How to Mobilize Your Social Media
Your Entire Social-Network Audience Is Not on a Computer
Posted by Webster Lewin on 10.01.09 @ 10:05 AM
Recently, Advertising Age reported on the 400% surge in mobile video uploads to YouTube, attributed to the new iPhone 3GS. Beyond the implications of what that may mean for the value of ad inventory on YouTube, one thing is clear: There is an inseparable link between social media and mobile devices.
--> As the capabilities of these devices expand, we can expect that updating social-network sites via mobile will continue to increase and may eventually even surpass the wired web. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are remarkably dependent on mobile access for the value they provide to their users. I would also argue that mobile status updates are, by their very nature, timelier, more relevant and potentially more interesting to their readers.The mobile web version of YouTube is outstanding, and has well over 4.6 million users that log in many times a month.Today, every major social network offers its users a range of mobile services, from mobile web access to downloadable mobile applications. Although consumers with high-end devices may be the primary users of these mobile services, some social networks also offer a number of SMS-driven features that allow consumers to stay engaged by text, even on low-end mobile phones. This represents a big opportunity for brands to maximize their efforts and move consumers easily between their mobile and social media experiences.
While social media campaigns are becoming more common, we often see that when agencies and brands begin their engagement with social networks, they act as if their entire audience is on a computer -- the mobile aspects of social media are frequently neglected. And the reverse can also be said about many brands' initial mobile marketing efforts: They often neglect to effectively integrate the power of mobile social-media elements (even when these elements already exist) to further engage consumers and fans of the brand.
Twitter is a great example of the power of mobile and social media working together. According to Nielsen, more than 3 million Twitter users in the U.S. alone regularly access the service via the mobile web. Additionally, many consumers are frequently using Twitter through SMS and a range of downloadable mobile applications for iPhone, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. This makes Twitter an easy and seamless way to drive consumers to mobile content.If you're already actively using Twitter for a brand, consider how mobile-friendly your tweets are. If you're including links to content on YouTube, Flickr and many other social-networking sites that automatically redirect users to their mobile versions of pages, you're doing great. But if you are sending Twitter users to a page on your all-Flash website or content that could potentially crash a phone's browser, you should consider posting both mobile-friendly and non-mobile links to important content that you want to share.
--> Also, if your brand has a mobile site and a Twitter account, then why not invite your mobile users to click over and follow your tweets right then and there? I've only seen a handful of brands take advantage of this easy integration point.Some social networks offer a number of SMS-driven features that allow consumers to stay engaged by text, even on low-end mobile phones.
According to Nielsen, Facebook is the No. 7 mobile website in terms of reach. About 15% of Facebook users (11 million) in the U.S. regularly access the social network's mobile web version (not to mention various downloadable versions and the roughly three million users who use SMS). Users visit the mobile web version an average of over 18 times per month and each visit lasts about 10 minutes.At the time of this writing, Facebook fan pages are just beginning to be supported on the mobile web, and hopefully soon on mobile applications as well. Once they are fully supported, that will open up mobile social-media integration opportunities. Already, the Facebook Connect service is allowing brands to link their iPhone apps to users' profiles, and Facebook Connect has potential for mobile websites as well.
Facebook recently launched a new feature for fan pages that allows users to subscribe via SMS. This is a free service that essentially gives any brand with a Fan Page the ability to send targeted SMS updates to their fan's mobile phones if they have opted into the service. However, only a few brands have effectively used this new feature, and more work needs to be done to actively engage fans with it by including content that is relevant to mobile users.
YouTube
YouTube is a powerful social network and content site, and by far the most ubiquitous in terms of the number of platforms and devices that it can be accessed from. Even on mobile, there are a number of distinct ways that users can access the full range of mobile content. The native versions of YouTube that come pre-installed on iPhones, Android phones like the G1, and the Palm Pre offer the best mobile user experience. However, the mobile web version is also outstanding, and has well over 4.6 million users that log in many times a month.Any brands that are on YouTube and are also doing mobile, but are not integrating the two, are missing an important opportunity. Your mobile site is just a click away from lots of video, and you can add links to video descriptions that can be used to drive users back to your brand's mobile site for more. Also, consider the power of video to influence consumers at the point of sale. Virtually everyone who walks down a store aisle these days has a device in their pocket that gives them the ability to get to your brand's video content. You just need to take a few simple steps to connect the dots.
