from making it on air if users don't vote it back up.

That's not the end of the game-like experience though. In a call with CNET News on Monday, Jelli CEO and co-founder Mike Dougherty (who was previously TellMe's VP of biz dev) told me that the bombs and rockets were just the tip of the iceberg and that other gaming "power ups" and ways to earn them were coming shortly but could not give specifics on what they would do.

The company is also working on more ways to keep listeners engaged and feeding the station with recommendations. For instance, Jelli gives the person who originally suggested a track and who successfully got it played a personalized call out right before it begins playing. Because the service has no real DJs, this is all done with a text-to-speech robot. Jelli will also be giving highly active users their own short audio signature, which will get played right before their chosen song starts.

A little farther down the line, Dougherty hopes to get hardware besides PCs involved, including a way to manage the song queue and recommendations from mobile phones. There also isn't currently a way to purchase any of the music that's playing from Jelli's site, which means users have to go off and do a search for each track on their own. This too is something that will be changing in the very near future.

Jelli's streaming service is definitely a fun experiment in controlling radio--both Web and now terrestrial. You can listen to it in any streaming audio player with this link, or sign up on Jelli's site to vote on the queue and get more information about what's playing--something that can be quite useful if you're trying to get the name of that song you loved that just got bombed off the air.

Start configuring Twitter from Slacker.com.

(Credit: Slacker)

At the CTIA Wireless conference (see all stories) this afternoon, Slacker Radio showed off its new applications for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows phones. Unfortunately, Slacker isn't sharing a time line for those release dates. That's not to say we'll walk away empty-handed. On Wednesday, Slacker will turn on Twitter integration, so registered members can tweet songs they're listening to in real time.

Know up front that this is a limited service that Slacker will flesh out later with those updated smartphone apps they teased us with. Think of the Twitter feature as a working preview.

Using a new feature, tweet your tunes from Slacker Radio.

(Credit: Slacker )

Starting tonight at 9:00 p.m. PT, a Twitter box will appear on the Community tab of Slacker.com. (If it doesn't, wait a few minutes and try again.) After signing into Twitter, you'll be able to configure Slacker to auto-tweet any combination of the following: whenever you change or play a station, a favorite song, a banned song, or a banned artist. According to Slacker, when the Twitter integration appears on those future Slacker Radio apps, you'll be able to manually tweet any of the above from the mobile interface so you won't bludgeon your buds with your musical taste, no matter how impeccable it is. Until then, it's automatic tweeting or nothing for you.

After integrating Twitter, Slacker will look to other social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace.

While Slacker's new Twitter integration gives cell phone rockers and crooners the chance to share streaming ditties within the Slacker Radio experience, it's not the only service to tangle with Twitter. Here are six more ways to tweet your musical faves.

You can share comments on streams you're listening to in RadioWeave with your friends.

(Credit: RadioWeave)

SAN DIEGO--MyVocal is launching here at DemoFall 09 what looks like a useful service for anyone who ever gets bored while commuting in a car. The service lets you combine into a single stream your audio podcasts, as well as your text RSS feeds, which it will read to you. You get a local phone number to call to listen to the stream, and if you hang up and then reconnect later, it'll just pick up where you left off.

The company also has services for publishers. It can help them make their RSS feeds accessible to users on less-than-smart phones, plus the content feeds get links to download stories as dictated MP3 files, as well as the option to add a stream to a user's dial-up custom broadcast.

If you'd rather listen to streaming radio over an Internet connection in your car, it's worth also looking at RadioWeave, also demoed here, which will blend streaming music with other audio channels like traffic reports--or even text-to-speech readings of Twitter streams--into what looks like a clean iPhone interface. Users can also record their own quick messages from the iPhone app to share with their friends.

Of course, it's much easier to just turn on your car radio or CD player than it is to user either of these services, but they both show how Internet content is entering drive-time. I hope to see car audio systems updated with these kinds of technologies, but realistically I don't expect the car manufacturers to get up to speed quickly. So we're all probably going to be stuck with docked iPods and audio over phone connections for a while.

Digital music site Last.fm is like Pandora on steroids. The site allows devoted music fans from around the world to compare tastes, stream music from their favorite artists, stay up to date on local shows, download free MP3s, and create their own custom radio stations.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Last.fm's open API has given rise to hundreds of user-created applications, plug-ins, web tools, mash-ups and widgets. No other music site offers more tools or more features to help users connect with each other and the music they love.

Unfortunately, the deep features that makes Last.fm so appealing to hardcore music nerds, can also make the site a little intimidating to first-timers and casual listeners. Like a freshman dance, folks will often just find one comfortable corner of Last.fm and lose sight of everything else going on around them.

If you're interested in breaking out of your Last.fm rut, I've put together a quick video guide and slideshow, illustrating some ways to take your experience further.

How to do more with Last.fm--screenshots

Disclosure: Last.fm is a property of CNET parent company CBS.

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.

Follow me on Twitter.

