Back in August I wrote about Screamer, a nice portable streaming radio app. KSoft's Icy Radio offers a similar experience with a couple of nice additions.

Icy Radio is completely portable - just download the zip archive and extract it to a folder. Apart from a large library of audio streams, Icy Radio includes several nice skins and streaming video support.

As with Screamer, you should expect some of the included streams not to work. After all, many of these feeds come from ad-supported sites and their owners probably aren't so keen on the idea of us listening to their music without having to view their banners.

The massive channel list is fully searchable and indexed by genre - more than 60 of them. Adding new stations is easy, and can be done one-at-a-time or in bulk from an XML file. Icy Radio's tabbed main window also sports a favorites list for your top channels and maintains a history of your recordings for easy playback.

Built-in recording supports MP3 and OGG (you'll need to download and unzip the plugin into your Icy Radio folder first). Unfortunately, video streams can't be recorded as of version 0.5.

Icy Radio is freeware for Windows only.

I love a good price war. And it looks like Walmart is challenging Amazon and Apple to one by offering select MP3 downloads from Walmart's online music store for just 74 cents. Not every song will go for that price, but standard tracks start at 94 cents per song, which is still cheaper than music on iTunes. Amazon typically sells MP3 music for between 89 and 99 cents per song.

Walmart is also rolling out improved support for web browsers that aren't Internet Explorer and operating systems that aren't Windows. You can now download MP3s from Walmart's web store using OS X, Linux, or Windows, Firefox, Safar, or Internet Explorer.

Walmart has a library of over 3 million DRM-free MP3 tracks from the four major lables and a number of independent artists.

[via Electronista]

Last.Fm is one of the better streaming music services around, but you're probably wishing you could save the tracks it plays. Brush up on your German (or just keep reading) and grab LastSharp, and you'll be downloading in no time flat.

The download link on the author's site is just below the Aktuelle Version text (to save hassles, it points to RapidShare or you can find mirrors on Rapidspread). LastSharp doesn't require installation, just extract the contents of the rar file. As you may have guessed from the name, you'll also need the .Net 2.0 runtimes to use it.

When you launch it the first time, the interface will be in German. To change it, click the tab marked Erweiterte Einstellungen. Click the dropdown marked Deutsh and change it to English, then close and restart the program.

Log in with your Last.Fm username and password, and enter your search text - results are displayed neatly in the "Tune In" box. Downloading is as simple as checking the songs you want and marking the Continue Downloading Automatically option (otherwise you'll be grabbing them one at a time).

LastSharp has a lot of useful options, including on-the-fly normalization with MP3gain, automatic scrobbling, cover downloading, and filtering. Downloads are automatically filed in a tidy Artist -> Album name folder structure.

This is a great app for music downloaders, and I hope it sticks around long enough after this post goes live for our DS readers to enjoy it.

[via gHacks]

Buying music directly from the Amazon.com MP3 store is one of Android's coolest features. Although it might not be the "killer feature" that some were hoping it would be, it offers a great way to get quality, DRM free music directly to your device. The only downside is that you have to download music over WiFi (the iTunes WiFi Store works the same way).

As a huge music junkie (my total collection, including digitzed CDs is probably about 2 TB in size -- and that's not 2 TB of FLAC either, that's 2 TB of mostly V0 LAME MP3s), Amazon's MP3 store is easily my favorite place to buy digitial music. Although it might not be making a dent in iTunes sales figures (here's a hint - get in more countries ASAP and start offering digitial exclusives like iTunes does), its increasing selection and weekly deals and promotions continue to make it the best game in town.

So how does the Android version of the store stack up? It hits the most crucial points, but it does lack some of the finesses that could make this a real mobile destination.

Lala is back, and while it's probably better than ever, it may not be good enough. Lala started out its life as a CD swapping service. But in a world of digital downloads, that's not much of a business model. Now Lala is back as an online music store - with a twist.

You can download albums or individual tracks of DRM-free music from Lala just as you can from iTunes or Amazon MP3. The company has worked out deals with all of the major labels plus a bunch of independent artists. So while not you might not be able to find every song you're looking for, there's plenty to choose from. Individual tracks run from around $.80 to $.99.

But here's what makes Lala different. The website features a built in music player. You can listen to any song on the site for free. Once. If you want to listen again, you have to pay $.10 for a "web song." You can then listen to that track any time you want from any internet connected device that can access the website. In other words, you can buy some albums for a buck or less, as long as you don't feel the need to download the music.

To get you started, all users get 50 free credits for web songs. So you can check out the service without paying a dime. You do need to register for an account, but you don't have to give up any credit card or PayPal information, so you won't accidentally buy something without knowing about it.

