At music-based social network Grooveshark you can search a music database and listen to streaming audio from thousands of artists. Additionally, you can can embed songs you find on Grooveshark into web sites and social networking profiles, and share them with friends via email and instant messages. Here's a Grooveshark embedded tune:
Signing up for an account activates additional features like saved playlists, music suggestions, and access to the social functions of Grooveshark, like browsing the playlists of people who share your musical tastes. Thanks Toribor!
Probably the most exciting piece of digital music news to come out of CES 2008 was that Napster was planning on offering its complete catalog of more than 6 million tracks in the unprotected MP3 format. Today, with the launch of version 4.5 of the software and store, that announcement becomes a reality. Although digital music stores such as eMusic, Amazon MP3, and even Napster itself already had MP3s on offer before this point, the collective catalogs of all three didn't even come near the volume of tracks you can find in the entire Napster library. This is a huge day for digital music, as all four major labels and thousands upon thousands of indies are represented in the store, and every track will be available at the standard 99-cent price point.
Napster's Web-based store with the online media player window open.
(Credit: Napster)
More good news is that Napster's Web-based store, which is all that is required for MP3 purchases and downloads, is compatible with every operating system. And--of course--the MP3s can be played on any MP3 player, portable video player, or music cell phone. Currently, 95 percent of the catalog is encoded at 256kbps, which is reasonably high-quality for an MP3, and each track comes with hi-res album art (at least 1,000x1,000-pixels). Although Napster has quite an international presence, the MP3 store will only be available to U.S. residents for the time being.
Napster will continue to offer its online and To Go subscription services for $12.95 or $14.95 per month, respectively. The music associated with a subscription will remain in the protected WMA format with the time-out capability. The company did make some improvements to its online interface. It now features a "liquid layout," which resizes everything within both the store and media player windows when you adjust the size of either window. Napster has also improved its download management system so that users can better view what has been purchased already and whether it was eve
Listen to your iTunes library from any web browser using Anywhere.FM, a slick webapp that hosts and streams your music with its web-based player. The Anywhere.FM beta is almost too good to be true right now, with free unlimited uploads and listens (but the service may charge in the future). Download a free Anywhere.FM iTunes uploader application that will detect your library and upload all your songs to Anywhere.FM for you.
With the blueorganizer Firefox extension, your browser becomes smarter. It helps you personalize your web experience based on what you already like. It harnesses your information to help you discover relevant new information and save time.
Create music online using guitar, drum, bass and piano loops à la GarageBand with JamStudio. Each instrument comes with an impressive collection of loops, and you can build your song-adding instruments and loops-in (almost) any way you want, then save the results. JamStudio isn't for the professional musician by any means, but if you've ever wanted to toy around with music and loops without paying a dime, JamStudio is a good place to start.