The free web service Chromus could change that again. The service combines Last.fm’s music database with the music found on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The result? A player that knows and plays nearly every song and album on the planet.

Here is how it works. You visit the Chromus website over at Github. Now type in a band name, artist, song or album after clicking on the search icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Tracks and albums are displayed on a result’s page afterwards. You can now click on an album or track to start playing it right away on the site. If you select an album, all tracks of the album are queued in a playlist. This lets you listen to all songs of an album in full length online. All without a Last.fm or Vkontakte account.

You can select individual tracks with a click on the playlist entry. The player supports all basic controls from pausing and changing the volume to seeking and repeating the playlist.

Last.fm or Vkontakte users can sign in to their accounts to make use of scrobbling and music playback more reliable.

Chromus looks like a spin-off of the popular Google Chrome extension Last.fm free music player which provides more or less the same functionality. It is not clear if the two are linked in any way or if the author of Chromus has used the Chrome extension for inspiration only.

It is interesting to note that many non-English and non-Russian songs can be played as well. If you are looking for a free web music player that does not require you to register, and that does not limit your music listening experience, then you may have found it in Chromus. (via Caschy)

The question that many users will have when using the program is if it is legal to use. The developer website claims it is 100% legal as it only provides downloads from free legal music sources on the Internet. These sources, or at least examples, are not provided though, and the program interface reveals no information about the Internet locations the songs are downloaded from.

All you get are the artist’s name, the song title and the duration of the song. Listing the source could provide users of the program with the reassurance they need to download the music without fearing legal consequences.

A quick check for the top 5 US single charts of this week listed dozens of hits for each song, indicating that the database lists commercial songs and free songs.

A network software reveals that the program taps right into Vkontakte, a popular Russian social networking site. These songs are uploaded by users of the service and not the site operators.

If you take this into account you must come to the conclusion that it is likely not legal in all countries. While I cannot say that it is not legal in Russia for instance, it is fair to assume that it is not legal in the majority of countries.

I personally would advise users not to download music through the program. While it is unlikely that doing so will have legal consequences, it is still possible that it will depending on the local jurisdiction.

Looking for legal alternatives? Try the free music repository Jamendo, the Internet radio recorder Streamripper or our free music download guide.

Lets take a closer look at how this works. The extension, available for the Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome web browser picks up mp3 files automatically that you happen to stumble upon on the Internet. This is automatic, and a player is displayed at the bottom of the browser window to play those songs directly on the page. Registered users get the additional benefit that discovered music is saved so that they can open it at anytime on the Ex.FM website.

The service works well with popular music sites such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, the Live Music Archive or music blogs hosted on Tumblr. Songs are picked up automatically even if you do not play the songs on the site. They are then sorted automatically by site > artist and album on the Exfm website.

You can click on the extension icon to bring up the current music queue that offers all the options you would expect from a music player (back, forward, pause, stop volume).

If you do not want to look for music by yourself, you can use the trending and explore options on the site to get your daily music fix.

Trending displays the top 20 tracks of the last 24 hours on Ex.FM.

The explore section on the site offers several options:

• Site of the day – A new site every day that posts publicly accessible mp3 music.
• Genres – Pick a genre and get a selection of music that other users have found.
• Featured Album – A favorite editor picked album of the day.
• Tastemakers – Music discovered by popular Ex.FM members is posted here.
• Monthly Mixtape – A hand picked mixtape that changes monthly.
• Latest loved – Realtime music discovery, again from other users of the site.

The extensions are not needed to use the service. You can visit the service to access both the trending and explore sections of the site.

If you like to discover new music, or are simply looking for a versatile web music player that picks up songs that you find on web pages automatically, then you should take a closer look at Exfm. And since it is all about direct mp3 links, you won’t encounter country restrictions like you would with other services or players. Thumbs up!

You probably think that bandwidth and storage costs have fueled that decision, but that’s far away from the truth. It seems that the German performance rights organization GEMA, the bane of all music on the Internet, has once again had its hand in play. The organization is for instance the reason that German users are not able to watch many music videos that are posted on YouTube.

GEMA in 2009 asked Google to pay $0,013 per song played on YouTube. Google declined back then and as a result, German users cannot watch the majority of music videos on YouTube.