Quality vs. Quantity
Both mobile and social media are more about reaching niche audiences and getting them actively engaged than they are about massive reach. They are about getting personal with the consumer, which makes both social media and mobile impressions more valuable. These consumers are fully engaged. They have raised their hands and want to know more. And once they've told you they're interested in more, they will be disappointed if they don't get it.Some who look at social media and mobile through marketing goggles question reach and how these channels can be used to sell consumers more stuff. But in the era of Web 2.0, part of the selling process is increasingly becoming about the art of being there for the consumer in the always-on environment of mobility- charged social media. It's about offering something of value, creating movements that build over time, engaging with passionate fans and giving them the tools to influence others.
By using a multichannel approach to social media that fully leverages mobile communications, you will have a much greater likelihood of gaining critical mass for your social media initiatives. You'll gain even more valuable social media impressions, and most importantly a growing list of brand fans that you can continue to communicate with. It will allow consumers to digitally participate in this brand movement anywhere -- and anytime.
~ ~ ~
Webster Lewin is senior VP-director of digital innovation and strategy at MS&L.0 Comments
Thursday, October 01, 2009
From AdAge. How to Mobilize Your Social Media.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
From TechCrunch. Your Guide to Music on the Web, Part II
Last month, I published Part 1 of my Guide To Music On The Web, which covered music recommendation sites, Web radio, independent music sites, playlists, and music visualizations. Today, in Part II we’ll take a tour of music search engines, Web players, ways to share music on Twitter, and music mixing apps.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading all of your comments and insights on my previous post and of course, took them under consideration while creating this second part. Please bear in mind that I can’t list ALL the music applications out there. I really tried to find the best and the most used applications that will probably still be here to serve you tomorrow too.
So readers’ main concern was the companies’ business model. You are right. A few of the services might make an exit, and most of them are probably not going to have one, and some are just for fun. I think music services can make money by being innovative enough to get it. Anyway, I don’t want to get into the business model stuff too much, but I will tell you this: The Internet is too competitive, you may be succeed by just being simple, but you may also need to be sophisticated. The era where creating an application first, then two years later thinking how to make money from it, is bygone now, and companies will need to think how to make money sooner than later if they aim for it – This is where innovation comes in and usually wins.
Music Search Engine:
Back in 2007, SkreemR
was truly my favorite MP3 search engine. SkreemR locates MP3 files on blogs and webpages, then indexes them on its site, allowing anyone to listen to their favorite music right on the spot. There is no registration required, all you need to do is to search for your desired song/artist, and browse the results. See something that you like? You can play it, rate it, buy it on Amazon, get the song lyrics, watch the video, find related photos on flickr, find concert tickets, download as a ringtone, and finally – yes – you can also share and tweet about it. Unfortunately, now SkreemR has jumping ads all over the site. I understand the need to make money, but did they have to choose the most annoying way to achieve that goal?
I remember the hype around Songza
when it first launched… it is a slick Ajax-designed service, which makes it easy to stream music on the web. Well, it still does. Songza became popular for its great usability and the fact that you can easily create playlists, and share music with your friends. At first Songza aggregated music from Seeqpod
, then switched to YouTube videos and imeem (where imeem
= 30 seconds of a song, and Youtube
= full video, low quality). Somewhere around October 2008, the service was acquired by Amie Street for its marketing potential.
Another acquired service is FoxyTunes, this time by Yahoo! in February 2008. FoxyTunes Firefox toolbar extension (launched in 2004) enables control of your favorite music player from the Firefox browser. It supports almost any media player and lets you also find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more – all from the comfort of your browser. Today, it has more than 50,000 weekly downloads, and a cumulative total of nearly 11,000,000 downloads! FoxyTunes also released an additional add-on called TwittyTunes, which allows you to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click. On their behalf I have to say, they where the first to offer that. Their search engine: FoxyTunes Planet
, is a mashup Netvibes-like page, that gathers music information from Rhapsody, Yahoo!, Flickr, Last.fm, Youtube, Pandora, Amazon, and more.
