These days, iTunes and music subscription services make it almost too easy to access the music you know and love. It's pretty amazing that we have all this music available - and the craziest thing is that you can get bored listening to stuff you've already heard.
My personal remedy? I'm a huge fan of independent music and mp3 blogs. For the past year, I've been analyzing web audio and mp3 blogs at Yahoo!'s Media Innovation Group. We've been developing ideas and infrastructure for web media products we wanted to use, but which didn't exist yet.
Last week we got to release one of the fruits of our labor -- the new Music Blogs application on Facebook. It lets you surf popular mp3 blogs to discover new music you like. I haven't been this excited about music in a long time - and it's because I keep finding great new tracks on my favourite blogs, and they keep getting updated with more stuff I like...
The Music Blogs application was built almost entirely in Flash and Flex - which allows us to go beyond what is normally possible in a traditional Facebook app. The app is actually comprised of two different Flash movies - our webplayer widget which you can put on your own blog and the Music Blogs app. They communicate with each other, your desktop, the Facebook API, and Yahoo! -- all from the Facebook canvas page running in your browser.
This model scales a lot better than a traditional Facebook app since all the work is done on the client side. Yahoo! hosts edge-served images and a few static HTML and XML pages, which only get called once per session. All the work takes place on the user's machine, which communicates directly with the Facebook API and the web at large.
Check it out:
(Note: You must be logged in to Facebook to view this app. Anyone can sign up to become a Facebook member.)
http://apps.facebook.com/musicblogs
Popularity: 18% [?]
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Comment by Adam — November 14th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Anyway to get the Y! Music Blog functionality outside of Facebook? Seems like this would make a great stand alone webapp, untied from FB.
Comment by Adam — November 14th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Also, I'm not seeing the Hype Machine show up in the list of popular MP3 blogs….should I look for it under some other title?
Comment by Alexis Kauffmann — November 15th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I like that. I have a few music blogs, these tools will greatly improve them.
Comment by Joe Lazarus — November 15th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Adam, check…
http://musiclibre.org/
Comment by ~ — November 15th, 2007 at 11:16 am
i agree with adam - im not a facebook fan but love the app. i think it could make a great standalone site/service.
Comment by Noel — November 15th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Wow, this is really cool. I too would love to see it outside of FB.
Comment by lauren g — November 15th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
This is super-cool. Congrats.
Comment by Justin Davis — November 15th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Congratulations William. This is a great way to get turned on to new music and a cool app.
Comment by jr — November 15th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
No, really, folks wanting this control outside of facebook need to go look at http://musiclibre.org. (or click on the "Y!" menu in the upper right corner of the control to get an embeddable snippet you can post on your blog/ web page/ pants/ cat/ etc.
Comment by %7E — November 15th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
while its true that you can grab the embed code for the music player widget, the "music blogs" app is more than just the player. it would be nice to have the whole "music blogs" browser outside of facebook. i dont want to have to manually add urls when im in the mood to be surprised by new music from an unexpected source. musiclibre has a handful of music blogs listed, but the music blogs app has many more - plus a history - plus the ability to save items.
Comment by William+White — November 15th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
FYI - http://musiclibre.org is my testing ground for exploring ideas about web music and playlisting. I did some early prototyping of the facebook app there several months ago. That's what you see when you go there now…
Comment by casey — December 10th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
myspace.com/brockmcgoff
If your looking for a new sound from real musicians and not punks who think they can make it as rappers check this out. We are all classically trained and are beginning to write pop music for the first time. Two more coming shortly and words to maybe
Comment by A-A-Reisen - Ferienwohnung in Ungarn und Tschechien Riesengebirge Balaton — April 17th, 2008 at 4:09 am
I love it. Thanx. Best regards.
Comment by CREATIONPOOL - Agentur für Internetseiten und Flash Programmierung in Berlin — April 24th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Nice post. Well done. Thanks.