You Guys Like Music?

By Chris Tackett

Friday, April 11, 2008

I'm about to drop a big bag of internet music awesomeness right on your lap, so bear w/ me while I step into geek speak for a moment or just jump down a few grafs to find the music stuff.

Hustlin' RSS just doesn't get old for me. When I started using it I thought I'd eventually get bored and the hype would wear off. That, of course, was my thinking before I had used it and realized how much time it can save you and how much interesting and useful stuff one can discover. And together both of those things can really change your life for the better, so I've tried to get friends to pick up the habit of using rss - PEER PRESSURE! DO IT! DO IT! DOOO ITTT! - but other than a few who have picked it up and are loving it, the peer pressure just hasn't worked.

I have a few theories about why this is. First, I work online from home. However, since the place I'm currently living is in a god-forsaken black hole of broadband access and will not be cleansed of the evil internet-less spirits until effing Cox gets off their asses and lays some new cable in the ground, I've been working from coffee shops and the AMAZING Fayetteville Public Library in the mornings and my friend's houses in the afternoon and evenings. So, they see that I'm online all the time and I get the feeling they think jumping onto the RSS-bandwagon will make them become crazy-hooked to the internet like I am.

Secondly, if you haven't noticed, I'm a passionate guy when it comes to politics and most of my friends really aren't. I'm occasionally sending out mass emails to friends asking them to be aware of pending legislation and to call their representatives and since some of these originate with an email from my Google RSS Reader, I get the impression some of them think RSS is some sort of liberal news mailing list.

So, those two things together seem to be the areas I need to work on to explain RSS better. If you're an RSS user and have had success hustlin' it to your friends and family, let me know what has worked. And be aware that May is going to be the (first ever?) RSS Awareness Month.

Okay, now for the music stuff...

Here's something I found via RSS. It's a collection of 6 mashup sites for learning about music while you're listening. If you're not already using Pandora or Last.fm or Rhapsody to listen to streaming music online, this might not seem that cool to you, but since I do use some of those, I'll just assume everyone is exactly like me. :)

Oh, and I guess I should first say, in case anyone is not already aware, that a mashup is just what it sounds like, a combination of two or more web sites or tools into a single page. Of the 6 the article mentions, FoxyTunesPlanet, Musiic and WikiFM seem to be the coolest to me.

Descriptions from the link: FoxyTunes Planet - this great looking site combines many different data sources to bring you a very complete set of info about an artist. You get a biography, related news and info (from Yahoo search), related artists (from Last.FM), lyrics (from Yahoo Music) and the option to buy the albums from Amazon.

...

Musiic - a very thorough music search site with all conceivable information thrown in, including tracks from Last.FM, YouTube videos, images from several different sites, related blog posts, Wikipedia entries and more.

and

WikiFM - not the most beautiful site to look at (let’s be honest here, it’s ugly), but I love it. The premise is very simple: divide the page into two frames, load a Last.FM player in one and show the related Wikipedia page in the other, according to whatever is playing at the moment.

Tangent time: wouldn't it be kickass to have sometime similar for the local music here in Lawrence? I could see there being a bit of an issue w/ initially not having enough information to compile, since local bands aren't as likely to have Wikipedia pages or YouTube videos, however I think that will quickly change as the entry-costs for video cameras continues to fall. Also, if the framework is built and bands can see how easy it would be to add YouTube videos or links to buy their albums from Kief's or LoveGarden's online stores, then they will be motivated to produce more content to take advantage of the mashup options.

There are solid benefits of mashups for both users and publishers. Pulling all the available data or media onto one site benefits the users for obvious reasons, saving them time by having everything in one place and making their experience more enjoyable. And for the company, it increases site 'stickiness', which helps keep users on your site, increasing page views and advertising dollars. MASH IT UP!

Okay, so that's the end of the tangent.

Check out a few of these sites, take a listen and let me know what you think. Or just say nothing and I'll assume you're too busy listening to the new Hannah Montana track or watching My Morning Jacket videos, like I am.

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Posted by dolores2175 (April Fleming) on April 11, 2008 at 10:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Elbo.wk is this weird but rad sort of meta-music blog thing that was my favorite mentioned on the old mental floss

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on April 11, 2008 at 7:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)

elbo.ws is pretty rad.

what's also rad is thanks to you we now effing OWN page rank for elbo.wk!!

check it:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...

i don't know about you, but strangely enough i'm genuinely happy about that.

Posted by Dominic_Sova (anonymous) on April 11, 2008 at 10:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)

what else are you syndicating? i have compiled a few of my favorite feeds at http://www.netvibes.com/dominicsova

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on April 13, 2008 at 9:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Dominic: my shared items are here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/1072...

Posted by OnShakedown (Chris Tackett) on April 13, 2008 at 9:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Dominc, i like your page. it kinda reminds me of http://alltop.com/

You Guys Like Music?

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