It is not often that you come upon an application that provides everything you need to access restricted services. Saver 2 Bundle is a free software collection for Windows that is an all-on one solution providing access to services such as Pandora, Rhapsody Radio, Last.fm, Songza or Meemix.

The program installs several programs on your computer that work well together. You can start the core application directly and use the integrated Opera USB browser to load the web services. It is alternatively possible to use other web browsers which may need to be configured properly before they can be used, or the optional Pandora Radio player that can be installed with the main program.

Saver2 uses the Tor Network to establish proxy connections. This basically tunnels the connection so that it appears as if it is coming from one of the allowed locations in the world. For Pandora Radio, this would be an endpoint in the United States.

The connection to one of the supported services should work right away and without the dreaded “country unsupported” message that users would see otherwise. Quality of playback during tests was good; Music streams from Pandora Radio and several other services were playing without buffering issues and errors.

Saver2 can be configured to download music from supported services automatically or on demand. The program is configured to download everything automatically. The preferences offer options to save only on approval.

The program furthermore tries to replace lower quality songs with higher quality versions, looks up album art on Amazon and may query the MusicDNS service for additional information.

Files can be re-encoded, for instance to a lower quality setting or file extension. Other options include configuring a blacklist or whitelist.

New users may feel overwhelmed at first by the applications that get installed and displayed on the screen when the main program is started. The majority of windows can be minimized though. All it takes to get started is to run the main application, wait until a proxy connection has been established to finally load the website that you want to access.

Windows users can download the Saver2 Bundle from the developer website.

Music downloading is often accompanied by the legality question. Is it legal to download music from that Internet site or stream? There cannot be a global answer for that considering that every country has its own set of laws and rules. That said, use the following program with caution as it may not be legal to use in your country.

Last.FM, Aupeo & Vkontakte.ru Downloader is a free software program for Windows to download music from the three websites Last.fm, Aupeo.com and Vkontakte.ru.

The portable application can be started right after unpacking it on the system. You can start searching for and downloading music right away by entering an artist, band or station name into the url form. This runs a search for that artist on Aupeo. Results are automatically downloaded without user interaction.

No account is required for downloading files from Vkontakte.ru. Just enter vk artist to find all songs by that artist on the Russian social networking site.

If you want to download from Last.fm you need to switch to Login to enter Last.fm login information before you can do so. Once done you can paste Last.fm urls into the url form to download the songs listed on that url.

You may want to open the Settings tab before you perform any searches. Here you can change the download folder, set size and file download limits, configure the program to start an application once a limit is reached or download cover art with the songs.

Last.FM, Aupeo & Vkontakte.ru Downloader works very well. It would have been nice if the program would allow the user to select the songs to download instead of downloading everything that it finds.

The software is without doubt one of the easiest to use downloaders out there. You can download the music downloader from the developer website. The portable application is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

The functionality of all different ports is similar, I’m using the Opera widget to explain the program’s functionality.

When you start Seesu you see the following screen pop up.

You get a search form on top that you can use to find bands, artists or songs. Below that are recommendations and loved tracks which only display contents if you link your Last.fm account to Seesu.

This is followed by a section that highlights what other Seesu users are currently listening to, country specific playlists and tags.

Depending on your selection you are either taken directly to the music player where you can play the selected song, an artists or band overview page where all albums and songs are listed on, or a category or group page listing multiple bands and artists.

Here you stumble upon the integration of Vkontakte for the first time, as the program recommends to log in to vk.com or vkontakte.ru to find better music files.

The vast music library of Vkontakte is used in searches after the login. While it is recommended it is not necessary to login at all. You can use the core program features as an anonymous user, or guest as well. You may however notice that several of the songs are cut at the 30 second mark. If you link the accounts, you are more likely to find the full songs.

The music player automatically loads the next song in line. One advantage over Last.fm’s radio feature is that you can play all songs of an individual artist.

Mp3 downloads are only available if the full song is being played in the player. All download links point to Soundcloud for guest users. If you log into Vkontakte you may get download links from Vkontakte servers as well which increases the number of songs significantly.

The music player displays artist and song information taken from Last.fm and videos which are embedded directly in the interface. The videos use YouTube as the provider.

Videos can often be used to play the full song if only the first 30 seconds are offered in the music player. Both the music player and video player stop playing if you click play anywhere on that page.

