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Posts with tag music search

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Features, Web services, web 2.0

Mufin launches new music discovery engine beta, Download Squad readers are invited



As a music lover, one of my favorite innovations of the last five years or so has come in the form of music discovery services. Services like Last.fm, Pandora, Rhapsody and iTunes 8 have made it easy to find artists or songs that are similar to your musical tastes and preferences. The only problem with these services, is that they are based on limited databases (like the iTunes Music Store, for iTunes's Genius Mode), reviews or ratings by other users and overall popularity. That means that the music discovered might indeed be similar, but it really limits results to mainsream songs and generic genre distinctions. This is great for an automatic playlist, but not so great for really finding new bands or artists.

This is why Mufin's new music discovery engine is so unique; it analyzes the actual structure of the song, not just the genre meta-data. Mufin's discovery engine just entered private beta, but Download Squad readers can get in on the action by using this invite link: http://beta.mufin.com/start?ic=e75eecf85a4a547ca9379d6f8b6c23bb.

Co-developed at the Fraunhofer Institute (the creators of the MP3 format), Mufin uses audio recognition technology to analyze the actual musical characteristics of a song. Mufin creates a unique "fingerprint" for each song, using 40 characteristics like tempo, instruments, rhythm structure and sound density. Then, when you search for a song in Mufin's database, an alogrithm compares the fingerprint of that song against the database and presents you with results of songs that are similar in structure.

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Features, web 2.0

Songza gets a memory, adds some new bling

On our second episode of the Squadcast (we've improved our production quality since then, we swear) we interviewed Songza founders Aza Raskin and Scott Robbin. Even in its early stages, we were super impressed with Songza, a site that makes it easy to find a play various music tracks, share them with friends and purchase favorites, but with a truly superb user-interface.

Now Songza offers users even more options. According the the Songza team, the ability to save playlists has been the most requested feature. That feature has been added. Once you register for a free Songza account, you can save your playlist. The user profile page is simple and intuitive, and we have a feeling it's the sign of more networking/sharing features to come.

The Songza interface has been updated too. The same overall style that we know and love remains, but there is now more emphasis on a users playlist (which is always present on the right-hand side of the page). Additionally, a "Most Played" tab has been added to the search area. The Songza interface is what really sets the site away from other music search engines. It is easy to use, clean to look at and fast loading. Now, it's even better.

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Filed under: Audio, Web services

Owl Music Search: find music with music

Owl
Music recommendation services are nothing new. Type a favorite band into Pandora, and the service will go to work creating a custom playlist of music you might like.

But Owl Music Search takes the keyboard out of the process. Sure, it's probably quicker to type in a band name than to upload an mp3 file from you collection. But Owl uses some pretty nifty tricks to compare your uploaded track with thousands of other files in its database, many of which are licensed under Creative Commons.

The system is a bit quirky, in that you can only select a short snippet of your song to compare with other tracks. That means you can find other songs that sound like the chorus of your tune, but not the verse, or vice versa. And there's not guarantee that the songs you find will be in the same genre as the song you upload. But at the very least, it's fun to enter a song and see what results Owl spits back at you.

It seems like Owl needs to recognize the file you upload in order to go to work. The first track we tried came up with zero results. Owl is still in the early beta stages, but it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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