I sure noticed the difference when I tried Mufin
. Looks like they put an emphasis on the site’s usability and design. The interface is so clean and easy to use. Like other services, Mufin will search for your favorite music and will play it on the spot, via Youtube (what else?) It also lets you create playlists in a snap. But what makes it unique is its visualization tool (vision) that lets you discover more music, based on similar artists. Mufin also provides a player which can be downloaded to your desktop for free. The player will help you organize your music, create playlists, find similar music, share tracks with friends on Last.fm, Twitter or Facebook, and so much more.
search engine has no special feature really, it’s just built really well. The service has a simple look & feel, which allows you to listen to music that streams from Youtube, and create playlists if you are logged in. You can connect your Twitter, Friendfeed or Facebook accounts, and share with your friends’ music in realtime. There’s not much to say other than that.
has quite an impressive history since they launched way back in 2006; At first, it was just a plug-in
allowing you to organize your own library better, so you would be able to find the right song at the right time. Then Qloud released ‘My-Music’: A music app for social networks (Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Myspace, etc), which led them to 1M Facebook users! And finally today, it’s all of the above, plus a real-time music search engine, and a pretty good one. You can search and find music that you like, save and organize your favorites, share music with friends, or find new friends based on shared music taste. You can also import your iTunes or Windows Media Player library, and play your playlist directly from your browser. There’s a rumor that Qloud was acquired by Buzznet last year, but I couldn’t find any formal confirmation about this at either site (Qloud or Buznet).
And finally MySpace Music
: A massive hub of free music on the web. MySpace Music gathers all of its music accounts into one searchable page by genre. You can see the entire discography of your favorite artists from anywhere on the globe: view the artists’ music pages, listen to their music, track local concerts and much more. You can also search entire collections of free-to-watch video uploaded by artists or users. Read reviews by users, blog posts by both users and artists, and basically dive into an endless amount of content. Addictive.
Worth mentioning: Wearehunted
, which is a playable chart of the most popular songs on the Web..
Web Players:
From your Desktop to the Web, Moof
allows you to have a full back up of your own music. Export an xml file of your iTunes library, and listen to your favorite music from any computer. If you don’t want to do that, you can still browse through the Moof music library and play any song you like on-demand from the Web. Moof looks and behaves like a desktop player, with the additional ability to share and see music from friends. If your friends are on Moof, you can browse their entire collection of music, and add favorites to your own personal library. Overall, it’s a great way to find new music. Note that Moof has the coolest registration form ever
is so awesome, but fails to explain the service to its users. What you see when you enter the site is a Web Music Player that lets you find the music you want, then play it right away. What you don’t see is the powerful feature that allows you to see what your friends are listening to in real-time! How it works: Just sign up for the service, invite your friends to join in, and each time you play music on the site, your friends will be able to see what you’re listening to as you listen to it, and vice versa. The music streams from all kinds of free sources—not Youtube.
Like most of the Web Players, Grooveshark
allows users to find any song in the world and listen to it instantly. But there are several things that makes it different than the rest; first off, the application’s UI is stunning, and the experience using this site is absolutely a joy. Other than that, there’s so much that you can do: search, find, organize, favorite and add music that you like. Also interact with people in the community, and discover new music from others’ choices. With a team of 40 people they must have a business model (or a lot of VC cash). Grooveshark has a paid VIP version with some exclusive features, and a special interface for VIP users ($3/month or $30/year)
Youtube probably has the largest music database in the Internet, but finding music can be very frustrating since it’s not well organized. I’ve already recommended Jogli
as a service that gathers Youtube music into albums in the first part of this guide. JukeFly
does the same but also lets you listen to the music as if it was on your desktop music player, only it’s on the Web. JukeFly prepares everything for you, so you don’t really need to create playlists, you just need to choose from a variety of content already made for you. Additionally, JukeFly can stream music from your desktop, but you’ll have to download their plug-in to be able to do so. The player has more features and functionality, which you may or may not need, so don’t be surprised if eventually you find yourself using it as your new music center on the Web. JukeFly is working on a newer version, which will include an iPhone app, concert information, chat, fan-clubs, and Internet radio.
searches an entire database of songs in addition to the millions of songs indexed by MP3 search engine SkreemR
to bring you the best results possible. If you sign up for the service you will be able to save your favorite songs, create playlists by simply dragging & dropping tracks into a box, and share playlists with anyone. Users can upload custom album art to any playlist, then embed the playlist at their blog/site. All from a sexy web interface.