So far so good. But there are a few problems. First, the service is only available in the US. Second, while the downloaded tracks are DRM-free, the web tracks can only be listened to on Lala. If the company goes under next year and you've spent $100 on web songs, I doubt anyone's going to refund your money. Sure, you could download MP3 versions of all the songs. Your $.10 per song will go towar the purchase price. But that means you'd have to pay as much as $900 just to save backup copies of the songs you've already paid for in this hypothetical example.

Finally, there are plenty of other ways to listen to music online - for free. If you want to go the legal route, there are ad-supported services like MySpace Music. And if you don't care so much about legalities, there are services like SeeqPod. While Lala does offer a nice interface and a decent music library, it's hard to compete with free.

If you're embracing the day, you just can't go wrong with a pocket full of great pirate tunes. My personal recommendations include Last Saskatchewan Pirate by Captain Tractor, Frigging in the Rigging (ever-so-slightly NSFW) by The Sex Pistols, and the entirety of Captain Morgan's Revenge by Alestorm.

Alestorm easily earns my vote as "best pirating music." Their self-proclaimed Scottish Pirate Metal will put a swagger in your step only a peg leg can rival.

Now, where to find these tasty tunes? The following sites will let you download or stream a boatload of music.

Since I posted 35 Places To Download Free, Legal MP3s, I now fully understand just how much everyone on the damn internet wants free music. Well, here's another place to feed your addiction.

I wandered over to Tagoo expecting to find another piece of hastily assembled Google search garbage. Man, was I in for a surprise.

Tagoo finds direct links to MP3 files, and it lets you stream them or build playlists right on their site.

It'll suggest while you type: "prote," offered me Protest The Hero. Well done, Tagoo! When results appear, click the play button immediately to the right of the track to listen to it immediately. The track's artist, title, genre, bitrate, filesize, and length are all displayed.

It's even nice enough to warn you about potentially slow download sites, marking them with a red dot.

I love the RIAA. They make sure the hard working bands that record the music we love can still squeak out a living in the face of an ever-growing number of freeloading downloaders. Without them, how many talentless, lip-synching, manufactured performers would be able to afford homes in Orange County and multiple Bentleys?

In the interest of helping our readers stay out of jail and avoid massive fines, here are a bunch of places you can get tunes without fear of finding a summons in your mailbox. There's plenty of good, free, and legal music on the net for you to download.

1. iLike is a social music site which allows you to discover new music with a little help from your friends. Free downloads and the buddy system, what could be better?
   
   
2. Altsounds has a lot of streaming content, but there are quite a few quality mp3 downloads mixed in, including bands like Anberlin, Panic at the Disco, 10 Years, and Underoath.
   
   
3. bt.etree.org tracks live recording torrents of "bootleg friendly" bands. You'll be able to find all kinds of FLAC downloads from performers like Ben Harper, Jerry Garcia, Blues Traveler, Trey Anastasio (I smell a trend here, or at least some patchouli), Radiohead, Primus, and even Tenacious D.

If you're anything like us, your music collection is probably a mislabeled mess that you don't have the time to clean up. Getting the job done using TuneUp, which we took a look at a couple of months ago, is probably as painless as it's going to get. The application is available to the public starting today. It's easy to use, efficient, and has a great UI. There were a few kinks here and there the first time we used it. It crashed every time we tried to save the track information for a few songs, although strangely enough, it always happened with tracks we wouldn't admit to owning.

Drag up to 50 or 60 songs from your iTunes library into TuneUp and it automatically starts looking up the track information using Gracenote. You can either save the information for each song individually, or save them all in one go. TuneUp is extremely accurate, but we would definitely advise you to scan through the results as some of the more obscure singers aren't in Gracenote's database. The drawback we highlighted last time hasn't been solved. Even if two tracks appear on the same album, but also on other albums, TuneUp won't necessarily group them together. On the other hand, we were impressed with its ability to differentiate between studio and live tracks.

TuneUp will also dig up the missing cover artwork for your collection in minutes, provide links to videos on YouTube and album recommendations from Amazon depending on what you're listening to, and concert notifications from StubHub depending on what's in your library. TuneUp, despite being in its early beta stages, is already so good, it's worth the hassle of having to use a bloated program like iTunes. The free version of TuneUp limits you to fixing 500 tracks and finding 50 album covers, and an unlimited version of the program is available for an $11.95 annual subscription or a one-time payment of $19.95.

