Webware

If you're a frequent Webware, reader you might remember Grooveshark, and Grooveshark Lite--two different but equally awesome music-sharing and listening tools. From those same folks comes TinySong, a bit of a play on large link sharing services like TinyURL. However, instead of sharing Web sites with your friends, you're linking them straight to the track.

The service uses the same built-in song search found in Grooveshark Lite, and will simply jump whoever opens the link right to the Web based jukebox. What's nice is whoever is searching will have the short link copied to their clipboard automatically. For popular songs there's also a fairly good diversity of variations and remixes.

One thing missing from TinySong is a way to make multi-song playlists, but you can simply use Grooveshark Lite and share the playlist link with a friend. See also services like MuxTape and Mixwit for such a task.

[via Delicious]

TinySong lets you search for songs hosted on the Web and share them with friends using a small, sharable link like you'd get on services like TinyURL.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The new chat function lets users talk to their friends about the music they're borrowing from them.

(Credit: Simplify Media)

As the self-imposed deadline of June approaches, Simplify Media remains in beta for Windows, Mac, and mobile users. The iTunes and Winamp plug-in that lets you share your music with friends has, however, added three new features: chat, a "now playing" message that displays what your friends are listening to from your collection, and a built-in password reset for the forgetful among us.

The chat feature is the strongest, allowing you to directly communicate with friends, family, and even enemies with whom you've shared your music. It's a great way to give and get some direct feedback on what you're currently listening to, almost like a personalized mixtape with live commentary.

The "now playing" message pops up in your Media List, and is a reasonable (if somewhat navel-gazing) way to see what your friends like from your list. It'd be better if it kept statistics, but it still dovetails nicely with the chat feature. Nothing like interrupting a friend getting their groove on by asking them what they think about the music.

One of the most promising freeware programs of 2007 was Simplify Media, a plug-in for iTunes and Winamp on both Windows and Mac that lets users share their music collections with friends and themselves via the Internet. The application is expecting an official release in June, but until then you'll have to appease your appetite for music with these beta builds.

New options in Simplify Media give users more flexibility.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The program still eats a voluminous amount of virtual memory--near the 100MB range, on average--but if you're not using a lot of other system processes it makes for an attractive way to get your tunes across the world, or just to another room.

The expanded settings panel will be greatly appreciated by users who don't have their music files stored in the default iTunes or Winamp directories, or want to keep a separate collection of tunes for sharing in a separate folder. A new option lets you set the music folder location, and separately share iTunes or Winamp playlists. Users can make further tweaks to start-up behavior, and you'll now see a tally of songs being shared next to your friend's computer names.

Additional improvements for Mac users let them run Simplify Media with Front Row on Tiger and Leopard, and the application can now be run from the Menu Bar instead of the dock, but only in OS X 10.5.2. Sixty-four bit Windows Vista users should now see support for the application, as well.

Finally, the publisher notes that iPhone and other smartphone users should see an official release, also in June.

MediaMaster is one of many companies worth keeping an eye on, mainly for the potential of having your entire music library available anywhere you go, as long as you've got an Internet connection. Their Facebook app, which went live just a few weeks ago, is a prime example of a great use of the service.

The app lets you set up a huge playlist of music, and serve it up right on your profile in a miniplayer. Anyone who comes by your profile can then get the full quality versions of the tracks streamed in whatever order you set up. Uploading and rearranging tracks is all managed at MediaMaster's site, and once you're done, the site will jump you back to Facebook. The best part--your friends don't have to install a thing to enjoy the fruits of your labor. There are also quick button presets to play the track list in Winamp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player, in case you want to subscribe to the station or feel like venturing off the profile page.

The Facebook app is an extension of the radio feature, which the company unveiled earlier this month. To take it beyond Facebook, you can give a direct URL of the playlist to your friends, or plug it into a smart phone. If you've got a speedy mobile data connection, you'll be able to stream your music to your phone from anywhere you get range.

The one major drawback at this point is the lack of playlist controls. The inline player merely plays the stream from beginning to end, with no real control for playing music on demand the way you can on other popular Facebook music apps like iLike, Last.fm, and even Box.net's file-sharing widget. At this point you're limited to finding out whatever the song's track name and artist are from the radio stream's metadata.

The real killer app MediaMaster has over the others is its core service, which at this point feels a lot like an online version of iTunes. You can find our hands-on take on the service earlier this year here.

Friends and profile visitors alike can listen to your own custom playlist any time they want, right on your profile or on their favorite music jukebox software.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Today's discovery: SimplifyMedia, a very handy media-sharing service. It lets friends listen to your iTunes music library from their computers, no matter which network you or they are on. It's even useful if you have no friends: if you use more than one computer and want to be able to access your music on all of them, SimplifyMedia does it.