How disappointing is it to find out that Lala
works only in the U.S when everyone keeps telling me how great this service is… Anyway, I can give you a brief overview of the service from the information I picked up on the site. Windows users can move their entire music collection from the desktop to Lala on the web. Most of your music will be matched to Lala’s catalog and will be available online in minutes; The rest and unmatched music can be uploaded to Lala. If your personal music collection is not enough, you can play over 7 million songs once for free. If you’d like to add songs to your collection, it’ll cost 10 cents per song, and your first 25 songs are free.
plays music over a nicely done application with a great visual experience. The application was created by two students trying to change the stereotype that access to free music is an illegal activity while immersing the user in a unique visual experience. So what can you do at the site? You can listen to music you like, create online music collections & multiple playlists, and hopefully share favorite tracks with friends (it doesn’t say this anywhere, but I presume it does) – not much different from the rest of the services here, except for its nifty UI. BTW, even with their goal to show the world that music can be free and legal, they use Youtube like most services, so I’m not sure what’s unique about that.
Since Seeqpod.com’s
service is mostly dead, every service that used them switched to Youtube instead. The pros: Its video ability. The cons: The music quality (but hey, at least we have free music). Same applies to Streamzy
, an Ajax-based media player that lives on the web and allows users to create quick playlists from their favorite music. Streamzy says it merely provides search results for media being hosted elsewhere on the Internet – Well, I can’t argue with that. Anyhow, sign in if you want to save playlist, or use it as an alternative music player occasionally.
Post Music on Twitter:
is by far my favorite Twitter music service. It is also the first service that allowed people to send music to twitter in a very easy way, which is what made it what it is today. What makes it so great is that you can use it with or without a Twitter account. Some use it via the Twitter connection, other use it as their main music playlist and enjoy the community within the site only. Anyhow, you can discover new music, and new friends based on your collections. Once you sign up to the site, you can set Twitter to send notifications each time you suggest a new song to friends. It looks like Twitter, it behaves like Twitter, but angled around music only.
project Twisten.fm
, came out a bit later than Blip.fm and offers pretty much the same service. Sign-up with your Twitter credentials, and share music with your friends on Twitter. The site streams music from Grooveshark, allowing you to enjoy the quality of music played there (blip.fm streams music mostly from Youtube). Overall, it’s a cool place to save your music into playlists, and share directly with your Twitter friends. I wish that both Blip.fm & Twisten.fm would allow people to buy mixed CDs created from their playlist, instead of having to buy each song separately.
is the new kid on the block, basically the same as Blip.fm and Twisten.fm except with a killer tool—a nifty Bookmarklet! While you play songs on Youtube or Myspace, you can immediately add them to your playlist in Funnel. Another unparalleled feature is the ability to integrate your Twitter account or Tweet only the songs that you want. This way, you don’t feel bad about inundating your Twitter stream with too many of those annoying music updates. Also, you can easily comment on songs that you like.
If you wish to share MP3 links with your Twitter friends, you can do it with the help of Song.ly
. Enter an MP3 link, and Song.ly will generate a small player for easy listening over the web. I have to admit that the whole process is somewhat an unnecessary hassle. After all, who’s uploading songs these days when everything is searchable on the web already? On the other hand, you can enjoy a list of songs that’s already been uploaded by others, and are of very good quality, of course. I’d summarize it as a user generated MP3 search engine.
Another successful service, is Twt.fm
which finds music that you like and posts it to Twitter in a cool way. All you need to do is to log in via Twitter, type in an artist/track and click preview. Twt.fm then generates a track page using your Twitter page design. Post it on Twitter and your friends will be able to leave you comments on the same page – Example
.
Worth mentioning: Listento.fm
, and Twones
.
Mix & Share:
Not a pure mix service but it still falls into this category, 8tracks
allows you to create a Mix (playlist) with your favorite songs. It’s actually very similar to a service that already shut down, Mixwit
—so if you missed it, you might as well try 8tracks. Once you sign up to the service you can start searching for music, or uploading it from your computer to build your Mix. You can publish a Mix of no more than 8 tracks and only two of these can be from the same artist. Visitors at the site can listen to Mixes without signing into the service—but for creation and music uploads, you’ll have to become a member.
A fun service to close the list with, Jamglue
brings music and fans together. Any artist can sign up for a free Jamglue account and upload music in multi-track format for others to remix. There are several Creative Commons licenses to choose from. These licenses allow others to share and remix work, as long as they follow the artist’s restrictions. Fans can remix other folks’ stuff, and share the results.