If you ever made a music mix on your computer you know there are many ways to go about it. There are applications that simulate turntables giving you that analog feel or those that draw out waveforms so you can align the songs the way you want them to be played back. But one common aspect between these types of applications are that you really have to pay attention to the tempo to get them synced together.

We're not gonna pretend here, it's not easy to get different songs mixed together. So when we heard about MixMeister and it's automated mixes we were intrigued.

After selecting the songs you would like in your set, MixMeister will automatically determine the tempo as well as the key the song is in. From there, arrange your songs in the order you would like them played as well as their mix points.

Now here is the best part of the program, MixMeister will automatically sync the tempos of the 2 songs together so that when the mix occurs the beats are matched up seamlessly. MixMeister will also handle the fading from one song to the next and what you end up with is a perfect mix each and every time. We were absolutely floored when we heard our mixes as each song was perfectly synced up to one another.

MixMeister comes in several different versions ranging in prices of $50 - 400 and is available for both Windows and Mac operating systems. Unfortunately, the $50 Express version is only offered in Windows format. Those with Macs will have to spring for the $200 version.

[Thanks, Koan]

It's hard to take a site called Worry About You seriously, especially when they claim that their search engine will direct to you to over 15 million songs. In an attempt to overlook the bizarre name choice, we're just going to refer to it as WAY from now on because Worry About You is possibly the most irrelevant Web 2.0 name in history.

Despite the fact that they might be prone to exaggeration and might need a lesson or two in brand marketing, the site works pretty well. We tried a bunch of different searches, from obscure eighties one-hit wonders to every cover of Wild Horses we could lay our hands on and WAY always delivered.

They give you the choice between streaming the song or downloading it, not that we're encouraging the latter. The site follows in the footsteps of countless other web-based mp3 search engines that are anything but legal, but it doesn't really differ much from its predecessors, apart from offering the service in six languages.

RealNetworks has launched a DRM-free MP3 music store. The Rhapsody MP3 store has music from all four major labels, with over 5 million tracks available for download. Most songs are priced at 99 cents, and most albums cost $9.99. That's about the same price that Apple charges for DRM-free AAC audio files, but a bit more than Amazon MP3 charges for many songs and albums.

All songs will be encoded at 256kbps, and will be playable on any device that can handle MP3 audio. RealNetworks isn't killing off its DRM-restricted music service, but rather, plans to have the two services peacefully coexist. You can pay $12.99 a month to stream unlimited music to your computer, or you can pay per download to save songs that you can play forever.

RealNetworks is also rolling out a service that will let Verizon Wireless customers download music for their handsets. For $15 a month, users will be able to download an unlimited number of songs (with DRM) on a Windows PC and sync those songs with their cellphone. Currently seven handsets are supported, with several more coming soon.

The Rhapsody MP3 store is offering a $10 credit to the first 100,000 customers who purchase an album by July 4th. You need to sign up for an account and fork over your credit card information to qualify. But hey, free music, right?

[via CNet]

If you've ever played a musical instrument the concept of playing in key is nothing new. But what about DJs? Are there lessons out there that go over majors, minors or even basic chord progressions? Having 2 songs mixed in key gives the impression that the songs were made for each other.

MixedInKey has developed a software for DJs that will analyze your songs to determine what key they are in. That way when you are building your set you can select songs that where performed in the same key or a complementary key.

In order to have your mp3s analyzed add them to MixedInKey. From there, the software will determine its key and display them according to their Camelot Sound keycode. Add songs according to their keycode using your favorite mixing software and start mixing.

We had our reservations about this program, fearing that all your mixes will be in the same key leading to one boring set. But the system itself, teaches you musical concepts and if you follow the system you can move from one key to the next to add chord progressions to your mix.

MixedInKey is available for both Windows and Mac and cost $58.

A lot of web apps seem to be targeted at problems that nobody actually has. SoundCloud is smarter than that, focusing on a problem we have at least once a week: what's the best way to send a song to a friend? E-mail is a pain, you might not have ready access to an FTP server, and those weird Rapidshare-style upload sites can be more trouble than they're worth.

SoundCloud basically does two things: it sends music, and it receives music. It's the ideal setup for sending around demo copies of that new album you just finished mastering, or sharing the latest hit single (that you would never pirate because you're a law-abiding Internet citizen). There's great control over email notifications for new tracks sent to you and new comments on your songs, and you can play a song right from your SoundCloud account before you download it.

In terms of comments, the SoundCloud system is awesome. You can drop in a note at a specific point in a track -- Viddler users might be familiar with this feature for videos -- and follow your stats to see how many people are listening to your stuff. This just scratches the surface of SoundCloud's features, so be sure to check it out and apply for an invitation if it sounds interesting to you.