(Credit: Livio)

The new Livio Radio certainly isn't the first Wi-Fi radio to feature Pandora access--the Squeezebox Boom and the Grace GDI-IR2000 both offer the functionality--but it's certainly the first model seemingly designed around the streaming Internet music service.

With a standard tabletop radio design, the Livio gives you full access to Pandora, and also makes it easy to interact with the service by putting "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" buttons on the front panel and the remote. The Livio can connect to your home network using either the integrated Wi-Fi or the Ethernet port around back. In addition to Pandora, the Livio Radio also features the ability to tune into more than 11,000 standard Internet radio stations. We're also happy to spot an auxiliary input on the back, making it easy to plug in an iPod in a pinch. We also can't complain about the price, a reasonable $150, but we're reserve our final judgment until we actually get to listen to it.

Livio Radio photos

Article updated 4/1/09 at 1:30 pm PT to correct the name of LyricFind.

All these lyrics can be yours as part of a subscription fee.

(Credit: Slacker Radio)

If you've ever seen this Internet-infamous video, nobody need ever remind you of the importance of song lyrics.

Soon, subscribers to Slacker Radio's RadioPlus service will be able to avoid embarrassing lyrical flubs with the help of a new lyrics tab on the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Web. Slacker Radio has partnered with LyricFind to provide the text behind the songs, which RadioPlus subscribers began seeing Tuesday, March 31, 2009, on Slacker.com. The lyrics tabs is expected to appear on the BlackBerry on April 1, and on the iPhone sometime next week.

Licensed lyrics are beginning to set a trend in mobile applications. In addition to Slacker Radio's lyrics play, TuneWiki has released its offering for Android and is working on versions of the music video and lyrics application for the other mobile platforms. The bottom line is: are you willing to pay for a tool that keeps you from making a fool of yourself in front of people you're trying to impress?

(Credit: Weather Underground)

There's no shortage of streaming radio apps for mobile phones, but lately it seems that far more have been readied for the iPhone than for Windows Mobile. On Thursday, Wunder Radio (download), already a popular iPhone radio app, also became available for Windows Mobile phones.

It may not be the prettiest radio app out there, but Wunder Radio packs in a ton of stations provided by Radio Time, around 36,000. The stations span everything from talk radio and Weather Underground's local weather reports to the browsing, searching, and genre-scouring you'd expect from a streaming radio application. The search engine, we might add, is sensitive to radio show and show host names in addition to station names and call letters. If your smartphone or Pocket PC is GPS-enabled, Wunder Radio can fetch some of your local stations.

Wunder Radio's extras are also serviceable--you'll be able to save and view favorites, stream stations in the background, and open a URL from the application. In addition to the standalone application, Wunder Radio installs a home screen plug-in onto most phones (our Samsung Omnia's default theme blocked this) that streams program and song information and offers a shortcut to favorite stations.

Price may be the only major sticking point with Wunder Radio. The Windows Mobile version costs just shy of $10 as part of a 30-day promotion, after which the app's price shoots up to $14.99. While competing radio applications like Pandora for Windows Mobile don't have the breadth of Wunder Radio's stations, or even its goal (Pandora Radio is concerned with music discovery, not with talk radio and finding particular stations), Pandora's free application may satisfy many music-seekers. For those with more specific tastes, Wunder Radio's broad tuner gives you a good chance of finding what you seek. A free, 15-day trial period gives you time to bond with the app, after which you'll decide if you're ready to buy.

Note: As it goes with streaming radio apps, faster data connection speeds through 3G and Wi-Fi produce the best sound, with fewer interruptions and skips.

Update 2/19/09 at 5:00 PM PT: Wunder Radio does not fully support phones with a WQVGA resolution. These phones should still receive audio, but may not display images. Jeyo, the company that developed Wunder Radio for Weather Underground, told us that support for these phones will be added next.

Google's radio advertising business has become the newest project that didn't pass muster in Google's new financially rigorous era, and up to 40 employees will lose jobs as a result, the company said Thursday. However, the company isn't completely withdrawing from the market, saying it's begun exploring ads for streaming audio instead.

"While we've devoted substantial resources to developing these products and learned a lot along the way, we haven't had the impact we hoped for. So we have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and focus our efforts in online streaming audio," said Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president of product management, in a blog post Thursday. "We will phase out the existing Google Audio Ads and AdSense for Audio products and plan to sell the Google Radio Automation business, the software that automates broadcast radio programming."

And cuts will come: "We hope to find other roles for the majority of the people concerned and will work to make that happen over the next couple of months. However, given that we are exiting the broadcast radio ad business and selling the Radio Automation business, we expect that up to 40 people may not be able to find other roles at Google."

Google said employees will have about two months to apply for new jobs within the company. The service itself will shut down May 31.

The search giant has more than 20,000 employees, so losing 40 isn't very many in the scheme of things. However, it's bigger than the full staff of a lot of start-ups, and the cut is notable given Google's willingness for years to tackle an immense spectrum of projects.

Google already said it's cancelling its print-ad service, which like radio is a step away from the Internet domain where Google has the home-field advantage over some rivals. The company will continue to invest in its TV ad business, though, Wojcicki said.