Jango

Overview
When it comes to music discovery sites, there seems to be a new one every day. Some of them I will talk about here but I doubt I'll post about every single one of them. The objective of a music discovery site is to create a personalized radio station for you based on any number of input values (typically a single band or list of bands that you know you enjoy).

One major difference between a music discovery site and a site like IMEEM is that you typically are not there to listen to a particular song or album or even artist. You go there to listen to music you might not have found unless it was played for you (much like the radio).

Of all the music discovery sites out there, the one that I use most often is Jango. This is due to a combination of design and user interface. Specifically I like the ease of creating and maintaining your personal stations which can be shared with others. It also provides a level of social networking which lets you find other users with similar interests. You can add those users and friends and listen to the station that they have created.

For all the positives of Jango, it is not perfect. It is still in beta, but it has been for a while now. The player seems to be their biggest problem due to the glitches it has on occasion. Refreshing the page seems to fix most problems, but then the player restarts on a different song.


Pros

• Easy to create and maintain stations
• Allows multiple stations
  
• Social networking
• Allows you to play specific songs if available
• Recommendation engine is flexible

Cons

• Player will stop on occasion and cannot be opened in it's own window
• Player will occasionally cut songs short
• Community is not as large as other sites

When to Use
If you are at work or reading a book or just surfing the web, Jango is a great site to have open in the background. If you spend the time and add a large selection of artists you are interested in to your station, you can listen to it for hours without repeats and a few artists thrown in that you may not have heard before.

If you want to listen to a very specific song or artist, other services might be better. But I find that I often just want to listen and enjoy.

IMEEM

Overview
There's a new king in town when it comes to streaming media over the internet. As mentioned a couple of weeks ago on Wired's Listening Post blog , "Study: Imeem Unseats Yahoo as Top U.S. Music-Streaming Site".

I've been using IMEEM for about 5 months now, since the first time it was mentioned on the Listening Post and it has found a place in my arsenal of music sites I frequent.

In short, it allows you to search for and stream full songs and videos from their massive catalog of user uploaded content. The big difference between IMEEM and SeeqPod (last post's topic) is that all of the music on IMEEM is stored on their server and has been licensed from the major record labels.

What this site lacks in design it makes up for in content

Pros

• Huge music catalog (old or new)
  
• Easy to create playlists, which are needed to remember what you played previously
• Keeps track of what you've played, so you can always find it later
  
• Has video
  

Cons

• While the player itself if nice, the overall user experience is somewhat lacking
• When you perform a new search, the current song stops playing unless you've opened in a new window
• Must create account to play full versions of songs

When to Use
If you are in search of a specific song, IMEEM is great. After you create an account you can play the full song as many times as you would like without ever paying a cent!

I personally use IMEEM as part of my guitar lessons. If I want to learn a new song, having the actual song to play along with is a huge bonus.

The other great use is for following artists on music blogs. When a new band is discussed or reviewed it only takes a few minutes to locate them on IMEEM and determine if it is something you might enjoy.

SeeqPod – Playable Search

Overview
For the first Music 2.0 site to discuss, I have chosen this blog’s namesake (offtopic – very good book.) SeeqPod is a site, which has been around for quite some time and has slowly evolved into a solid, easy to use tool. It is flash based as most of the 2.0 tools are these days.

As the slogan indicates, the pupose of this site is to search for a specific song or artist. Searching will bring back results realted to the search in a similar manner that google does. It searches for music as well as a host of other items as seen in the chart.

The site really shines not because it allows you to search for music, which is old hat by now, but by making it so easy to add the results to your playlist and immediately stream the files that are returned in the search.

Pros

• Simple UI which easily allows you to search for music
• Instant playback of songs returned from the search
• Easily save songs as a playlist to open later (requires you to create an account)
• Has video results if you are interested in such things

Cons

• Only songs posted on blogs tend to be available, which means you will most likely not find every song by an artist
• Results are returned even if the song is no longer available. This happens quite often given the nature of the source material. Thy player will just keep trying to load the track and eventually tell you it is unavailable.
• The same songs display multiple times in the search results, so some digging is required to find a wide array of songs

How to Use

• Open the SeeqPod main page
• Enter band name/song you are looking for in the search box
• On the search results page, hover over the song you want to hear and click the “)))” button of the green play button.
• The song will be added to your playlist and begin playing immediately
• Search for more songs and build your playlist

NOTE: The blue circle indicates music, the red circle indicates a video, the yellow circle indicates information. The types of results can be filtered using the checkboxes above the search results.

When to Use
If you are in search of a random selection from a particular band you just heard of, this tool is great. It seems to work best for new bands that are being mentioned often in the blogosphere.

Other sites are better if you are looking for something new. This tool is best used if you know the song or artist you are “seeqing.”

Music 2.0

As the internet evolves into a social, collaborative medium; so too do the tools and services which help us discover music that suite our tastes as well as expose us to music currently beyond our horizons.

The goal of this blog is to expose anyone who might be interested to the tools and websites that I use to feed my music addiction on the internet. I will be adding the existing sites I use currently and that I have found useful in the past ranging from the very popular to those which not many have heard of.

The point will not be to focus on a specific genre, but to promote the sites that are of use no matter the music choice. If you know of any sites or tools which you think fit into this category, please let me know.

Cheers!
-Kyle