Tune in to Online Music

Music apps abound in the Web 2.0 world. While I still have some questions about whether they are legal and strongly suggest that you use these apps to discover and listen to music for a future purchase online or in the music store, there is no denying that listening to these apps is fun and time-saving. I have discovered a number of new vocal artists I probably would not have listened to in the music store and I have purchased a lot more music since I started using these Web 2.0 music apps.

Depending on the bandwidth and user policy in your in your school, you might consider giving your students an opportunity to listen to music as they work. I have found that many students stay on task and accomplish more with music, than without. Even if you find that you cannot legally use these applications in your school, I’m sure you will enjoy using them from home. Today I am sharing a couple of Web 2.0 beta music applications I have worked with recently.

Charts.fm is a newcomer Web 2.0 application that makes it easy to create personal music charts by (re)mixing music charts from more than 2650 radiostations. You control the chart creation-process as you define various parameters like period or style, choose a radio station (or stations), select the top songs from various stations (or just the top songs), and define the number of results you would like to see. After you have created your charts play the list as you watch various videos, read the bio of the artist, review the lyrics, or buy the music via i-tunes or amazon. You can login with your Facebook account or set up a new account with email confirmation. This application makes it fairly easy to find new music and radio stations that match your music taste, however I personally found that I preferred the music results I discovered when I used Pandora Internet Radio.

Pandora Internet Radio is an application that serves as the primary delivery vehicle of the Music Genome Project. So, what is the Genome Project. It’s a really neat (and in my opinion effective) project that evolved when a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating a comprehensive analysis of music. Together they assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. “Together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like.” Since the project began in 2000 the technologists and musicians involved in the Music Genome project have analyzed and categorized literally tens of thousands artists and songs so that we can better explore and enjoy our personal parts of the music universe.

How does Pandora Internet Radio work? After registering for your free account you enter a song or artist that you enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. You can provide a thumbs up or thumbs down rating to each individual songs, which Pandora takes into account for future selections. As you rate each song a menu is provided with the choices: Don’t play this song for a month, Why was this song selected?, Move song to another station, Bookmark, and Buy. There are a few restrictions. Play of a single artist is limited. Pandora provides similar music, not a play-on-demand service. Additionally, only four songs by the same artist will be played within each three-hour period. In addition, you cannot rewind, or immediately replay, any song played by Pandora. The free version of Pandora Radio means that you will have to tolerate advertising (I don’t find that bothersome, though I tend to play the music in the background as I work). I should also mention that because of a recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling that increases fees and asks for licensing guarantees, the Pandora service is no longer available in countries other than the United States.

All of this said, I have to say that I absolutely love this service and find that most of the songs and artists that evolved from my original selections were spot on. If you live in the United States you really need to try this service…I think you will be pleasantly surprised and delighted with the results of Pandora Internet Radio. If you live in a country other that the United States I would suggest that you experiment with the first service I mentioned earlier in this post, charts.fm.