Chromus A Last.fm Web Music Player

You have got plenty of options if you want to listen to music. From Internet radio to online services such as Spotify or YouTube to CDs or ripped mp3s. Some services have changed over the years, and Last.fm is without doubt one of those services. It is still highly popular thanks to its vast database, but not so much anymore when it comes to listening to music directly on site.

The free web service Chromus could change that again. The service combines Last.fm’s music database with the music found on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The result? A player that knows and plays nearly every song and album on the planet.

Here is how it works. You visit the Chromus website over at Github. Now type in a band name, artist, song or album after clicking on the search icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Tracks and albums are displayed on a result’s page afterwards. You can now click on an album or track to start playing it right away on the site. If you select an album, all tracks of the album are queued in a playlist. This lets you listen to all songs of an album in full length online. All without a Last.fm or Vkontakte account.

You can select individual tracks with a click on the playlist entry. The player supports all basic controls from pausing and changing the volume to seeking and repeating the playlist.

Last.fm or Vkontakte users can sign in to their accounts to make use of scrobbling and music playback more reliable.

Chromus looks like a spin-off of the popular Google Chrome extension Last.fm free music player which provides more or less the same functionality. It is not clear if the two are linked in any way or if the author of Chromus has used the Chrome extension for inspiration only.

It is interesting to note that many non-English and non-Russian songs can be played as well. If you are looking for a free web music player that does not require you to register, and that does not limit your music listening experience, then you may have found it in Chromus. (via Caschy)

Is It Legal To Use Music2PC?

Music2PC is a free music downloader for the Windows operating system. All that users need to do is type in an artist, band, song name or album to see results populated instantly in the interface. A single click on the download button is all it takes to download the music to the local PC.

The question that many users will have when using the program is if it is legal to use. The developer website claims it is 100% legal as it only provides downloads from free legal music sources on the Internet. These sources, or at least examples, are not provided though, and the program interface reveals no information about the Internet locations the songs are downloaded from.

All you get are the artist’s name, the song title and the duration of the song. Listing the source could provide users of the program with the reassurance they need to download the music without fearing legal consequences.

A quick check for the top 5 US single charts of this week listed dozens of hits for each song, indicating that the database lists commercial songs and free songs.

A network software reveals that the program taps right into Vkontakte, a popular Russian social networking site. These songs are uploaded by users of the service and not the site operators.

If you take this into account you must come to the conclusion that it is likely not legal in all countries. While I cannot say that it is not legal in Russia for instance, it is fair to assume that it is not legal in the majority of countries.

I personally would advise users not to download music through the program. While it is unlikely that doing so will have legal consequences, it is still possible that it will depending on the local jurisdiction.

Looking for legal alternatives? Try the free music repository Jamendo, the Internet radio recorder Streamripper or our free music download guide.

Ex.FM Music Discovery Service With A Twist

Most music discovery services let you only play music that they have available in their databases or on their servers. That’s great and all but may be limiting at times. Ex.FM offers a solution. The web service at its core is still a music discovery service, with the difference that it will pick up music that you find on third party sites as long as you have one of the browser extensions installed.

Lets take a closer look at how this works. The extension, available for the Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome web browser picks up mp3 files automatically that you happen to stumble upon on the Internet. This is automatic, and a player is displayed at the bottom of the browser window to play those songs directly on the page. Registered users get the additional benefit that discovered music is saved so that they can open it at anytime on the Ex.FM website.

The service works well with popular music sites such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, the Live Music Archive or music blogs hosted on Tumblr. Songs are picked up automatically even if you do not play the songs on the site. They are then sorted automatically by site > artist and album on the Exfm website.

You can click on the extension icon to bring up the current music queue that offers all the options you would expect from a music player (back, forward, pause, stop volume).

If you do not want to look for music by yourself, you can use the trending and explore options on the site to get your daily music fix.

Trending displays the top 20 tracks of the last 24 hours on Ex.FM.