Individual song pages display tags, similar artists and albums

Seesu combines a powerful music player with mp3 downloads and music discovery options. The optional integration of VKontakte improves the availability of music significantly, on both the playing and downloading side. Program Downloads are offered on the developer website.

The interface is divided into a header area with playback controls, search options and information about the current song, and a main area that is divided further into tabs.

All that is needed to find songs is to enter the name of a song or artist into the search form. The program displays a list of hits in an extra search window. A double-click on a listed song adds it to the current playlist.

Playlists can be saved and loaded at anytime, with an additional option to import GrooveShark playlists (under Tools).

The Last.fm tab can be used to find similar songs or artists, display the top songs, albums or artists or top songs by geographic location, tag or genre.

There are additional options available, like linking to the user’s Last.fm account to display songs related to that account. Users who want to do that need to supply their last.fm username and password in the Options.

Local songs and folders can be added and included in the search which means it is possible to use the music player even without Internet connection.

Several plugins are already available to search for and display lyrics of the current song, sync the playlist with other devices enable or disable the web remote server.

The player displays biographic information about the current artists as well as album art and related information directly in its interface.

GrooveWalrus is an interesting music player for users who like to tap into two of the largest music databases and local files at once. The player is available for download at the official project website. The Python source code is provided there as well. The player supposedly runs under Wine for Linux or by running it from the source directly. (via)

Pithos is a native Pandora client for the GNOME desktop. It is easy to install, has a user-friendly GUI, and won’t drag your machine into the murky waters. Let’s take a look at how to install and use this client so you can start your new year out rockin’.

Before you begin, you will need to have a Pandora account. Once you have a Pandora account you will be able to manage your stations from within Pithos (so need to bother adding/removing stations from within the Pandora site.)  In fact, it’s actually easier to manager your stations from within Pithos than it is from within the site.

Installation

Pithos is not found in the standard repositories, so you have to add the Pithos repository. Adding the repository is simple. Open up a terminal window and issue the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kevin-mehall/pithos-daily
sudo apt-get update

Once you have the repository in place, you can then install the application. This is done with the following command:

sudo apt-get install pithos

Once the application is installed you will find it located in Applications > Sound and Video.

Usage

Figure 1

When you first start up Pithos you will be required to authenticate to your Pandora account. Once you do this Pithos will download your current list (or the default list) of stations associated with your account and open up the main window (see Figure 1). You can change the channel you want to listen to simply by clicking the channel drop-down and selecting the desired channel.

Figure 2

To create new channels to enjoy click on the Preferences button (the gear with the drop-down arrow) and select Manage Stations. In this new window (see Figure 2) click the Add Station button and then enter the name of an artist. You will then be presented by a number of choices to select from. Choose the correct artist and click OK. That artist will be added to your station list.

You can also include each station in your QuickMix list. The QuickMix list is like a shuffle for Pandora. Select which stations you want to include in your QuickMix and then, from the Station drop-down (in the main window), select QuickMix to get a mix of music from all of your stations.

Other features

One of the nicer features of Pithos is the inclusion of a notification icon. From this icon you can left-click and quickly “Love”, skip, play, pause, “Ban”, or “Tired” a currently playing song and you can quickly quit Pithos.

Pithos also includes:

• Cover Art.
• Notification popup with song info.
• Launching pandora.com song info/station page.
• Reconnecting when pandora session times out
• Media Key support
• Proxy support
• Last.fm scrobbling

Final thoughts

At last Linux has a worthy client for the enormously popular Pandora Music service. Make this your go-to application for Music listening in Linux and you won’t be sorry.

A playlist option however is not available on those pages, only the ability to play songs of the artist in the Radio on site.

The Google Chrome extension Last.fm Free Music Player improves the listening experience on Last.fm. It will automatically intercept clicks on play buttons on Last.fm. The page is scanned for music and all songs found on it are displayed in the player’s interface.

This works on all pages containing a play button to play songs.

last fm free music player

The music player acts as a playlist on Last.fm. The music plays in the background and continues to play even if the Last.fm page is closed in the web browser.

The player offers basic controls that include controlling the volume, pausing playback, shuffling or repeating songs and scrobbling.

All songs that are played in the music player seem to be full length songs. We tested some songs in Internet Explorer and Chrome without the extension installed and noticed that they were cut after 30 seconds. The same songs were offered as full length songs in the Last.fm Free Music Player.

That alone should be reason enough to use the music player when playing songs on Last.fm.