Conclusion:
To summarize this whole guide, I have to admit that I’m somewhat concerned: Let’s say Youtube closes its doors tomorrow or decides to stop streaming music—there goes about 80% of what I’ve listed. Which brings me to my next point, the future of music on the Web doesn’t looks so bright right now. Not if every service depends on Youtube so heavily as its music source. For once, I wouldn’t mind paying a yearly fee if it meant listening to an unlimited source of any music that I like with good streaming & with awesome quality. And, I don’t even need to download the songs to my computer, all I really want is a place where I can play my favorite music based on monthly/year fee. Is it too much to ask? Oh wait, this is exactly what Rhapsody offers; Unfortunately, only in the U.S. . . .For now, I suggest you try the services above and enjoy them as long as they last. For some reason, music services don’t stay around very long but I guess that’s the way they roll.
Since I can’t list them all, please feel free to add services that I’ve missed in your comments and make them handy for everyone.
From TechCrunch. Your Guide To Music On The Web – Part #1
I’m a Web fanatic, I admit. But you probably already knew that… My work environment has been completely web based for years now. The same applies to my music. Like many people, I used to download music from Kazaa
or eMule
(Yeah, I know some of you still do). Most of the time now, I listen to music on the web and don’t have any need to download it. My laptop benefits the most from this inclination since it’s not weighed down by music files, thus saving me tons of space and virus headaches (you eMule users know what I’m talking about). Anyhow, if I do choose to download music, I can always do it over at iTunes or my favorite place in the web: Jamendo
.
Music plays a large role in our lives. Since the web now plays an even bigger part, combining the two together has become unavoidable. The greatest thing about this powerful duo is that you don’t need to spend a lot of time searching for music you like — just use this nifty guide list and you’ll find just about everything you need to enjoy hours of good music. The sound quality changes from service to service, but overall, it’s good enough for regular web usage.
Please note that this is a list of services that you can use over the net without the need to download anything to your computer. This is why I’m not listing any P2P software: i.e., Spotify
, as well the fact that most of us can’t really test it or use it for all that matter. This is also only the first half of this guide; part two will include more web music players (including MySpace Music
, Streamzy, and others) as well as music search engines and services that make it easy to share songs on Twitter and other social sites.
Music Recommendations:
Pandora
is a service that can be used only in a specific locale, this one being within the U.S. Luckily, I had the chance to test the service when it was first released and became available to everyone. Launched way back in July 2005, the project had been in the initial testing phases for five years prior to launch date. Pandora recommends music to you by matching similar musical attributes. All you really need to do is choose an artist or a band you like, and Pandora will do the rest. Pandora delivers high quality 128Kbps audio streams, offering recommendations similar to the artists you have chosen. Pandora’s player looks like a radio, you can open up to 100 stations and navigate through them quickly. Registering for Pandora will provide you with a free account (advertising-supported). Free Pandora accounts will play up to 40 hours of music for free per month, you also have the option to pay 99 cents for unlimited listening hours for the rest of that month, or pay $36 to upgrade Pandora for one year. If you want to download music from Pandora, you can do it through iTunes or Amazon. You can see our past Pandora coverage here.
With almost 3 million unique visitors a day, Last.fm
is one of the most powerful social music communities on the Web today. Like Pandora, the service allows you to enjoy music that you like, but unlike Pandora, Last.fm analyses what you and your friends listen to and like, and then suggests more music based on that analysis. When you recommend music to a friend or you tag it, or you write about it, or simply just listen to it – you shift the song’s importance on the site, and will in turn get recommended to more people. Based on the music you’ve already listened to, Last.fm will recommend new music you might like, as well as suggest other users with a similar music taste to yours, which you might be interested in friending, and you can also easily communicate with them. If you live outside the U.S., U.K. or Germany, you can listen with a free 30-track trial or subscribe for a low price of $3/month for unlimited radio streaming. (Launched in 2002!)
is how BlogMusik, looked in 2006, and this
is how Deezer
(formerly BlogMusik) looks today – pretty impressive change, don’t you think? The French-based service is one of the largest and happens to also be a very successful music recommendation search engine. Once registered here, you can create your personal profile and reach the Deezer community. You can create playlists, send messages to your contacts, leave comments, add artists and albums to your favorites, and more. But here’s what I like the most – The SmartRadio, which is an intelligent radio that automatically generates 3 hours(!) of continuous listening based on one artist – completely free. Priceless! You can see our past coverage of Deezer here.