The explore section on the site offers several options:

• Site of the day – A new site every day that posts publicly accessible mp3 music.
• Genres – Pick a genre and get a selection of music that other users have found.
• Featured Album – A favorite editor picked album of the day.
• Tastemakers – Music discovered by popular Ex.FM members is posted here.
• Monthly Mixtape – A hand picked mixtape that changes monthly.
• Latest loved – Realtime music discovery, again from other users of the site.

The extensions are not needed to use the service. You can visit the service to access both the trending and explore sections of the site.

If you like to discover new music, or are simply looking for a versatile web music player that picks up songs that you find on web pages automatically, then you should take a closer look at Exfm. And since it is all about direct mp3 links, you won’t encounter country restrictions like you would with other services or players. Thumbs up!

Grooveshark Pulls Out Of Germany

Grooveshark’s ride to popularity has abruptly ended, at least in Germany. German users trying to access the website of the popular music streaming service Grooveshark are now greeted with an informational page telling them that the service has ended its operation in the country. According to the information, cost of operation reached a level in Germany that did not allow the company to continue offering their streaming music service.

You probably think that bandwidth and storage costs have fueled that decision, but that’s far away from the truth. It seems that the German performance rights organization GEMA, the bane of all music on the Internet, has once again had its hand in play. The organization is for instance the reason that German users are not able to watch many music videos that are posted on YouTube.

GEMA in 2009 asked Google to pay $0,013 per song played on YouTube. Google declined back then and as a result, German users cannot watch the majority of music videos on YouTube.

Grooveshark likely faced a similar decision, and like Google, Grooveshark decided to pull out of the country instead.

A GEMA mail address is listed on the page for users to direct their complaints to. It may be more fruitful on the other hand to direct complaints directly to politicans and not the GEMA.

Grooveshark recommends the German Simfy service as an alternative. And while that service looks like a great alternative on first glance, it needs to be noted that free users (with an account) only get five hours of free music per month. Users who would like to listen to more music need to switch to the Premium account which sets them back €4.99 each month.

Existing Grooveshark users can export their music from the service. A link is provided in the announcement.

The mobile clients are currently still working. It will however only be a matter of time until they will be shut down as well. (via Caschy)

Mentor FM Tunes Into Your Facebook Account To Play Music You Like

Mentor FM is one of those tools that it is pretty awesome and scary at the same time. The Internet radio tunes into your Facebook account to play music that you like. The awesome part is that it usually gets things pretty right in this regard. All you need to do is to give the app permissions to connect to your Facebook account before you can start listening to a playlist that has been specifically made for you.

The scary part is actually what makes the application that good: Facebook seems to know your music taste pretty well. The application displays up and down vote buttons on the radio page that you can use to further finetune the music listening experience.

Basic playback controls are displayed on the page as well. Here you can change the volume of the music, pause, stop and play songs or skip ahead to the next song if you do not really like the one that is currently playing.

Mentor.fm displays the artist or band, and the genre of the music on the page as well. It feels rather strange that the name of the song is not among the information displayed there.

If the playlist is not what you are looking for, you can let the radio station load a new playlist with different songs.

The surprise me mode finally lets you look beyond your music taste to discover a different kind of music. When I first used surprise me the radio started to play songs from artists such as Emilio Santiago, Jazzkantine or Renata Tebaldi, music that I would not listen to at all otherwise.

The site is a music experiment, that will be online for about 2 months before the makers will take it offline again. One of the interesting aspects of the site is that you can just turn on the radio and start listening, without having to perform searches or songs first. The service uses a user’s likes on Facebook and generates the playlist from those information. (via Freeware Genius)

Did online piracy really hurt music sales in 2011?

The digital music and video industries have been under increasingly scrutiny in recent weeks because of the US government’s SOPA anti-piracy legislation.  Now the UK’s British Phonographic Industry (BPI) have released figures that prove piracy is to blame for all their woes… or does it?