The ability to play full length songs, the playlist feature and the fact that music can be played in the background make Last.fm Free Music Player an ideal player for Last.fm users. Google Chrome users can download the extension directly from the Google Chrome Extensions gallery.

The official reasoning behind that change is that Last.fm users have for some time now used other music services as well to listen to music and that it would be in the best interest of all parties involved if Last.fm would concentrate on their core mission and leave the music streaming to those music providers instead.

The changes are already shown on the sites. Single music tracks like the one shown above now display a preview this track link (to listen to 30 seconds of the track) and links to partner sites which vary heavily depending on the user’s location in the world.

The beta launch partners are Spotify, MOG and The Hype Machine with more – including Vevo and We7, in the pipeline.

Last.fm will concentrate their efforts on music strategy including statistics, scrobbling and their music recommendatino engine as well as community features offered on their websites.

The move itself can be seen as a positive one for users who are not living in the countries that were able to access the on-demand streaming feature. These users actually benefit from the change as they can now access those third party music streaming services, some of which are available for a worldwide audience, directly from within Last.fm.

Users from the US, UK and Germany on the other hand lose the ability to play full-length music tracks directly on the Last.fm website but the partner services ensure that they can still listen to full-length tracks on those partner sites.

YouScrobble brings the best of these two worlds together. Users who visit the music service can perform a search for an artist to be presented with the complete discography of that artist. The mashup now brings Youtube into the picture by allowing playback and downloads of the music found on Youtube.

The service makes use of three different user roles: Guests can search for and listen to music on the website. They are also allowed to download five songs every 24 hours. Registered users (still free) get ten additional downloads per day, a better download priority, playlist support and scrobble functionality to let Last.fm know about the music. Paid users finally get unlimited downloads and the highest priority in the download queue.

YouScrobble offers means to discover music in a different way. Users can also take a look at the categories or popular artists instead of searching for artists, albums, bands or songs.

Is the service legal? That’s a question that is better left to the lawyers in this case. The pay for downloads model that YouScrobble uses is certainly the most controversial aspect of the service. As Martin Bryant over at Read Write Web points out it is one thing to embed videos on a website that playback music and another to offer that music for download. But that’s something that the developer’s have to dell with eventually, not the users who are using the service.

Yahoo Downloader is another Firefox extension that has been designed to download videos from portals like Youtube, Yahoo or CNN but also music from sites like Pandora, Last.fm or Imeem. Probably the most interesting feature for many users is the ability to automatically download videos from these websites.

The Firefox add-on places an icon in the Firefox address bar. Some users might not like the location of the icon as it is placed on the left side of the address bar. This can however be easily changed by right-clicking blank space on that toolbar and selecting the customize option. The Yahoo Downloader icon can then be dragged and dropped to another location, toolbar or even removed completely as it is not needed for most of the functionality.

A left-click on the icon will display the window of the download that will list all the videos that have been discovered in open tabs in the Firefox web browser.A click on the download it button will start the download. This can be automated if automatic downloads have been enabled in the options of the Firefox add-on. This setting makes it very comfortable to download youtube videos or videos and music from the other supported audio and video portals.

All videos will be downloaded to a location on the local computer system which can also be changed in the options of the add-on. Yahoo Downloader is a great add-on for users who download many videos or music and want to automate the process as much as possible.

There are several options when it comes to downloading music and videos from the Internet. Some websites use weak or no encryption at all which means it is possible to download the media directly from within the web browser. Other websites and services protect the media by encrypting it which makes it harder to actually download the files to the local computer system.

There are several software programs available that can download from most music and video portals and services. A very versatile one that is automating the process as much as possible is Tubemaster++. Tubemaster++ is a Java application that is using the packet capturing network monitor WinPcap.

The software program will automatically capture music and videos once the application is up and running. All the user needs to do is to visit a media site, service or software and start playing the media from there. Tubemaster recognizes the media and will display it in its interface. The software works with many services including Youtube, Last.fm, Pandora, Imeem and many more. The only restriction is that the service needs to stream the music to the computer system.

The music and videos can be saved in their original format or converted in the software program to common formats like avi or mp3. There are presets for some popular devices like Apple’s iPod, Blackberries, the Playstation 3 and dozens of other devices.

A video and mp3 search is provided in the program itself which makes it very comfortable to find specific music or videos. The search results are displayed in the program but open in the default web browser where they can be played.

