Remember when you put together mix tapes on cassettes and lovingly wrote the song titles in microscopic script on the tape label, maybe even including artistic doodles? Remember the recorded intro you did for the recipient? Remember the songs you selected? Each one chosen for its particular meaning - a special code for you and the receiver's relationship. Yeah, we don't remember that sappy stuff either.
Well *cough,* not that anyone would do that, but Mixwit is a site where you could if you wanted to theoretically speaking, do something kind of, sort of, like that, if you were into that type of thing, which you're definitely probably not.
Making a mix tape with Mixwit is super easy. You can upload your own artwork for the tape skin, search for songs online and drag and drop them on the playlist you're creating, share by publishing it on Mixwit or even embedding on your blog or website. It's absolutely free too. We think you'll love it.
Myspace is currently in talks with the four major record-labels to offer its users an ad-supported music delivery service. We say "music delivery service" because it's currently unknown whether the record labels will concede to free downloads or force the News Corp owned company into creating a streaming service similar to Last.fm.
Either way, the service will be ad-supported and DRM-free.
Whether or not the new Myspace service happens, the news is great for consumers. Even if the record labels haven't figured it out yet, other companies are trying to come up with ways to get music to the people for free (or at least cheap and easy - like Amazon's MP3 Download Store).
After about three years of preparing and attempting to get into the digital music business, Target is finally offering digital music (320kbps MP3) for download. Currently the only album available is the latest John Legend album "Live From Philadelphia" with SonyBMG as the label. The album is a Target exclusive, so you'll need to shop there if you're lookin' to score the latest of Legend, but it's also available in-store in CD format . The 19-track set will run you $10 online, which is a steal for so much music.
Though it may seem like the digital-download market is starting to get crowded with new services popping up all the time, there's still a lot of room for major iTunes competitors to surface. It's also nice to have options when it comes to shopping. The digital-download market is no exception, so we gladly welcome Target to the new frontier.
Kompoz is a site designed to allow musicians to compose music with other musicians around the world. Have a sweet melody but can't come up with song lyrics? Searching for a song you can add your own drum magic to? Kompoz is the place. The site allows you to upload what you have of a song, and then allow others on the site to add things to it. You can also search through songs on the site and add your own special touch to the songs that you find. Kompoz currently has musicians registered from over 60 countries and 24 different time zones, so you have the opportunity to collaborate with a truly diverse group of people.
Each song has its own page where you can see each version of the song that has been uploaded as well as who had added what to the track to make it what it the song it is today. Each song also has a discussion board attached where you can talk with other people on how the project is going. Once your project reaches its final stages it can also be added to Kompoz Radio a podcast featuring songs created on the site. You can also embed a player on your personal website that shows all of the different versions of your song. Believe it or not, the site actually has some pretty good songs out there now. Even if you're not a musician yourself it can be interesting to the original drum track that was uploaded to the site, and then hear the song a dozen different people managed turn it into.
Some of you may remember when MP3.com tried to allow users the ability to access to their music online. The music industry was none to excited about the idea, sued the pants off of mp3.com and it was shut down selling the actual domain name to CNET.
Apparently the makers of the Oboe Music Locker and now MediaMaster weren't paying attention. Both companies give users the ability to upload all of their music to the service and then listen to it on any Internet enabled device. Oboe even gives you the option of "Sideloading" other peoples music into your playlist.
MediaMaster is the newest kid on the block in online music players. The site does roughly the same thing everyone else did, but this time they're doing it with cover art and widgets. The site allows you to upload tracks directly off your computer's hard drive and then adds then album to your play list as the albums cover art. Clicking on the cover art will take you to a playlist of the entire album where you can select individual songs to play. Users are also able to create custom playlists from all their albums and create their own radio station that is playable on any program that can handle a .pls file.
The site is currently offering unlimited accounts. They don't allow users the ability to download music or listen to other people's music (like Oboe) so they also probably have a decent better chance at being around for a while.
A French site called BlogMusik is about to take free online music to new heights. I have no idea if this site is legal or not, as there are no copyright notices or anything, but they are providing some serious online free music through a nifty little flash iPod player interface. Playing the tunes, and sharing your song choice is free to anyone, but registering on Blogmusik launches new features such as saving your music preferences. Not a lot is known about this site at the moment, other than they have a MySpace, and a blog, where not much information is given away. Give it a try.
Update:TechCrunch has some nice comments going on. Apparently this could be a re-skin of a music service called RadioBlogClub, where there is a giant music collection open to anyone who cares to join. Also playing in this same category is Sideload.
Remember when you put together mix tapes on cassettes and lovingly wrote the song titles in microscopic script on the tape label, maybe even including artistic doodles? Remember the recorded intro you did for the recipient? Remember the songs you selected? Each one chosen for its particular meaning - a special code for you and the receiver's relationship. Yeah, we don't remember that sappy stuff either.
Kompoz
Some of you may remember when MP3.com tried to allow users the ability to access to their music online. The music industry was none to excited about the idea, sued the pants off of mp3.com and it was shut down selling the actual domain name to CNET.