Grooveshark likely faced a similar decision, and like Google, Grooveshark decided to pull out of the country instead.

A GEMA mail address is listed on the page for users to direct their complaints to. It may be more fruitful on the other hand to direct complaints directly to politicans and not the GEMA.

Grooveshark recommends the German Simfy service as an alternative. And while that service looks like a great alternative on first glance, it needs to be noted that free users (with an account) only get five hours of free music per month. Users who would like to listen to more music need to switch to the Premium account which sets them back €4.99 each month.

Existing Grooveshark users can export their music from the service. A link is provided in the announcement.

The mobile clients are currently still working. It will however only be a matter of time until they will be shut down as well. (via Caschy)

The scary part is actually what makes the application that good: Facebook seems to know your music taste pretty well. The application displays up and down vote buttons on the radio page that you can use to further finetune the music listening experience.

Basic playback controls are displayed on the page as well. Here you can change the volume of the music, pause, stop and play songs or skip ahead to the next song if you do not really like the one that is currently playing.

Mentor.fm displays the artist or band, and the genre of the music on the page as well. It feels rather strange that the name of the song is not among the information displayed there.

If the playlist is not what you are looking for, you can let the radio station load a new playlist with different songs.

The surprise me mode finally lets you look beyond your music taste to discover a different kind of music. When I first used surprise me the radio started to play songs from artists such as Emilio Santiago, Jazzkantine or Renata Tebaldi, music that I would not listen to at all otherwise.

The site is a music experiment, that will be online for about 2 months before the makers will take it offline again. One of the interesting aspects of the site is that you can just turn on the radio and start listening, without having to perform searches or songs first. The service uses a user’s likes on Facebook and generates the playlist from those information. (via Freeware Genius)

The figures released today and reported by the BBC show that overall CD album sales were down 13% on 2010′s figures to 86.2 million discs.  The figures also showed that the sales of digital albums climbed 24% to a total of 26.6 million in the same period.  The BPI said that the decline in album sales was the result of piracy, and they went on to blame the British government for not doing enough to tackle it.

Now you can’t compare one percentage with another as both will have begun from a different base, so let’s do some maths.  A sales drop of 13% would have made 2010′s CD album sales a total of 99.1 million and a rise of 24% in digital album sales would have made for total sales in 2010 of 21.4 million.  This would make total album sales in 2010 120.5 million.

The BPI are claiming however that total album sales in 2011 of 112.8 which is only slightly down on the previous year is all due to piracy.  Technically the BPI are correct but only in so far as overall sales are down.  Banging their drum about piracy being the cause when online digital sales rose by a quarter (which frankly is a huge sales leap in any industry) just goes to show how behind the times the music and movie industries really are.

People having to tighten their budgets, or finding new ways to buy and consume their music is a much more likely explanation for the sales drop.  The BBC said…

“People now buy the individual songs they like rather than buying the whole album because they like a single,” said Philip Buxton, an independent digital media consultant.  “So they might buy the single and then use services like Spotify and Lastfm to listen to the other tracks and are then much more selective about what they purchase.  “The implication for the record industry is that they need to embrace this new model rather than fight it.”

This reported 6% drop in overall sales will be seen by many as a smokescreen created by major multi-nationals who are feeling their pockets squeezed when they’re not fully embracing the new ways that people want to consume their music and video.  It’s similar to the banks claiming to be hard done by after being bailed out by taxpayers worldwide, just ask the Occupy Wall Street protesters how they feel about that!

The BPI’s Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor told the BBC “While other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of the US tech giants.”

Ultimately though SOPA has brought the whole issue of piracy and copyright theft back into the public consciousness and it’s unlikely that the general public worldwide will be sympathetic.  I may be wrong and you might disagree with me, but it’s widely considered that the music and video industries are failing to keep up with the demands of consumers.

What are your views on this?  Do you think that the music and movie companies are delivering content in the way that suits you best?

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.

And now Google Music with its big announcement on November 16. Google Music gets rid of the beta status and remains a free service for all users (from the United States, and those who know how to use a proxy). Users can store up to 20,000 songs on Google servers.

The Google Music store offers a library of 13 million songs which can be purchased on the Android Market. Songs cost 99 cent and are provided in 320 Kbit quality. Users can download songs or stream them to other devices. Google Music users who make purchases can share their purchases on Google+. This allows others to listen to the song once on Google’s social networking platform.