Tubemaster++ (via Freeware Genius) is a very comfortable program to download videos and music from the Internet. The program is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. It requires Java and WinPcap to run (which are provided if they are not installed).

Today, TechCrunch ran the follow up story citing a second source and offering some clarification why the Last.fm staff members denied the leak. According to the story it was CBS, not Last.fm directly, that leaked the data dump to the RIAA, or as is suggested one of the music labels.

CBS seems to have given in to the demand because of fear that the streaming rates could be negatively impacted if they did not.

We believe CBS lied to us when they denied sending the data to the RIAA, and that they subsequently asked us to attribute the quote to Last.fm to make the statement defensible. Last.fm’s denials were strictly speaking correct, but they ignored the underlying truth of the situation, that their parent company supplied user data to the RIAA, and that the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users. We believe that the outrage they aimed at us for reporting the story, which was materially correct, should have been aimed at CBS instead. But Last.fm never spoke publicly of the real facts of the story.

If data has been leaked – and the article speaks of IP addresses and usage data – then this could very well be a privacy disaster for Last.fm and CBS.

Spotify is a service which allows users to stream many songs online free and legally. The service is ad-supported and currently available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain. The adverts are only a minor annoyance; I find there is about 2 minutes of them per hour of music. A premium service is also available, where adverts can be removed for a cost.

The service requires a desktop client to play the music. Their client is currently only available on OS X and Windows. Using this software, users can search for music, compile playlists and listen to online radio. The music is streamed as an Ogg Vorbis at 160kbps, so it is very high quality! It also scrobbles the music to last.fm.

The advertising is tolerable. Generally, they last about 30-45 seconds and either advertise Spotify Premium or, currently, the Disasters Emergency Committee in the UK. Premium (ad-free) Spotify costs either 99p a day or £10 a month.

I am beginning to reconsider if I still have the need to download music. Most songs are available free on Spotify, with the exception of some of the newest releases on certain labels. My only problem with Spotify is that it isn’t portable, so I can’t use it on my iPod etc.

Spotify has a bigger collection of music than the ‘full tracks’ available on last.fm.

It is currently only invitation only, but I will give the first 4 people to ask an invite each. Just leave a comment asking for one.

The service requires registration which is a quick and painless process. After signing up and in artists can be added that the user wants to track. The database of artists and releases is directly taken from MusicBrainz which ensures that most artists will be found and can be tracked.

The releases of all entered artists can be tracked afterwards. Notifications can be received by email or RSS news feed if that is preferred. Additionally only certain release types (albums, singles, compilations, live etc) can be monitored.

Another interesting feature is that artists can be imported from Last.fm usernames. It does not necessarily have to be the user’s account because all that is needed for import is the username and the maximum amount of artists that should be imported.

No advertisement is currently send with the emails or news feeds which one would almost except from such a service. Could be that the developers have plans to add links to shops at a later stage but even that should not be a huge drawback for the service.

This radio feature is being used by Last Sharp, an application that can be used to download music from Last.fm. Last Sharp requires the Microsoft .net framework 2.0 and an operating system that is either Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista. The application itself can be unpacked and started from any directory on the hard drive without installation. The only other requirement is a Last.fm user account to be able to tune in and download the music.

The default language of the interface is German but it can be set to English in the options. The options are in the lower left corner. The user can set the download directory, add a proxy, enable continuous downloads or select to normalize mp3 files with MP3 Gain.

The heart of the program is the Tune In section which can be used to load a 30 track playlist filtered by tag, similar artists or account specific parameters. All tracks of the playlist are selected by default and can be downloaded by right-clicking in the window and selecting the Download option from the context menu. Tracks that are not wanted can be unchecked. The Remember Downloads setting in the option is handy to prevent that already downloaded tracks are downloaded again.

It should be noted that the downloads have to be in order. Selecting a download from the middle will prevent downloads of tracks that are listed above it in the playlist. It is however still possible to recreate the playlist which will be populated with songs that can be downloaded.

One interesting parameter is continuous download. It will automatically pull the next 30 track playlist from Last.fm once the end of the last has been reached. This effectively means unlimited downloads for as long as the application is running.

Last Sharp is available on a German website. Just scroll down to the section called Aktuelle Version and click on the Download link which leads to Rapidshare where the application can be downloaded.

Intelligent Music Scheduler uses so called libraries to create playlists. A library contains a list of music files that the user selected for inclusion. This can be the complete music collection or only part of it. The music program analyzes the songs that are selected by the user and provides several ways to use them for playlist creation.

