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.

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The user of MySpace Grab can then double-click on any listed song to listen to it. The small window that opens contains a small embedded music player that is similar to those found on many websites and a big download button. Pressing the download button will immediately open a save file dialog window which can be used to save the selected song on the local computer.

The process is pretty straightforward and great for saving the occasional song from MySpace. It becomes long-winded if the user wants to download several songs from MySpace as it would mean to repeat the double-click song, click download button in new window process over and over again.

Selected urls can be added to favorites in the software program to access them faster and easier the next time the program is started. MySpace Grab is a free 400 Kilobyte download that is compatible with all Microsoft Windows operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

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Last.fm Downloader (via Life Rocks) is a free portable software program for the Windows operating system that can connect to any last.fm radio station to record the music that is played there. The software is absolutely fool proof as it provides only a few buttons and configuration options.

The url of the radio station has to be pasted into the application which is the only thing needed to start the recordings. Settings make it possible to change the download location of the music files, to define a maximum size limit or download file count limit, to start an external application if a limit is reached and whether to download cover art and make use of a deep folder layout while downloading.

The last.fm software will download three different songs at a time from the radio stream and save them to the local computer. Several songs are shown that are next to be downloaded from last.fm.

The downloaded songs will be named artist – title.mp3 by default and \Artist\Album\Artist – Title.mp3 if the deep folder structure has been selected.

An alternative to Last.fm Downloader is Last Sharp.

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The proxy setting has to be configured in the web browser so that all http traffic is routed through the localhost proxy at port 8800. Firefox users would click on Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Settings to open the proxy configuration.

They would then select the manual proxy configuration and enter localhost and port 8800 under HTTP Proxy. They should make sure to revert the settings to No Proxy again when they stop using Freezer.

The program requires the user’s presence because the download dialog will pop up whenever the user clicks on play on any of the supported music portals. This works nicely with the various radio stations at Deezer and playlists in general.

Downloads are pretty fast, they never took more than a few seconds during tests. Freezer is probably best for users who like to download a few selected songs from those music portals. Should work nicely with an instant proxy changer or autoscripts that automatically save the files.

The author explicitly states that the software is not intended to download copyrighted music but only music that is freely available.

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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.

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I personally do not like the layout of the site that much. The popular songs are displayed when you visit iJigg and you can navigate to the most recent songs as well. The option to filter certain genres or languages is available in the right menu. I had serious difficulties with the language filter though, it would show non-English titles even if I filtered all languages except English.

As you can see there is the option to play a song but none to save it. To save the songs you need the excellent Grab++ which has to be run in the background when you play a song. This little application displays the exact location of all media files which can then be downloaded with a download manager.

Grab++ has been created by the same developers that brought you the Orbit Downloader. I use both programs to find the songs and download them.

All you need to do is start Grab++, click on the Music tab and visit iJigg and play songs there. Once a song is started at iJigg the url of the mp3 will be shown in Grab++. Right-click the mp3 and select download from the menu.

Songs are not properly named most of the time which can only be done manually, but this is not really a big drawback unless you plan to download hundreds of songs.

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The most successful album on Jamendo has been downloaded more than 11000 times which is a huge success for the artists that decided to upload their work to Jamendo. Users can listen to and download more than 2800 albums at Jamendo using streams and the bittorrent network. If you are looking for free music you should definetely visit Jamendo and start listening to some of the tracks suggested there. Below is a short sample of my favorite songs that can be listened to and downloaded at Jamendo. (I’m into Electronica at the moment)

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