The figures released today and reported by the BBC show that overall CD album sales were down 13% on 2010′s figures to 86.2 million discs.  The figures also showed that the sales of digital albums climbed 24% to a total of 26.6 million in the same period.  The BPI said that the decline in album sales was the result of piracy, and they went on to blame the British government for not doing enough to tackle it.

Now you can’t compare one percentage with another as both will have begun from a different base, so let’s do some maths.  A sales drop of 13% would have made 2010′s CD album sales a total of 99.1 million and a rise of 24% in digital album sales would have made for total sales in 2010 of 21.4 million.  This would make total album sales in 2010 120.5 million.

The BPI are claiming however that total album sales in 2011 of 112.8 which is only slightly down on the previous year is all due to piracy.  Technically the BPI are correct but only in so far as overall sales are down.  Banging their drum about piracy being the cause when online digital sales rose by a quarter (which frankly is a huge sales leap in any industry) just goes to show how behind the times the music and movie industries really are.

People having to tighten their budgets, or finding new ways to buy and consume their music is a much more likely explanation for the sales drop.  The BBC said…

“People now buy the individual songs they like rather than buying the whole album because they like a single,” said Philip Buxton, an independent digital media consultant.  “So they might buy the single and then use services like Spotify and Lastfm to listen to the other tracks and are then much more selective about what they purchase.  “The implication for the record industry is that they need to embrace this new model rather than fight it.”

This reported 6% drop in overall sales will be seen by many as a smokescreen created by major multi-nationals who are feeling their pockets squeezed when they’re not fully embracing the new ways that people want to consume their music and video.  It’s similar to the banks claiming to be hard done by after being bailed out by taxpayers worldwide, just ask the Occupy Wall Street protesters how they feel about that!

The BPI’s Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor told the BBC “While other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of the US tech giants.”

Ultimately though SOPA has brought the whole issue of piracy and copyright theft back into the public consciousness and it’s unlikely that the general public worldwide will be sympathetic.  I may be wrong and you might disagree with me, but it’s widely considered that the music and video industries are failing to keep up with the demands of consumers.

What are your views on this?  Do you think that the music and movie companies are delivering content in the way that suits you best?

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© Mike Halsey MVP for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2012. | Permalink |
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Post tags: bpi, music, piracy

Listen to and Download Music from blocked Music Services

Some of the best web services may not be available to you if that service is limited to users from a specific region or country of the world. This is for instance the case with Pandora and many other entertainment related services. Your only option to access the service is to use a proxy server or virtual private network to bypass the country restrictions.

It is not often that you come upon an application that provides everything you need to access restricted services. Saver 2 Bundle is a free software collection for Windows that is an all-on one solution providing access to services such as Pandora, Rhapsody Radio, Last.fm, Songza or Meemix.

The program installs several programs on your computer that work well together. You can start the core application directly and use the integrated Opera USB browser to load the web services. It is alternatively possible to use other web browsers which may need to be configured properly before they can be used, or the optional Pandora Radio player that can be installed with the main program.

Saver2 uses the Tor Network to establish proxy connections. This basically tunnels the connection so that it appears as if it is coming from one of the allowed locations in the world. For Pandora Radio, this would be an endpoint in the United States.

The connection to one of the supported services should work right away and without the dreaded “country unsupported” message that users would see otherwise. Quality of playback during tests was good; Music streams from Pandora Radio and several other services were playing without buffering issues and errors.

Saver2 can be configured to download music from supported services automatically or on demand. The program is configured to download everything automatically. The preferences offer options to save only on approval.

The program furthermore tries to replace lower quality songs with higher quality versions, looks up album art on Amazon and may query the MusicDNS service for additional information.

Files can be re-encoded, for instance to a lower quality setting or file extension. Other options include configuring a blacklist or whitelist.

New users may feel overwhelmed at first by the applications that get installed and displayed on the screen when the main program is started. The majority of windows can be minimized though. All it takes to get started is to run the main application, wait until a proxy connection has been established to finally load the website that you want to access.

Windows users can download the Saver2 Bundle from the developer website.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: last.fm, music, pandora, video, windows software