Payments are currently limited to T-Mobile US customers which benefit from carrier billing support. This basically means that Google Music purchases will appear on the monthly cellphone bill which improves the buying experience significantly. T-Mobile customers will get exclusive contents for free until the end of the year as part of the promotion to establish the service in the United States.

Artists can create their own space on Google Music where they can sell their music directly. The initial fee to setup an artist page is $25 US Dollars. It is likely – but not confirmed – that artists will have to share their earnings with Google.

When you look at both Google Music and iTunes Match, you will notice that they are both US-only at this point in time. Google Music is even more limited as the store is currently only available to T-Mobile USA customers.

What’s your take on the recent development? If you are living in the US, will you be using one of the services?

Instant Elevator Music is a fun application for users who like to be accompanied by calming soothing music during file operations. I’m not saying that any sane person would want to listen to that music for a long period of time, but it is fun the first times you run into it.

You need to install the software before you can enjoy music during most file operations and even some splash screens. You can open the program’s settings to define when the music starts to play while you are waiting.

Popular choices include “anything with a progress bar” to Firefox downloads or the Adobe Photoshop CS5 splash screen. And if you are annoyed by the elevator music in a particular application you can turn that off to. The ignore list in the program settings offers to add programs that will stay silent even if they would trigger the music otherwise.

You can also add your own tunes to the music playlist for some extra variety. One of the issues that I ran into was that the music started playing even while I was playing another video or song on the computer. The program can be configured to identify some music playing applications like Winamp to block the elevator music while other music is playing, but there is no option to do the same for video players or even web video.

Regardless of that; You can still have some fun with the little application. It is likely that you will uninstall it sooner or later though.

Windows users can download Instant Elevator Music from the official website. It should work with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

But fear not, we take a look at all three services, highlight their advantages and disadvantages so that you can make an educated decision after reading the article. Before we start we should probably take a look at cloud storage and syncing in general. The first question that you need to ask yourself is whether you need such a service at all.

Do you need your music in the cloud? You may answer that question with yes if you work on multiple computer systems or use smartphones and other mobile devices. The main advantage of cloud based music services is that you get access to your music on all devices that you can connect to the service. No more copying of songs or playlists, all songs that you have stored online are available on all compatible devices at all time, provided that you have a net connection and a good mobile subscription with enough free bandwidth.

Lets take a look at the services and some of their features:

Apple iCloud

Apple’s new service is tied to its iTunes software as expected. Users can use it to store up to 25,000 songs they have not purchased on iTunes, an unlimited number of songs they purchased on iTunes and an additional 5 Gigabyte of other data.

Users can pay $24.99 annually for iTunes Match which matches any song on iTunes and makes it available in the cloud as well taken directly from the iTunes store.

It appears as if iTunes Match is required to store music not purchased on iTunes in the cloud.

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Apple iCloud requires iTunes to be installed. It is compatible with Apple’s mobile device lineup and limits access to ten authorized devices.

The main downside of the service is that it does not support streaming, and that users need to subscribe to iTunes Match if they want to have access to their non-iTunes purchases, like CD rips, on iCloud.

Google Music

Google Music is in Beta currently. During beta, users can upload a maximum of 20,000 songs to the service. Google has not revealed anything yet about pricing. Music is uploaded with the help of the Music Manager software that is available for PC and Mac (appears to be running with the help of Wine under Linux as well).

The service is currently restricted to the United States. It is also the only service without online store integration. Users need to keep in mind that the service is labeled as beta at this point in time. While that is typical of Google, it means that it is possible that Google will make changes to the final product. The company has already announced that the service will only be free during beta. It is therefor likely that a pricing structure similar to that of Amazon’s Cloud Drive is introduced after the beta.

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon users get 5 Gigabytes of free space, and an unlimited amount of space for their Amazon mp3 purchases. It is the only service where users can purchase additional storage, at $1 per Gigabyte per year.

Like Google Music, Amazon supports web streaming of music. It is possible to store other media and documents on the cloud drive as well, which is similar to iCloud’s offering. Music is uploaded via Amazon’s Cloud Player or a compatible web browser.