I think the first Adobe AIR application that I ever tried was Finetune
. Finetune provides you with the most interesting new playlists of related music from your choice of artists. Besides the site’s community where you can browse, listen to music, create a profile, connect with other users and more, Finefune also has some cool feautures to complete their suite, and each tool gives you an extraordinary music experience. Take for example the Finetune Wii project
(which can be played also over the web), it’s a great sight and sound for the eyes and ears. Just enter an artist’s name and Finetune will create a playlist with similar music that will play for hours. Best of all it’s free, and you also get an iPhone
, Facebook and a Desktop app that all sync with your music playlist, no matter where you play it from. You can see our past coverage of FineTune here.
Also worth mentioning in this same topic group are, of course: Ilike.com
(acquired by Myspace), and music.strands.tv
Independent Music:
Amie Street
is a home for musicians. The service allows music fans to discover new and independent music. Visitors at the site can search for new music based on genre, region, or recommendations. Fans can also search for music according to its price - Amie Street is actually the only marketplace where listeners determine the price of the music. How does it work? Every song is originally priced free or very inexpensive and increases in price, up to 98 cents, as more and more users purchase it. Musicians then get 70% of the revenue from each sale. Additionally, Amie Street matches you with music that you might like, for example: I couldn’t locate Coldplay on the site, but I got more than 70 results that sound similar to the band. Obviously, this exposes me to music that I’ve never heard before, which is always a welcomed experience. You can see our past coverage of Amie Street here.
Why is Jamendo
one of my favorite music services? It offers the largest catalog of music under Creative Commons licenses – worldwide. And, not only are all of the albums free to download, there’s also a large chance you won’t know any of the artists. If you already have an open mind about music, surely it won’t stop you from listening to some new albums, right? The best way to find music at this site is to search by the genre tags. Found something that you like? You can review, comment, rate, share and as I’ve said download it for free. The service is available in seven languages, and has an iPhone app
that you can download for free. Business model? Yes they have
one too.
is by far the best looking music application there is today. It offers a great interface, a great user-experience and above these all, great music! SoundCloud lets music professionals receive, send and distribute their music. The service allows professionals (and non-professionals) to exchange, and follow music and musicians at the site. It’s a full community where people can easily communicate with each other based on shared tastes, but it is also a place where musicians can store and showcase their music using high quality standards. With the free account, you can only upload 5 tracks maximum per month, but if you are an industry fanatic and you find this plan to be somewhat lacking, you can check the pro page
for packages that are more suitable to your needs. See our past coverage here.
allows artists to upload their songs and lets thousands of listeners decide whether they like it or not. The most popular songs hit the front page. Think about it as a Digg for music, the more people heart a song, the higher it goes. The site connects musicians and fans, giving them all the tools to communicate with each other. For artists, it’s good place to promote their work. For anyone else, it’s a wonderful place to discover and support new music.
Create & Listen to Playlist:
I’ve never been very much of a Project Playlist
fan, but I have to say it’s a good service. Ultimately, it’s a community based on playlists. You don’t have to register to be able to listen to the music, but once you do, you can start building your playlist and enjoy more features such as the Playlist IM, which is a chat system similar to Facebook where you can connect your ‘playlist’ friends or even friends from AIM, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, etc. What else? You can write blog entries, upload photos, privately connect with other members, browse thousands of other music playlists, comment, share, and much more. My guess is that people use this site mostly to share their playlist on their blog/site or social network. Playlist allows you to grab a playlist code and embed it anywhere you want. One thing that bugs me though is that the member’s search feature is missing. Today, when everything is so connected to your identity, this is a must have feature. On the other hand, I was impressed to see they saved my playlist
from 2006…
allows you to create personalize playlist and share it in the Jiwa.fm community or with friends & family. As a member, you are able to share, exchange, and explore music. You can also expand your tastes with the SmartRadio tool. I found this service to be unique in a way because no matter what you are doing at the site, it won’t prevent you from listening to your playlist, it just plays in the background. Amazingly, when you click on an artist from within a mixed artists playlist, it will automatically create
an album playlist of that artist. You might find the site to be a bit cluttered at first time, but once you get it, it works like a charm – highly recommended.