Connect to friends' libraries, and your own, too.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

At the moment, the service works only with iTunes, and most iTunes users probably know that iTunes already allows streaming between computers. The hitch is that iTunes restricts sharing to a local network, so music can be shared in a building, but not across the world. You can hack around this with a virtual network product like Hamachi, but that's beyond the technical reach of most people. Orb also lets you share your media libraries, but I've found it buggy, and the browser-based interface is slow.

SimplifyMedia makes things automatic if you want to share across the Internet. You can invite up to 30 other people into your library, and see their tracks as well. As I said, what I find most useful about the product is that it gives me easy access to my home desktop's iTunes library from my work laptop, no matter where it may be. I keep a large music and podcast library on my desktop at home, and this tool makes it easy for me to access it from iTunes on my laptop, even when I'm at work or on another network elsewhere. It's like a Slingbox for music.

The service keeps things legal by allowing only streaming, not copying, and only to a small group. Also, only you can listen to your own iTunes-purchased, DRM-protected tunes. The Simplify team is working to loosen up that restriction.

SimplifyMedia-shared libraries show up inside iTunes.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

My big criticism has to do with access control. It's binary--when you let people see and play your library, they have complete access to all your nonprotected music, just as you do. I'd like a better way to restrict visibility for people I've given access to, while maintaining full access for myself. Also, I found a technical conflict between the beta software and my home's media storage drive--I could only have one working at a time. There are also reports of VPN incompatibilities, but none popped up in my tests.

This application is a natural for the Facebook community. SimplifyMedia co-founder Paul Joyce says the team is already working on it.

See also TUAW's interesting history lesson on iTunes sharing.

MediaMaster is a Web-based jukebox service that launched last week. MediaMaster gives users free storage space to upload their tunes and listen to them anywhere they have Internet access. The interface is clean, simple, and intuitive--if you're used to iTunes or Windows Media Player you'll feel right at home. Users can upload their tunes with two uploaders, a simple one for a few tracks and an advanced version that lets you simply drag and drop files from file folders right into the uploader.

Once your tracks are uploaded, you can create and manage playlists, rate individual songs, and share your music with others with embeddable widgets for blogs, Web sites, and social networking profiles.

MediaMaster has a lot of personality. Having an incomplete album will give album art a little "bite mark" out of it. Its radio station feature gives you a URL to publish so people can subscribe and listen to your customized playlists or music recommendations.

For copyright concerns, neither the widget or radio subscriptions actually give people copies of your music, it's all streamed. Likewise, there's no way for you to download the music once it's been uploaded, it can only be deleted.

For now, the service offers unlimited storage space, with plans to cap off user accounts at 4GB. There's also planned iPod integration. MediaMaster will let users upload any unprotected MP3, WMA, and M4A (AAC) file, complete with album art if it's within the file's metadata. Give it a spin here.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

eSnips, the social networking and content-hosting service, is quintupling the storage on users accounts to 5GB. The company is also adding new music-sharing features that let users create embeddable music widgets and playlists for use on eSnips user pages, blogs, Web sites, and social networking sites like MySpace. The service ties into the eSnips marketplace, which lets you buy and sell user-generated content like photos and music.

We covered eSnips last year and noted its similarity to social bookmarking site Del.icio.us mixed with content hosting like you'd find on social networking sites. Since then, eSnips claims to have grown to a user base of more than 1.5 million registered users, which is more than Del.icio.us in less than a third of the time. The company also added 'Micro-Portals' in November, which are themed community pages that aggregate some of the site's most popular content. Photography, for example, gets its own Micro-Portal featuring popular or interesting photos from eSnips users. The same goes for poetry, painting, and now music.

The embeddable music widgets make eSnips content easier to share. It's a useful utility for existing eSnips users, but unlikely to draw new users to the service; there are a lot of music-playing widgets available. eSnips does get a thumbs up for its combination of music features: You can store, share, and sell music all from one interface.

Completely unrelated (but very interesting) is the eSnips toolbar. I usually don't get excited about toolbars, but this one has a neat feature that lets you take really slick looking screenshots of whatever Web page you're looking at, to share with others. Other social bookmarking tools rely on users or the site's feed to fill in aspects like the title and the description; but with the toolbar, you can just take a shot of it and post it to your eSnips profile, without having to log in or even touch your keyboard.

I've embedded one of the eSnips music widgets below, although as a warning I didn't pick out the music.