music posts

I covered We Are Hunted about a month ago, but they've just undergone a fairly major overhaul. In a nutshell, We Are Hunted trawls Twitter, Facebook, P2P networks, and a whole bunch of other sources in order to figure out what music is hot and interesting right now. It looks nice -- and it works.

And now, they've added a new music discovery option, which feels just as slick as the rest of the website. You basically go through a bunch of songs and rate them. Rating is easy; it's "thumbs up/thumbs down" style (not a point system). The tracks are full-length, but as soon as you rate a track, the site skips to the next one.

Once you're done rating (or even if you just stop in the middle, like I did), the site makes a custom playlist that features some of the music you said you liked and music similar to it. The interface looks and feels just like the rest of the site and there's a large, stylish thumbnail for each song.

They've also debuted a new Community feature that lets you listen to other users' charts, and they've added an apps section that ties the site into other services like Grooveshark, Tumblr, Spotify, Boxee, etc.

Another noteworthy section of the site, which might have been there before but I've only just noticed, is the Research branch. You can download incredibly detailed PDF reports about quite a few artists; I downloaded one about Jason Mraz, and I was blown away by 48 pages of extensive data and charts that documented everything We Are Hunted could find about Mraz's online popularity. It was intense.

It all feels a bit hipster-oriented, but the recommendations are nice, it's clean, and it works. It's definitely worth a spin; I should've mentioned it in my roundup of free ways to find music online.

The Aviary suite of web apps is best known for its image editing capabilities, but now it's expanding its audio offerings, too, with a new beat creator called Roc. Roc is extremely easy to use and comes preloaded with 30+ instruments, from drums to guitars to pianos. Creating music with Roc is as simple as dragging in the instruments you want to use and clicking out a pattern of beats.

Roc may not be an expensive pro audio tool -- in fact, it's free -- but if you need to whip up a beat in a hurry, it'll get the job done. You can also record your voice and drop that in -- and then export the whole track as an mp3. Pro musicians likely won't be impressed, but novice beatmakers will be happy that Roc is so easy to learn. Some features can only be unlocked if you email out beta invitations to your friends, and that's a small price to pay considering the app itself is free.

Last week news broke of Rdio, the new brainchild of the Kazaa and Skype creators. Everyone was very briefly elated until they found out a) it's USA-only, and b) it's still in the middle of private beta testing. Still, thanks to the kindness of a Download Squad reader, and some network hacking (I live in the UK), I can now tell you all about Rdio! If you prefer pictures, there's a high-resolution gallery after the break.

First, it's entirely Web-based, with a very lightweight almost-no-features Adobe AIR app providing desktop access. The Web interface is seriously slick: a music player occupies the left, and fancy AJAX updates the right. Much to my delight, even back and forwards navigation works! (It's about time an AJAX site made it work...)

Second, I can confirm there's a lot of music available. Still no Beatles though! It'a a breeze to create collections, playlists, or download music. It actually feels a lot like Last.fm, but with a more responsive interface.

Third, the recommendation engine is pretty good. I wonder if they coded it themselves or licensed something from Last.fm or Pandora.

Finally... the social aspect! This really is Spotify meets Last.fm. You can see your entire music listening history (pretty cool) -- but you can also see your friends' entire history (a bit scary).

Mufin Player Pro is a desktop music player that has all of the features you've come to expect and one that you probably haven't; it can map out your entire music collection as a "visual cloud," which lets you slice and dice your tunes in some very interesting ways.

At the heart of Mufin is a sophisticated music identification engine that scans all of your tracks and isolates a variety of musical properties for each, such as percussion, "mood" (sad to happy), instrumentation, and many others. Once it knows your library, you can use it to find similar tracks (a la iTunes' "Genius playlist"). You can also use it to visualize your music in ways that iTunes doesn't come close to.

I was very impressed by Vision and spent quite some time playing around with it. I created a fairly extensive video review of the software, which you can watch after the jump. It's worth seeing in action; a textual explanation does not do this feature justice.

Mufin comes in two flavors: Free and Pro. The Vision feature is only available on the Pro version; luckily, Mufin's developers have been gracious enough to provide us with 20 Mufin Pro licenses to give away to DLS readers. If you want one, just leave a comment for a chance to win!

You have until 11:59PM EST Thursday, June 10, 2010 to enter the competition. Full terms and conditions follow.

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter, leave a comment below.
• The comment must be left by Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Twenty winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: Mufin Pro retail value of US$29.99.
• Click Here for complete Official Rules

After popularizing peer-to-peer piracy and single-handedly destroying the conventional-plastic-disc distribution channel, it's only fitting that the creator of Kazaa now plays a part in rebuilding the music industry. Enter stage left: Rdio, flanked by the creator of Skype. Sign up now, because you're going to want a piece of this pie when it leaves private beta testing.

CD sales are at an all-time low. Disillusioned consumers are fleeing to the digital realm -- where music is cheap, where music is bountiful, where music is good. And there, awaiting their arrival, is a new breed of in-the-cloud music providers. Spotify is perhaps the service that exemplifies such a business model, but Rdio looks set to blow it out of the water -- to put it another way, I think Spotify knew what was coming when it dropped its prices last month.