Closing Words

Every service has its advantages and disadvantages. Apple’s iCloud is tied to iTunes, and you need to pay if you want all of your music to be available in the cloud and not only your music purchased on iTunes. Google Music is currently in beta and it is not clear how much it will cost when it comes out. Amazon’s Cloud Drive feels like a mix of the two other services. It can be used to store more than just music just like Apple’s iCloud offers and supports web streaming like Google Music.

What’s your take on the three services and music in the cloud in general?

Or, you could install the Firefox add-on Find That Band which puts all those options directly at your disposal. All you need to do is to right-click a name, band or artist for instance, and select one of the available search links that point to music related websites.

You get some standard choices like Wikipedia, iTunes or Amazon Mp3, but also several destinations that you may see utilized in an extension like this for the first time. This includes the popular music blog aggregator The Hype Machine, Allmusic, Discogs or iLike.

Just select a destination from the menu and you are set to go. The selected service opens in a new tab in the browser. The searches are pretty dead on all the time. I did about thirty searches during the test and they all returned the right pages on the selected sites.

The mixture is solid, even though some popular options like YouTube or VKontakte are missing from the menu. You can modify the order of items and their appearance in the add-on’s preferences. Here it is possible to hide websites and services so that they do not appear, and move the rest up or down. The results do depend on the text you highlight though. You can use the add-on to discover new artists based on words that you like, which is something new as well I think.

One thing that is not that great is that the music search options are always displayed on top of the right-click context menu if text is selected. This does not make sense all the time, especially if you only highlight a letter or two, or a whole sentence or paragraph. That’s something that needs improvement. You can remove the clutter partially by enabling the folder option in the preferences which puts all visible search options in a folder so that only one entry is displayed on the initial right-click.

Find That Band is nevertheless an interesting add-on for music enthusiasts who often search for band and artist information on the web. What I personally like most is the ability to look up textual information and open websites where you can play songs of the highlighted artist.

FindThatBand can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

In Free Music Downloads, we cover music portals that offer direct downloads of free music. This is basically an update for the 2008 guide How To Increase Your Music Collection Free (And Legally).

Free Music Downloads

If you look at sites that offer free music downloads you notice that the majority hosts music by lesser known artists. I personally would see that as a chance, not a restriction. Sure, you won’t find the latest Take That or Madonna on those sites, but that does not necessarily mean that the music is of less quality, or less enjoyable.

One of the largest websites that offers free music downloads is Jamendo. The music portal, at the time of writing, hosts more than 300,000 music tracks, which are all freely available.

Even better, you do not even need an account to download full albums or songs. Downloads are provided directly or as legal music torrents that you can download in your Bittorrent software.

You should consider supporting those independent artists if you like the music. You can be sure that the money reaches them directly.

Alternatives:

• CCMixter – Remixes licensed under Creative Commons.
• ClearBits – Legal music torrents, check out the Netlabel Music category on site as well for more free music downloads.
• Free Music Archive – Covers free music from all genres, no album downloads.
• Live Music Archive – A section on Archive.org that hosts live music that you can freely download. This does include popular artists and bands.
• Unsigned Band Web – Music from bands that have no record contract. Thousands of songs available.

Music Blogs

Another excellent source to download free music are music blogs. A good starting point is the website The Hype Machine which aggregates new music postings from many popular music blogs. You cannot download music directly on the website though but can follow links to the music blogs to do that there.

Below is a selection of music blogs that post direct music links. If you search the web you find many similar sites. A good starting point is the link section of the sites linked below, or a site like Hypem which acts as an aggregator.

• Bottom of the glass – Regularly updated music blog with direct mp3 links
• Faronheit – Chicago based music blog, regularly updated, direct music downloads.
• MP3 Hugger – Daily free music downloads and reviews.
• Sonic Masala – Another music blog, uploads music to file hosting sites.
• Spinner – Music blog with free direct mp3 downloads and reviews.
• The Music Ninja – Daily music updates.

Record Internet Radio

One of the easiest options to download free music is to record Internet radio. This is legal in most countries. Internet Radio has become a popular source to play music online in recent years thanks to the rise of broadband connections and flatrates. While you can only listen to one station at a time, you can record multiple, usually only limited by the speed of your Internet connection and the performance of the computer.

