Archive for the 'Music' Category
18
Dec
11
Listen to this
10
Nov
11
Exfm: A Brief Review
Since the demise of Lala, which had previously been my favorite music site, I’ve been experimenting with different sites in an attempt to find a new favorite. Both Slacker and Pandora are adequate, although neither are very good at helping me find new music and despite numerous attempts to “teach” it my preferences, Pandora continues to slip in the occasional death metal tune even though I absolutely despise the genre. I like Last.fm a little better, since it gives users the option of indexing your library and listening history from third party programs such as iTunes or Windows Media Player and incorporating that information along with your activity on the site to give you more personalized recommendations. I had been using Last.fm almost exclusively until I learned about Exfm, a site that scours music blogs for MP3s. Exfm is fully integrated with Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Last.fm so that users can browse and collect MP3s and then share them with their social network, as well as follow other users to see what they are listening to and what new music they have discovered. Browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari and an iPhone app are also helpful. I’ve only used the site for about a month but so far I like what I see. Exfm is excellent for discovering new music and the fact that it integrates so well with Last.fm makes it easy to go to Exfm when you’re in the mood for something new and then switch back to Last.fm when you want to listen something from your library – and all of your listening history will be recorded. If you enjoy discovering new music and sharing it with your social network, Exfm is definitely worth checking out.
01
Mar
10
Down & Cried
“Down & Cried” was one of my favorite tracks on last year’s Dearly Departed: True Lies in Song Unearthed from Lone Fir Cemetery benefit CD so I was pleased to see that Holcombe Waller is including it on his upcoming album-in-progress. If you haven’t heard it yet, you definitely need to check it out…especially now that he has it available for free streaming and downloading on his website. It really is a hauntingly beautiful song…the kind that stays with you with long after you first hear it. Also, if you like what you hear, listen to some of the other tracks from The Winter Songs (Album-in-Progress) and consider a pledge or a pre-order to help Holcombe complete the project. If you’re like me, you’re sick of all the commercial, over-produced crap you hear on the radio and it isn’t often you come across something that truly resonates with you. We need to support these talented, independent artists who are bucking the system and doing things their own way, producing the kind of music we want (and need) to hear.
07
Jan
10
my lala forecast
I’ve been having great fun experimenting with Lala recently. After playing around with several different online music sites in the past few months, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that Lala is my favorite. Besides being ad-free (a huge plus!), the site also has the advantage of allowing you to add your own stored music from your computer to your online collection. If you want to search their library, their collection is extensive (over 8 million songs) and songs can be added to your online collection for only 10 cents each (if you want to download for offline use, the cost is higher). The site is very easy to use and has many intuitive features. I especially like the way you can follow other users, see what they’ve been listening to, make recommendations to them, etc. It also has a fun feature called a Music Forecast, which the site describes as “a group of four songs that you think everyone should hear”. Once you’ve selected the four songs for your Music Forecast, they appear on your Lala profile and can then be embedded on your Facebook profile, MySpace page, Blogger site, or any other webpage (although unfortunately not on WordPress.com sites). I spent far too much time agonizing over the selections for my Music Forecast before coming to the obvious realization that the selections were not permanent. These are my current Music Forecast selections, subject to change at any time:
1. Lua by Conor Oberst & Gillian Welch: http://lala.com/zmHY
2. I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues by Billie Holiday: http://lala.com/zeN6
3. He Doesn’t Know Why by Fleet Foxes: http://lala.com/z3T8
4. Schizophrenia’s Weighted Me Down by Cat Power: http://lala.com/zrgeI
There are currently several great “Best of 2009” playlists to explore on the site and if you’re looking for other recommendations, you can check out my collection. All in all, I’ve been impressed with the features and service Lala offers.
06
Dec
09
my virtual mix tape
There was one bright spot in my exhausting and miserable weekend: while I was working, I checked out Playlist.com and put together a few different compilations. The site definitely has its flaws (mainly mislabeled tracks, broken links and, worst of all, some songs that seem to be hosted on painfully slow servers) but it functions well enough that I was able to spend an enjoyable evening listening to a wide range of music and arranging my own personal playlists, which I can now share with family and friends. I had no problem posting my playlist with its own player on my Facebook but unfortunately, I was not able to get the player to work on this site. I’m going to keep experimenting with the player to see if I can get it to work on WordPress but until then, you can check out one of my playlists here or on my Facebook.
I’ve recommended Holcombe Waller before and I surely will again but he’s given me an extra-special reason to do so this week: he’s offering free tracks from his album-in-progress! Check it out here: http://holcombewaller.bandcamp.com