At Jogli
, you don’t really need to create a playlist – they create it for you. Think about it as a giant web-based CD store where you can search for an artist, see all of his/her albums, and then listen to them exactly as listed in original CD Let’s take Michael Jackson for example: Here
you can find all his discography, and listen to his CDs one by one. Clicking on the button ‘Play Radio’ will open a radio station generated from music you might like from similar artists. As a registered member, you are able to save playlists, write reviews, and more. You can also import your playlists to Last.fm or iTunes to make it a video playlist. Check out our past coverage of Jogli here.
would have been better and easier if they allowed you to search for Youtube videos on their site to create a playlist. But no, you have to supply them with a Youtube URL, which means, you’ll have to go directly to Youtube, search for a song, then copy-paste that song URL back into MixTube. Thus, I found it to be frustrating. But looking at the bright side, you can always search for someone else’s playlist, and save yourself time and agony. One word about the Youtube music integration – lots of services use it, but unfortunately, it doesn’t offer you much control of your playlist, and what plays today, may not play tomorrow..
is another great music store/playlist maker that we’ve covered extensively since the site relaunched last year. It allows users to listen to any song they want one time. If you want to listen to a song more than that, you buy a 10 cent ‘web song’ that lets you stream the song from the cloud as many times as you want (you can also purchase a full download of the song as you would from iTunes or Amazon). The site has a great integrated music player and a variety of pre-made playlists built by other users.
Worth mentioning: Imeem
, and Maestro.fm
Music Visualization:
There’s no doubt in my mind that Musicovery
has a strong following of avid users. The site is an interactive and personalized webradio enabling its users to generate in a few clicks a musical program adapted to the various listening situations and their preferences. Their unique mood matrix proposes a relationship between music and mood in an ergonomic and attractive manner. I’ve submitted this item about the service to Digg
in 2006 and it’s good to see the site still works . But things have changed. You have limited navigation if you’re not a pro user ($15/3 months or $48/12 months), but once you are – the sky is the limit. In any case, this service will blow you away.
is perhaps just a mashup site, but it’s a good one! CitySounds.fm collects music from SoundCloud and pictures from Flickr to create a wonderful music experience from a single page. You can listen to the latest music from cities all around the world. At the top are the most active cities and the list is constantly changing as new music is being created.
Web-Radio:
Very similar to Last.fm in concept, Jango
allows you to create your own custom radio stations and share them with friends. Just type in what you want to hear – and your station will immediately play the music you want along with similar favorites of other Jango users who share your tastes. You can customize your stations further by adding more artists and rating songs. Each artist get a page, containing the web-radio, the music playlist, biographies, events list, comments from members at the site, and fan list for easy communication. The service claims to be legal and says it pays royalties due to all labels/artists every time a song is played. Moreover, Jango runs a program called Jango Airplay. This program gives emerging artists an unprecedented opportunity to be proactively exposed to the millions of visitors at the site. See our past coverage of Jango here.
is an efficient way to locate radio stations in your area or around the globe. You can search stations by geography, genre, band, language or tags. You can listen without signing up, or you can log in and create your personal dashboard with favorite stations that you can then listen to on a daily basis. We mostly hear radio on the go, but now you can easily track your favorite radio stations on the web. All the radio stations are public so you aren’t asked to pay anything to use the site.
OK, TheRadio
is also one of my favorites because of its simplicity. Entering an artist or a genre gets you custom channel, but if you go over the channel listing, you will find much more interesting suggestions. I don’t know about you but I actually like when someone else picks the music as long is it in the range of my request. Anyway, TheRadio does a great job on finding music that I like – it simply works.
fits in the Recommendation list as well as this category. The service lets you experience music in a fours different ways: by Stations, Artist, Mood, and Personal. The Stations area is pretty limited if you don’t have a pro account, but you can still get the feel of it. In the Artist zone, you enter your favorite name and choose from a variety stations suggested. The coolest way is the Mode area, which plays music based on your chosen mode. These stations are created by music experts, says Aupeo. The Personal station streams music based on your music behavior at the site. Overall, very intensive and powerful!
Worth mentioning: Tun3r
That’s it for Part 1 of this music guide. If you have any other suggestions related to these groups, you are more than welcome to add them in the comments. In the next part of this post, I’ll offer the best options for Music search engines, Music web-players, Twitter-Music craziness, and more. Stay tuned!
Image by RossinaBossioB
on Flickr.
Website: go2web20.net Birthplace: Israel Companies: Go2Web20 Orli Yakuel is a Web2.0 analyst and the editor of Go2web20 - A personal blog about Web2.0 technology.
She’s also a co-founder at Go2web20.net - which is a directory for Web2.0 applications. (in association with Eyal Shahar) Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBase
Posts