Many Internet Radio stations are now offering high quality audio streams, which should satisfy users who only listen to high quality music.

Probably the biggest usability issue is that you cannot pick a specific song or artist. You only pick a station based on genre or quality, and download random songs from it. Some tools, like Streamwriter make use of wishlists to reduce the randomness.

One of the best tools for recording Internet radio is Streamwriter. The free program comes with everything one would need to get started. It offers a channel list of Radio stations, abilities to record multiple radio stations at once, filters to only download music of a specific quality level and a wishlist to download songs that you really want.

Alternatives:

• Phonostar – Record more than 6000 Internet radio stations.
• Stripper – a StreamRipper frontend in Java.
• Stream Harvester – stations need to be added manually.
• Tapin Radio – simple music player and recorder

Convert Music Videos

Websites like YouTube host millions of music videos, uploaded officially by record companies and artists, or fans. The videos are automatically stored on your computer’s cache when you view them. You can convert the music videos into audio files with the help of programs. The core benefit of this method is that you can download and convert music selectively.

• Fetch Mp3 is a web service that can be used to convert Youtube videos directly to mp3 music.
• Gazzump – Online service to download from Youtube and convert to mp3.
• Tubequeue – Windows software to download music from Youtube.

Closing Words

I have not included tools and services to download music from popular sites such as Last.fm, Grooveshark or Spotify. Tools exist to download music from these services, but it is questionable if it is legal to download music from those services.

I want to walk you through the upgrade process for Banshee 2.0 on Ubuntu. You don’t have to be using the most recent beta release of 11.04, but you really can’t go back any further than Ubuntu 10.04. With that in mind, let’s see what Banshee 2.0 will bring you and how you can get it installed.

New Features

Here is a list of the new features offered in 2.0.

Artist/Album Browser Track Actions: Finally you can right-click on an artist or album and select an action to act upon the selection. From that list you can Add to play queue, Play after, Add to play list, write to CD, edit track information, and more.

‘Play After’ Queue Options: From the Play After menu option you can insert a track or an entire album after the currently playing track. This makes listening to must on the fly very easy.

User Interface Improvements: Several changes have been made with a goal of having a clearner and user-friendly UI. These changes include:

• Removal of active source titlebar.
• Search now beside volume button.
• Smaller icons.
• Hidden counts for libraries.
• Name group-separators..
• Seek slider and search area can be resized.
• Podcast episodes now shown in grid and include descriptive lines.

Ubuntu One: The Ubuntu One Music Store is no longer an extension, but a part of the core Banshee application. No more enabling this feature. SoundMenu extension also enjoys this same change.

Subtitles: Support has been added for embedded and external subtitles.

Enhancements

There have been a ton of enhancements that are now available in Banshee 2.0. Some of these enhancements include:

• Support Amazon Cloud Player browsing and downloading
• Remember sources’ column configuration
• ‘Shuffle by’ respects user-selected artist/album
• MultimediaKeys: Support Pause, FastForward, Rewind, Repeat and Shuffle
• Album grid has tooltips for ellipsized text
• MusicBrainz cover art search supports CDBaby and Jamendo
• Allow to clear the play queue while in Populate mode
• Add a new ‘Recently Played’ default smart playlist
• Blank track editor spin buttons when 0
• Remove Home and Photo folder import sources
• Improved write-metadata-to-file performance
• Many improvements and fixes to the F1 user guide
• Add support for handling u1ms:// links
• AmazonMp3.Store: amazon.ca support
• Daap: Keep a list of recently used remote servers
• Windows build (alpha-quality) now available
• Mac build (beta-quality) has been updated

Installation

The installation of Banshee 2.0 is actually quite simple, if you follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/banshee-daily
3. Issue the command sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

You will notice, during the installation process, the Ubuntu One extension will be removed, this is normal and must be done, since this service is now rolled into the core.

Once the above commands are run open up Banshee and you should now see a much-improved interface as well as a far better performing player.

The userscript Soundcloud Super adds options to download all songs from SoundCloud on every page of the music hosting service. The userscript adds a “Use right click save as to download” link to every song header on SoundCloud which links directly to the mp3 file on the SoundCloud server. A right-click on the file and the selection of Save Link or Save As opens the browser’s save as dialog window to save the song to the local hard drive.

