Soundpedia: A Decent Pandora Substitute For The Rest Of Us

Soundpedia is a legal Singapore based music sharing community offering a music streaming service that provides a decent Pandora substitute to users outside of the United States who can no longer use Pandora, along with the United States itself.

Soundpedia comes with the usual array of Web 2.0 music sharing functions. The site helps users discover new tunes and share them with friends. Soundpedia supports user playlists both interactively or by uploading existing playlist settings from music players. Users can chat with friends, post testimonials, make a comment on an artist, or make their own audio/ video blog.

In a different time it would be easy to dismiss Soundpedia as being yet another music sharing site entering a crowded marketplace. Yet Soundpedia meets an unmet need; it’s more Pandora than Last.fm and the world outside of the United States has been blocked from Pandora for a couple of months. Soundpedia is different to Last.fm. Sure, Last.fm music recommendations can be enjoyable but at other times you just want to listen to a particular artist or album. Soundpedia delivers with a thorough offering that may not be the most aesthetically pleasing service to use, but delivers with music. Music can be played by genre, artist or album and Soundpedia’s library is extensive. I did find the odd album that wasn’t fully included but instead songs were listed in 30 second clips. Co-Founder and NY native Gregory Gumo tells me that Soundpedia is increasing its playlist regularly; most users won’t notice any deficiency.

As non-American I’m missing Pandora’s functionality; Soundpedia just hit my Google Bookmarks list.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

 

MySpace IM

MySpace officially launches instant messaging service

Blog: The News Corp.-owned social network, having ditched its old browser-based IM service, formally unveils the new download after a year of buzzless beta.

 

Flash Drives next generation of "cd”?

Flash drives the new vinyl?

Blog: Some record companies are experimenting with distributing albums on the portable USB devices, but for now the releases are mostly expensive collectors’ items.

 

Digital music rules

Digital Music Rules of the Road for Artists

Here is an useful list for success in the immediate future:

-    Utilize MySpace and otherwebsites to its full potential and don’t be afraid to “give your musicaway for free”. If one million people listen to your songs online,don’t see it as you just lost 1 million dollars in potential sales. Seeit as you just got radioplay in 100 markets.

-    You have tolearn new ways of viral marketing, including widgets and blog searchengines and don’t be afraid to experiment with putting your music innew places and contexts.

-    Look at what the most progressive record labels are doing with their artists, like Canadian Nettwerk and Barenaked Ladies and try to copy it.

-  If you play a live gig, make sure people know about it. It may seemlike a no-brainer, but it isn’t always. I don’t know how many goodshows I have missed just because I didn’t know about it. Do all you canto get in Flavorpill and other online publications. Send emails toeveryone you know and make sure everyone that shows up signs your emaillist.

-    Press vinyl copies. This might be the last thing youthink about doing, but DJs love vinyl and so do music lovers. Press afew copies and distribute them to your favorite DJs, clubs and critics.

-  Don’t sign a record deal. This may seem like a weird suggestion, butstay indie as long as possible. You want to make sure the odds are inyour favor when you finally sign with a big label or it can be ablessing in disguise.

More here from Digital Media Wire

 

Maestro Social Music Streaming

Maestro: Social Music Streaming

Music has been a killer app on the web ever since Napster met mp3 in 1999, and we’ve seen a lot of startups designing new social applications around it. Some startups are creating communities around discovering new music, others are helping you store and remotely access the music you already have. Atlanta-based Maestro is doing both.

Maestro lets you stream music from your computer across the web, for easy listening anywhere. This is a lot like what music locker services Oboe, MediaMaster, and Orb are doing with a social networking twist. Not only can you stream music from your own computer using Maestro, but you can also stream music from your friends on the network (Oboe lets you share channels with friends, but through email links). They plan on expanding to other types of media in the future.

To start streaming music, you need to download “Maestro Connector” and tell it where you stash your music. Maestro then sucks down all the meta-data (location, artist, album, length) and logs it in your profile online. From there, you can play songs complete with album art and organize your music into playlists. The songs aren’t uploaded to the service like MediaMaster, Orb, or Oboe, but instead streamed directly from your computer. The major drawback, of course, is that you can’t play your music anywhere unless you leave your main computer on.

But if your music server is off, don’t worry, because you can listen to music off your friend’s computers. Their playlists show up along with yours on your playlist page or from within an embeddable player widget like the one on the co-founder’s MySpace page. However, streaming from your friends may put an unnecessary strain on their bandwidth. I imagine some bandwidth rules will be implemented to prevent abuse. If their computer is offline too, you can still see what music they have and what their most recently played tracks were. Since they haven’t implemented any social music recommendation, these recently played lists are all you have to go on for finding new music.

Maestro is looking for funding and is currently testing amongst a small group in private beta. You can apply for an account on their site.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Jam Online in Real Time

New music software could make online jams nearly as good as rehearsals in the same studio.

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Tags: tools, software

 

JamJunky: Project Management For Song Writing

I’m no musician, but I was always under the impression that they sort of kept their song writing secret until they were ready to play it to the world. If that’s accurate, new startup JamJunky may not have much of an audience. They provide a place for song writers to write their lyrics, upload songs in progress and share them with friends. Artists can also write notes about their work.

Friends log in and view the work and comment on it blog-style. The artist can then incorporate feedback into the song.

If there are any song writers out there I’d love to hear your feedback. This doesn’t sound like the type of environment that an artist would want to work in, but like I said, I’m no musician.

CenterNetworks wrote about them today as well and included a nice overview video of the product.

The founder of the company, James Thomas, also created Skinnyr.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Tags: songwriting

 

HOW TO - Stage lights on the cheap

Carpespasm writes in -

The goal of this project was to help out a friend’s band by making a lighting kit for their shows that didn’t cost the $150+ dollars that a normal light kit costs. It also helps out a lot when I record their concerts to make sure the lighting isn’t too dim. The setup I wound up with has three dimmable color lights that can be clamped onto whatever stand you wish. You could easily expand out this setup to use however many lights you need though.

Build the BandBlinder - Stage lights on the cheap - Link.

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Tags: stage, light, how-to

 

U.K. Music Label Creates a Vinyl-MP3 Hybrid

While the copyright fight rages between big record companies and their customers, some smaller, independent labels are moving in with innovation instead of litigation.

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Tags: copyright, mp3 , vinyl, label

 

Tech Politics Podcast: Copyright, copied wrong, battle goes on

Tech Politics Podcast: Copyright, copied wrong, battle goes on

There’s much ado about copyright, whether in Congress, among the movie and recording industries or with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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