Jadam Kahn from Rocketsurgeon has started a new directory of Music 2.0-related services. the blog-styled listing already contains more than 200 entries, including short descriptions + categorization. the only thing I’m missing are site-thumbnails (I really don’t like those snap-previews) and a search-box…
as reported here a few days ago, Last.fm hast now started to integrate video-content with their service. nothing groundbreaking like personalized video-channels for now though, but nifty quality clips for selected artists (check The Knife for some examples).
instead of the much anticipated video-upgrade, we just have received a very cool Last.fm flash-widget, which is embedding personalized radio-streams (”recently played”…), playlists & charts to any given website. check the sidebar of this page, press the “play”-button & start grooving (click here if you’re reading this post in your RSS-reader!) …stunning!
(more on TechCrunch)
nothing about this on the official Last.fm-page yet (their blog is kind of hard to find), but Read/Write Web and Mashable both report that the music recommendation service & social network based on the Audioscrobbler technology is about to add video-support within this week! unlike YouTube, which is host to millions of low-res music-clips without legal authorization, Last.fm will probably leverage it’s existing relationships with music-labels to offer a legally solid portfolio of video-content, just like they do with audio today. R/WW:
Initially it will be mainly independent labels featured on the video Last.fm - such as Ninja Tune, Nettwerk Music Group, Domino, Warp, Atlantic and Mute. However among the rosters of those independents are brand name artists like the Arctic Monkeys, Moby and Aphex Twin. Last.fm has also made partnerships with big labels like EMI and Warner, along with “over 20,000 independent labels
moreover, Last.fm will offer superior audio-quality (128kbit/s) over YouTube’s poor 64Kbit/s, less than radio-quality encoding. while probably not part of the initial release, I bet a personalized video-channel based on already existing preference-profiles is only a matter of time - you may call it “MTV 2.0″, like R/WW’s Richard MacManus legitimately did.
update: if you can’t wait for Last.fm’s video-feature, I suggest trying out Last.tv in the meantime: the work of two dutch students, this very cool site mashes up your Last.fm profile with YouTube!
as of today, MP3tunes.com has extended their free mp3-storage & -streaming product from 1gbyte to unlimited storage capacity & bandwidth. a locally installed application (available for windows, mac & linux) syncs the remote mp3-locker to the local media-library in both directions (this may take a very long time depending on your internet-connection, which typically is way weaker on the upload-side). since the application currently lacks the ability to do automated sync-ups, it’s up to the user to remember syncing once every while. stored tracks can be played back anywhere on the web using Mp3tunes’ embedded flash-player. however, before you start uploading tons of audio to the locker, consider that MP3tunes free offer will be financed by advertising, which at some point might also include audio-ads injected into your playlists.
(via P2P Blog)
update: after experimenting a bit, I noticed that the free mp3-locker is limited to a maxium file-size of 10mbytes 
another restriction, albeight an obvious one, is that files including DRM (Apple FairPlay etc.) won’t sync with the locker.
Myspace users experienced a suspicious anomaly yesterday, as adding new (flash-based) widgets to Myspace profile-pages didn’t work for a few hours (existing widget-integrations have not been affected). while TechCrunch reports that Myspace - unofficially - claims a developer-bug to be the reason for this behaviour, skeptics might take this as proove that the free-ride for 3rd parties on the Myspace-ecosystem will soon come to an end.
Music 2.0 by J. Herskowitz - a wiki indexing all kinds of music-related (web-)services.
8apps mashes social networking with collaborative project-management. 8apps is currently invitation-only (official blog).
leading music-recommendation service Pandora introduced some community-related features earlier this week (check their official blog for the full scope). however, listener-profiles (including listings of tracks which received most thumbs-ups & -downs) and a very basic search for listeners, artists & stations can’t really keep up with advanced community-features offered by last.fm. f.e., Pandora lacks last.fm’s ‘Musical Neighbours’, a feature that connects listeners by their shared tastes. on the upside, the new user-profiles allow to instantly playback bookmarked tracks on-demand. for now, I suggest to use PandoraFM, a mashup combining the best of both of products by submitting Pandora-playlists into Last.fm’s listener-history.
ps: if you’re interested in music-theory and the categorization Pandora is based on, you might want to check out the Pandora Podcast, featuring Kevin Seal, who works as a musical analyst at Pandora.
if you’re into music-recommendation & -exploration services, you might wanna check out Musicovery. set your preferred mood (energetic, dark, positive, calm), period (80ies, 90ies etc.) and musical genres, and Musicovery will generate a matching - though static - playlist. while this is definitely inferior to Pandora’s dynamically adjusting streams, Musicovery offers a beautiful flash-based visual chart to freely navigate the tracklist (something Pandora’s free-service offers only under restrictions due to licensing). imagine a similar interface to Pandora’s musical genome database, visualizing all sorts of musical connections & dependencies…I’ld gladly pay a monthly fee for that! 
(btw, Musicovery charges EUR 2,-/month for its high-bitrate streams, LoFi is free)
I just happened to read about partyStrands, a music-service demo’ed at yesterdays TechCrunch 8 party in NYC. partyStrands tries to replace oldschool club-DJs with a collaborative, SMS-based voting-system. to get things started, venues hook up a video-beamer or -screen with a PC running the locally installed partyStrands software (the music-library isn’t provided by partyStrands, venues have to provide their own media-library - and of course pay royalties for public performance). during the party, on-screen instructions encourage the party-crowd to join the voting by texting their song-requests to a special phone-number provided by the service (which is, of course, a value added number). partyStrands not only cues up the requested tune (if available, that is), but also considers the request for auto-generatig a playlist fitting the “overall-mood” of party-attendees (sounds a lot like a collaborative music-recommendation engine). other than song-votes, users may also send greetings & MMS-pictures for public display. in addition, partyStrands is marketing the display-estate for advertising to 3rd parties - revenue from both ads and messaging-fees are split with the venue.
I don’t see partyStrands as a DJ-replacement accepted by the average club-head anytime soon. the service is probably better aimed at DJ-less lounges & bars which are playing the same old compilation-CDs over and over again. and of course tech-events like mentioned TechCrunch party
update: a friend of mine just told me that he had seen a similar setup in a London-club recently, people seemed to be kinda into it. what do you think about systems like partyStrands? any chance to get into the groove while fumbling away on your mobile? or, imagine a sequencer-based system that could acutally mix (i.e beatmatch etc.) tracks? now that sounds interesting to me…
though Pandora and Last.fm have been dominating the market of web-based music recommendation- & streaming-services during the past two years, we’ve seen some interesting new products emerging these days. while recently reviewed SpotDJ enters new ground, turning listeners into content-producers by recording their comments on tracks, iLike is unique in terms of the particular music its based on. produced by the makers of indy-music site Garageband.com, iLike is a nicely integrated iTunes plugin-recommending independent, free music from Garageband, based on a users library and the communities listening-habits.
I strongly disagree with Marshall Kirkpatrick from TechCrunch, who’s basically claiming that most indie-music is not able to deliver quality - there’s quite a few good tracks to be discovered. considering the slick user-interface and presuming that the service is aimed at the hardcore music-lover, willing to spend a good amount of time to discover fresh stuff offside mainstream, I really think iLike is worth a try. a future version of the plugin could integrate even more features from the website, like f.e. direct feedback on the quality of recommendations.
similar services include MyStrands and Qloud, which I haven’t had a chance to try out yet. if you want to share your experiences with these products, feel free to post a comment!
Maybe you could explain me sometime