The download link is displayed on every page, both for visitors of the service and logged in users.

Soundcloud Super has a second feature, SoundCloud recommendations which taps into Easyrec’s recommendation engine to display song recommendations for the songs that you are playing or looking at over at SoundCloud.

The userscript works right out of the box under Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Chrome users can simply install the userscript and start using it right away, Firefox users need the Greasemonkey add-on or a comparable add-on like Scriptish before they can install the userscript in the browser.

Soundcloud Super is available on the userscript project website.

Users who prefer desktop applications can take a closer look at SoundCloud Downloader for Windows, Mac and Linux (with emulation) which is a free desktop application that can download multiple songs at once from SoundCloud.

You need to paste a SoundCloud url into the form under (1) and click on load afterwards. The application scans the page for songs and display every song found under (2). Check the songs that you want to download and specify a download directory under (3) before you click on the download button to download all selected songs. (via Caschy)

The latter offers greater flexibility and usually means that it is easier to locate a specific song or artist. Some music players and organizers on the other hand mitigate the factor, as they take music from all places and sort them automatically by artist, genre and other parameters.

Read on if you are not using iTunes, Mediamonkey or another music organizer, or would prefer your music to be in one location for easier access (for instance when copying music to your mp3 player).

Mp3 Folder Structure Maker to the rescue. The freeware can re-sort folders full of music based on your specifications.

The program interface looks a bit messy, but it is not actually that bad once you get used to it. You start by adding a directory, or individual files to the music list. You can add multiple folders and files and process them all together. Subfolders are automatically parsed and processed which means that you could theoretically pick the root folder of the drive, e.g. f: and wait until the software has processed the whole folder structure.

All mp3 files are then displayed in the list, along with artist, title, album and file name information. The program, as the name suggests, will only add mp3 files to the listing which could be a deal breaker for users who have part or all of their music in different formats.

The new folder and file structure is defined in the lower part of the interface.

The program uses variables to create the file and folder structure. Available are:

%original% – the original file or folder name
%artist% – the name of the artist or band
%title% – the title of the song
%album% – the name of the album
%firstletter% – the first letter of the artist
%year% – the year of release
%genre% – the genre of the album

It is now possible to define the new folder structure. You could for instance use %artist%\%album% to sort the music by artist and bands, and place all albums in subfolders of the artist folder. Big collections could start with firstletter instead followed by artist and album.

It is possible to keep the original file name, or change it as well based on the available variables.

The output directory needs to be defined as well, the files will be copied and not moved to the directory, keep that in mind if you have little disk space left on your drives. The program displays an example in the interface based on the user’s selection which should be used to check the new sorting to verify that the structure works for you.

It may be necessary to run the application with elevated privileges. This was the case on my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit PC. The program would not save preferences and process the music otherwise.

Words of Advise

It is a good idea to check for missing tags, especially the ones used in your new sorting structure to avoid that some files are not included in the end. Mp3 Folder Structure Maker can display those files. A click on Bad tagged Files opens a new window where the files are displayed. You may also want to make sure that band and artist names are identical for all albums, as you may end up with different artist directories otherwise.

A log file is created in the end that lists all errors and problems during the copying and renaming.

Mp3 Folder Structure Maker is available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It runs fine on 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

The following guide reviews the best extensions, userscripts and programs to enhance the Youtube Music experience tenfold.

Youtube Music Player

[Firefox]

Youtube Music Player is a Firefox extension that adds controls to the browser to add and play music videos from Youtube directly. Youtube does not have to be open at all. The extension displays playback controls and music information in the status bar / add-on bar, and the music playlist in a sidebar that does not need to be open when music is playing.

Music is added to the sidebar by drag and drop or by using the built-in search. Every Youtube url can be dragged directly to the sidebar. Playlists can be saved and loaded which makes it possible to maintain multiple playlists on the local computer. The developer plans to integrate playlists from existing Youtube accounts in a future update.

Chrome Media Player

[Google Chrome]

A complete music player for Youtube songs, accessible from a button in the Chrome toolbar. The player has a search and all controls one would expect. May require manipulation of the Global Security Settings of Macromedia Flash.

Lyrics

YouTube Music Video Lyrics

[Google Chrome]

Youtube Music Video Lyrics is an extension for the Google Chrome web browser that ads a lyrics button to the Chrome toolbar. A click on the button while a music video is playing will display the song’s lyrics if they can be found. Chances are pretty high if the song is popular.