In essence, Rdio is like iTunes and Spotify on steroids. There are no real surprises when it comes to the feature set. It's simply taking things to the next step. It's like iTunes, only without limitations on moving your files around. It's like Spotify, but cheaper, and with better music discovery. The coolest bit is that you can see -- presumably in real time -- what your friends are listening to. I guess it's also like Last.fm in that regard.

Now, both iTunes and Spotify are certainly working on similar features, so I doubt Rdio will be unique by the time it leaves beta testing -- but it's competition. $4.99 per month for unlimited music downloads from a library of 5 million tracks is pretty damn good... and it's only going to get cheaper!

Spotify, the (European) king of music-on-demand, is a real pain in the ass to actually use. I mean, it works, but only just. It's one of those annoying apps that minimises itself to your system tray -- and while that might be OK with Windows XP, on Windows 7 that's just crap. I want Spotify on my SUPERBAR! I want the ability to stop, start and change tracks without having to dig Spotify out of my system tray! Fortunately, Spotifycontrol does just that... and it's open-source!

It's not ideal -- really, I just want that Spotify icon on my Superbar to become 'active' -- but Spotifycontrol is a monumentally large step in the right direction. First, it lets you control Spotify (duh), and the control bar is always-on-top, so you'll never lose it. Second, it's integrated into Aero, so it's all translucent and pretty (it also pops up notifications when the track changes). Third, it exposes global hotkeys so you can control Spotify with your keyboard! AND FINALLY -- it has a built-in lyric search! Just hit that icon that looks like a text document... and blam! Lyrics!

There haven't been any updates to the project since the beginning of April, but seemingly they are currently working on a Web-based control server. There might also be a small memory leak: the memory footprint keeps climbing until you move Spotifycontrol -- still, mere teething issues... and we have gigabytes of RAM for a reason, right?

I think the need for music and rhythm is one of the most basic human needs; and as we evolve, so evolve our ways of hunting and gathering this precious commodity.

In this post, I've gathered 10 great places to expand your musical horizons: free, legal ways to discover music online, which work everywhere (not only in the US or in Europe)!

Not all of the sites below actually let you listen to music – they are not all players; but they can all help you find the next big thing, or just a tune to groove to.

Let's get started!

Uvumi

Uvumi is one of my favorite players in this space. You probably won't find much music you already know there; it's a community for budding artists, which lets them put their music online, be discovered and get direct feedback from their listeners.

I've covered Uvumi in detail, but if I had to sum it up in brief, I'd have to say that what impressed me most about the site is how well-managed it is. Marshall (the guy behind the site) seems to be taking both the listeners and the artists really seriously, and there's a true sense of community once you get into it.

YouTube Disco

When was the last time you listened to some music on YouTube? Probably sometime today or yesterday, right? It's something most of us do on a routine basis, and there's a whole cottage industry of mashups which use YouTube as a music repository and dish out recommendations.

And then there's Youtube's own Music Discovery Project. It's pretty much what you would expect, and it's certainly worth knowing about.

To see eight other ways to find and listen to music online (and a bonus mention!), keep on reading after the fold.

If you've ever played a connect-the-dots game like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, you know the idea behind Six Degrees of Black Sabbath. You enter two musical artists or band names, and it will automatically spit out how many steps it takes to get from one to the other.

Well-known artists have typically worked with more people, making it more likely to make shorter jumps. But the fun comes in trying to find either the shortest path between two seemingly unrelated artists, or in just trying to put together the longest path.

The best short one I've seen so far is William Shatner to Youssou N'Dour in only three steps, while the longest string I've been able to put together myself was from Baz Luhrmann to The Beat Farmers in 20 steps. The longest string I'm aware of is 40 steps.

So, how long of a string can you put together? Post your accomplishments in the comments!

You can hack many things... but music? Really? I know that technology plays a big part in music mixing in a synths sense -- but as a procedural, Python-scripted way... that's news to me!

Enter The Swinger, which was coded last week at the Music Hack Day event in San Francisco. It makes music swing: it abuses the time-stretching capabilities of Echo Nest's open-source Remix SDK to create strangely pleasant swing remixes of songs. Press play on the music player above; Guns N' Roses has never sounded so chirpy!

Given that the script was written by Tristan Jehan, the prodigious doctor of the bleeding-edge 'Hyperinstruments Group' at MIT, I shouldn't really be surprised that it exists. Digging a little further (check the Music Hack Day timetable), it looks like music hacking is a quickly-developing arena that cracks open an interesting kettle of fish.

While personalized music streams like Pandora are nothing new, imagine a service that also detects your preference for faster or slower beats. Imagine being able to select a fast or slow version of your favourite playlist, depending on your mood. That would be cool -- and only the beginning of what we'll see in 'next-gen' music.

[If you want to convert some songs into sultry swing (it can un-swing songs too!), grab the Remix SDK linked above and locate swinger.py in the Examples directory. You'll need Python installed.]