The first tab Time is defining the basic parameters of the playlist. The user can select a number for items, minutes or megabytes which define the amount of songs, playtime or size of the songs that make up the playlist. A value of 100 items would mean that the program would pick 100 songs from the library.

That menu alone contains additional parameters that can be defined, for instance the time between songs and artists which means the minimum time the playlist has to play before the same song or a song of the same artist is played again.

The user can also pick the time between genres, lenght, year and recording time. This alone would make a pretty sophisticated playlist tool but there is more, much more. It is for example possible to play only selected genres, only albums, by rating or by music format.

Intelligent Music Scheduler uses an Audioscrobbler mashup that can be activated to use it for playlist generation. Audioscrobbler is the backbone of the popular music website last.fm. It also offers a Zararadio mashup which I’m not 100% about because I never used that service before.

I continue to use Windows Media Player and Media Monkey for my music collection management, but I watch progress on Songbird and like to check out new releases as they become available.

I love the concept behind Songbird and I love what’s been created so far, however it still is a little lacking to become my default media player.

The aim however is for Songbird 1.0 to be out by December this year, with regular updates in the months leading up to then. Development seems to be on schedule and accelerating as Songbird gathers steam.

Songbird 0.7 comes with the following changes:

Refreshed UI: refined look and feel. Essentially an iTunes clone-style interface, however it really is a major improvement on the old ‘Rubber Ducky’ theme, although it may take a few minutes to get used to. I personally love it.
New setup assistant
Smart playlists: Another iTunes inspired feature, but a good one at that. I nice addition to the growing Songbird feature list.
Last.fm support:No longer necessary to download a separate plugin for Lastfm integration, it comes built in and scrobbles your library for you.
GStreamer on all platforms:“This is our first cross platform release using GStreamer as our new media core, by default it handles all FLAC playback on Windows/Mac (or you can enable GStreamer to handle more codecs)”
Faster Media scanning and reading: I definitely noticed this, Songbird is handling my 8000 item library pretty smoothly now.
Lower memory usage: Another welcome improvement.

Here is a shot of the new interface:

Incidentally Songbird has created some really simple ways for anyone to theme the program which is great news for the less technical minded people like me.

Well, actually it’s two feeds that are created. The first lists the upcoming releases while the second lists the releases of the previous year. I tested it with several usernames and it is working fine. It takes anywhere between 1 and 30 minutes before the feed displays the releases according to the Soundamus website although I was able to see the first items after less than a minute.

The feed items list information such as name of the album and release date. It also contains several links to pages that contain further information, some of them are located on Last.fm, some on the Soundamus website. There is also an option to add the date to Google Calendar and to buy the CD from a online shop.

The page of the release at the Soundamus website is surprisingly clean and lists similar artists and their releases. Again with links to all kinds of sites including Last.fm.

Artists get paid whenever a song is played by using revenue sharing, which means that they will be paid by a percentage of the advertising revenue based on the number of plays. Contracts with all four major labels made this improvement possible which could be a great step in the right direction.

A quick check revealed that the implementation has not been finalized yet but that you can access a lot of full length tracks already. Give it a day or two and everything will sort out. Users are a little bit confused for instance about existing playlists and embedded content.

I’m not a regular Last.fm user though and it would be nice if regular users could voice their opinion on the change.

The Skip song function works properly as well and you can just sit back and watch how all the songs that are played are recorded to your hard drive. Album covers and ID3v2 are appended automatically. Other updates include support for international characters and http proxies.

As I said before it is possible to search for songs or artists and create radio stations that can be recorded but it is also possible to use personal stations, playlists, neighbors or to paste urls that point to radio stations. Works perfectly to increase your music collection in no time.

The Last Ripper is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The newest version however is only available for Windows at the moment. Found the update at Alter Falter, a German blog.

A download starts when you click on the Free link next to the artists name and song title. It is possible to listen to the songs before you start the download by clicking on the mp3 link in that row. The songs can be downloaded by visitors and users alike, no registration is needed for this.

One thing that bothers me a little bit is that the songs cannot be sorted by genre. I did however find a link on Liquid Parallax that pointed to a website where Last.fm users where categorizing the free mp3 downloads. Just click on one of the genres in the tagcloud which will load a new site where all artists of that genre that offer free mp3 downloads are listed.