Youtube Karaoke rebirth!

[Google Chrome]

This Chrome extension adds lyrics to popular Youtube videos. Instead of just showing the lyrics it displays them in a Karaoke like fashion for users who like to sing along.

Misc Youtube music apps

Youtube Looper

[Google Chrome]

This Google Chrome extension adds a loop button to the controls on Youtube. It can be used to loop a music video indefinitely.

Youtube Music, Social Extension

This is a list of extensions that utilize social media sites, for instance to show your friends what you have been listening to on Youtube.

Last.fm Scrobbler

[Google Chrome]

Scrobbles Youtube music videos which basically means that Last.fm records that you have played the song.

Like.fm Social Music Tracker

[Google Chrome]

A similar extension that reports the music to Like.fm. The extension supports multiple sites and applications, not only Youtube. Also available for the Firefox Internet browser.

Userscripts

Youtube to mp3

Converts and downloads Youtube music videos to mp3 format.

Last.fm + YouTube

Adds icons to Last.fm’s website next to music tracks, albums and artists that redirects to a Youtube search so that the song, music from the album or artist can be played on the video site.

External Websites

Jukesy

Excellent web services that utilizes Youtubes’ vast music collection that offers genre based radio stations (it is all there from melodic death metal to music from the 60′s over Brit Pop to Bossa Nova) and a search. Jukesy plays the video in full screen in a tab in the web browser. Music is played constantly unless wanted otherwise by the user. The usual controls are available on the site. While it is still necessary to switch to the tab to pause or skip a song it is otherwise completely automatic. Pick a station and the music will play for as long as you keep the tab open.

Zebralizer

Zebralizer is very similar in functionality to Jukesy. Pick a genre or search for an artist or song and you will be presented with your personal radio station that plays non-stop for as long as you want. The full video is shown on the page next to options to add more custom music to the playlist.

Muziic

Muziic is not as automated as the other two services in the External Websites category. Users need to add songs to the playlist that then play on auto-pilot. The service offers a desktop application for Windows which offers a similar functionality.

Youtube Disco

An official Youtube feature that can be used to play a number of songs on Youtube without or only little initial configuration.

Download Youtube Music

It is not possible to add all extensions and applications that offer Youtube video downloading features. We have a separate guide for those under Download Youtube Videos here at the site. A recommendation is the Firefox extension Download Helper which is compatible with many different media sites, not only Youtube. Please note that the majority of browser extensions offers to download the Youtube videos, which would then need to be converted on the local system into mp3 if required.

Have we missed a tool in the overview? If you think we did let us know in the comments so that we can evaluate it.

Because of this switch, I thought I should give a bit of an update on where Banshee is now as a multi-media player. What are the nifty features that will easily win over the hearts of the Rhythmbox faithful? Let’s take a look.

Banshee features

Outside of the standard media-player features, you will find the following in Banshee:

• Cover art.
• BPM detection.
• Play youtube videos within Banshee.
• Subscribe to podcasts.
• Fix broken metadata.
• Context pane.

And much more. There are so many great features to this media player, you might be wondering what stopped you from using it before?

BPM

There are plenty of user-types that require Beats Per Minute (BPM) detection. DeeJays and fitness instructors are two groups that come to mind. When you play a song in Banshee the BPM is not auto-detected. You actually have to tell Banshee to detect the BPM. How is that done? Follow these steps:

1. 

   Figure 1

   Right click on a track and select  Edit Track Information.

2. Click on the Extra tab (see Figure 1).
3. Click the Detect button.
4. Click the Play button (next to the Detection button).
5. Very shortly after the song starts playing the BPM will show up and you can click Save.

If the BPM is not detected, you can also manually detect the BPM by clicking the Play button and then clicking the Tap button to the beat of the music and the BPM will be set.

Adding podcasts

Although this feature isn’t very intuitive at first, once you know how, the task is incredibly simple. Banshee has built in Miro which is a great place to find podcasts. So to add a podcast follow these steps:

1. Click on the Miro link in the left nav.
2. Navigate through Miro until you find a podcast you want to subscribe to.
3. When you find a podcast you like, click the ADD FEED TO YOUR SIDEBAR button.
4. From the left nav click on the Podcast button.
5. Navigate to the podcast you want to listen to and double click on it.