Today's Google I/O keynote focused on the Android platform. Any doubts about where Google is investing most of its developer resources have now been dispelled.

The first half of the keynote was dedicated to the Android Marketplace and smartphone platform, and boy are we in for some exciting changes when Android 2.2 (Froyo) becomes available later this month. This post focuses on how version 2.2 will impact the consumer, the end-user. Another post will follow with more technical details on the juicy innards of Android 2.2 and its super-charged HTML5 Web browser.

First up, as Jay reported earlier: music syncing is coming to your Android device. This isn't some kind of pussy-whipped eunuch of a synchronizing tool either: it's fully-fledged, in-the-cloud Internet-based synchronizing! The keynote speaker was at pains to point out how obvious sync-over-the-'Net is. Why should you have to plug in your device to sync it?

The syncing doesn't stop at music though! Rather, music is becoming part of the Android Marketplace -- your apps will also exist in the cloud. Select an app, pay for it (or not), and BOOM -- it's now on your phone. Or on your Google TV as the case may be! No silly conversion or repackaging or tethering is required. Remember, you can do all of this on your phone or your PC -- the Android Marketplace is just a website! The Marketplace will keep track of your linked Android devices: you just choose which one to send the app or song to!

More news coming out of Google I/O suggests that the Google/Apple rivalry is about to get even hotter, with Google entering the music arena. The big announcement today was Android 2.2, aka Froyo, but it might have slipped by you that Google is also adding music to the Android store. Google has also purchased music-syncing service Simplify Media, which syncs your media across multiple devices and apps, including iTunes.

A cloud-based iTunes competitor from Google?! Who would have expected such a thing? (Well, other than DLS editor Lee Mathews, back in October of last year ...)

It looks like the basic idea is that Google bought Simplify Media as a way to give Android customers access to DRM-free media -- including songs from the Android Market music service -- on their computers and mobile devices. The first step will be a desktop app based on Simplify's technology. That means you can buy songs from your computer, and they'll auto-sync over the web to your Android device. God, I wish my iPhone did that ...

Okay, let me get this out of the way first: Pomplamoose are awesome!!! I'm a huge fan, so I was overjoyed when Jack and Nataly agreed to grant me an exclusive 15-minute interview, chock full of nerdy goodness and hard-core technical information on how they create their music.

In case you don't know them, you should really go watch their YouTube channel. They're a musical duo, and they are getting tons of views for their work -- 3.5 million views on a Beyonce cover, for example, and over 850,000 for their latest original (non-cover) song. They are successful enough to make a living off their art, and they've actually turned down offers from the four major labels because they're doing just fine on their own. They were amongst the first musicians to participate in YouTube's revenue sharing program, and YouTube asked them to create a video for it. In short, they are a rising cultural force.

While they have a lot to say on social media and marketing, when I interviewed them I was mainly curious to find out more about the creative process -- how they actually make the songs, what software they use, how does it all come together and how difficult (or easy) it is.

Jack has some pretty interesting stuff to say about "when to ship", and about the question of quantity vs. quality. It's near the end of the video, and it's applicable to anyone trying to create any sort of product, software very much included. The interview is really funny and casual, like most of their work.

After the jump you can find their most recent original video, as well the interview itself.

Thanks again, Jack and Nataly!

With all of the Flash-bashing going on lately, it is easy to forget what a powerful platform it is. It's a good thing that Web tools like Soundation Studio serve as handy reminders, showing us that some very cool stuff can be created with Flash.

Soundation Studio is an incredibly full-featured, desktop-like sound editor. It has a built-in library with hundreds of sound samples that are sorted by BPM. The samples are predominantly electronica-style stuff, but you can buy more samples from the online store. Still, if you want to compose a nice piece of electronic music, the included samples seem to be more than enough.

Despite having no musical inclination whatsoever, I was so impressed with Soundation Studio that I felt compelled to stay for a few minutes, play around with the UI, and even try to compose my own trance beat (which I will not subject you to). After the fold, you can see some of the highlights.

Monkey Machine is definitely the coolest, most fun thing I've seen all day. It's also one of the best uses I've seen recently for the rapidly-aging Java programming language. What is it? It's a really, really nice, simple drum machine, with lots of cool features. It's very easy to use, and it's almost irresistible; once I launched it, I was compelled to play with it!

You begin with a looping pattern -- by default it's 16-beat, but you can make it longer or shorter (like I did for the screenshot). Each position on the pattern can be set to "off," "medium," or "strong."

The TAP button you see there lets you set the tempo by tapping along with your mouse. Tap slow, and it slows down; tap faster and the BPM rises accordingly.

The Shuffle control is one of the coolest features. I lack the musical terminology to properly explain what it does; it seems to randomize the intervals a bit, and add some nice groove to your pattern. It just makes it more fun.

Once you've finished working on one pattern, you can add another pattern and start playing with it. Your two patterns will play in a loop, one after the other. Once you're done, you can export your beat as a MIDI file. You can also download existing beats that other users created -- there are over 11,000 of them!

All in all, Monkey Machine is an awesome find.