If you have a specific URL for a podcast you want to add you can do the following:

1. Click on the Podcast button in the left nav.
2. Click Add Podcast button in the upper right corner of the window.
3. Copy the URL in the resulting window and select how you want the podcast to be downloaded.

Context pane

This pane is incredibly useful in discovering new music (or information about the band/track you are currently playing). To view this pane click View > Context Pane. The Context Pane will allow you to see (based on the track/disk you are playing):

1. Last.fm recommendations.
2. Wikipedia information about the artist.
3. Related youtube videos.

Final thoughts

Like I said, at first I was skeptical about the switch to Banshee. But after using it for a few weeks I have discovered that Banshee is, in fact, a much richer experience than is Rhythmbox. Give Banshee a go and I think you will agree.

Multiple file types is usually not a problem on the computer itself as software music players are capable of playing all of the popular music files. Problems usually arise when music needs to be transferred on media devices such as mp3 players.

Music converters are used to convert music from one format into a different format.

A first tech preview of the popular music converter LameXP 4.0 has been released a few days ago. LameXP is basically a frontend for the mp3 encoder Lame with support for additional decoders.

The tech preview has been released as a time limited demo which means that it will only work for 14 days. The developer plans to release a new version in that timeframe that users can update to.

Not all planned features are integrated in the tech preview as well. It is possible to load audio files into the interface with the built-in file browser or drag and drop. LameXP 4.0 supports a wide variety of file types from mp3 and wave over flac and ogg/vorbis to wma, mp4 and aac.

The endocder, quality settings, meta data and output directory are all defined in the program options. Supported are currently conversions to mp3, ogg vorbis, nero AAC (if installed), FLAC and Wave.

Meta Data can be added manually which will supersede meta data that is already existing in the files. A click on the Encode Now button starts the encoding. Encoded files are saved in the selected output directory. LameXP creates a playlist file automatically with an option to disable the creation in the meta data preferences.

Users who are interested in the tech preview of LameXP 4.0 find the official release thread at the Doom9 forum.

Most of the music on Grooveshark gets uploaded by users of the service.

GrooveDown is a third party program for the Windows operating system, which works on Linux and Mac with emulation, that taps directly into Grooveshark’s vast music library. The portable program can be used to search for music on Grooveshark and download selected songs to the local computer system.

The portable application is as simple as it can be. It begins with a search term for a band, artist, song or album. GroveDown pulls the information from Grooveshark and displays them in list form in its interface.

A double-click on individual songs adds them to the download queue. Users who want to download everything can click the add All button to add all songs that have been found to the queue.

Downloads are not started until the Download button is activated in the program interface. All songs are downloaded to the program directory and sorted into artist and album folders.

The download location and folder structure can be customized in the program settings. The latest version can also pull the most popular song listing from Grooveshark.

GrooveDown is a simple program that can only be used to find and download music, but that’s exactly how it was designed by its developer. And simple does not mean that it is bad, on the contrary. The application delivers exactly what was promised in a fast and reliable way.

The Grooveshark downloader is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows, and by using emulation also with Mac and Linux systems. Downloads are available at the developer website which links to file hosting services. (via)

Nobody knows that the annoucement will be but the concensus on the web, and I’d agree with them all, is to expect a subscription-based streaming service.

To be honest this could be an extremely good thing to help get people away for their frankly awful effort that is the iTunes software itself.  It remains to be seen though just how mobile network carriers will see the move.  The majority of purchases through the iTunes store will now take place on devices such as the iPhone and adding a streaming service could place significant stresses on mobile networks that have already had to introduce usage caps for some smartphone users.

Some people are also speculating that the move could see the beginning of the end for the MP3.  To be honest I would say that mobile and home broadband connections need to get much faster and more reliable for this to happen, though new technologies are already beginning to be introduced that can help on the road to this.  The CD and vinyl LP were hard to kill off because people liked a physical ‘thing’ they could hold and collect.  It can very easily be argued that people won’t have any such attachment to a digital music or video file.

Whatever the announcement, and however (un)forgettable it turns out to be, we’ll bring you the news here at gHacks.net