But even the best will still have room for improvement. I was looking for a GeekTool script to display my “currently playing” song’s data on the desktop when I found TunesArt. After playing with the app for a while, I consider TunesArt as one of those must-have iTunes software downloads.

And combined with GeekTool, TunesArt would create a lovely and functional iTunes desktop.

Tunes at your finger tips

TunesArt is a menubar application that will do its job while sitting quietly in the background. If you click on it when iTunes is not active, you’ll have the option to turn on iTunes.

And if iTunes is running, you’ll get full iTunes control and more right from the menubar; including the ability to set the song rating, option to display lyrics, title and artist of the currently playing song.

One of the true strengths of TunesArt is the ability to assign shortcut key to various iTunes control. So, even if your fingers are busy typing your next best seller, you could tell iTunes to skip the track that you hate without even have to leave the word processor.

To activate this ability, you have to go to TunesArt Preferences, and open the “Shortcuts” menu. Check the “Enable Hotkeys” option, and click in the shortcut fields to assign your preferred combination for each available control.

The Preferences window gives you many other options to tinker with. From the General menu, you can choose whether iTunes will launch and quit along with TunesArt and whether you want to fetch lyrics from the net and attach it to the songs with no lyrics.

On the eye-candy side, we have Cover Art and Notification menu. The Cover Art menu lets you choose which cover art style you want displayed on the desktop.

Meanwhile, the Notification menu deals with how (and for how long) you want TunesArt to display notifications every time iTunes plays the next song. You can use TunesArt’s own notification, or Growl (or both).

TunesArt notification will appear under the menubar icon.

If you want to, you can activate the Last.fm feature that will connect you to Last.fm and send the list of songs you’ve listened to and recommend other songs based on the list.

It’s obvious that you need to have a Last.fm account before you can use this feature.

Tunes on your desktop

TunesArt  is an iTunes software downloads that will place a cover art image of the playing song on your desktop. And if you activate the feature from Preferences – Cover Art, playback controls will appear everytime you hover your mouse near the cover art display.

The lyrics display is a nice addition for those who like to sing along. You could edit (and add) the words directly from this window. TunesArt also has a (supposedly) very nice feature to add lyrics to songs automatically from the internet. But from during my few days of trying the app, this feature was always non-functional.

User could do a quick search of iTunes library via the search window and jump to the chosen song. Assuming that you have set the shortcut key combination, all the navigationa could be done without lifting a single finger from the keyboard.

The geek and the tune combo

As I mentioned at the beginning, I use TunesArt in conjunction with GeekTool script to display iTunes information. The duet is proven to work wonders in beautifying my desktop.

The GeekTool script that I use is:

osascript -e ‘tell application “iTunes” to if player state is playing then get XXXXXX of current track’

where XXXXXX is one of the metadata of the song such as: name, artist, album, etc. You can get more metadata fields by referring to iTunes’ column headings.

Please refer to my previous article about GeekTool on how to utilize the scripts.

Some drawbacks

Please note that you will not be able to close iTunes if you are using the above iTunes script in GeekTool. The script will keep on re-opening iTunes everytime you try to close it. This issue will not be a problem for those who always keep iTunes open. The possible solution is to put the scripts in a different group with other script so you could uncheck and deactivate them anytime without disturbing the rest of the scripts.

I’ve also mentioned one bug that I found in TunesArt — fetching lyrics. Maybe because it’s still in its beta version, the lyric searching feature of TunesArt is still not working. Hopefully the developer will fix this issue in the future release.

Personally, the drawbacks are minor issues. I found the GeekTool – TunesArt combination to be truly amazing – a great alternative to Bowtie in terms of appearance, and to GimmeSomeTunes (mentioned here) in terms of functionality.

Do you know other alternative iTunes software downloads to enrich your iTunes experience? Please share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• GeekTool – Display System Information on Mac in Style (4)
• Who Is Connected To My iTunes Library? (Windows) (12)
• Wally- Awesome Wallpaper Rotator for Windows, Mac & Linux (15)
• Two Free Apps To Sync ANY MP3 Player with iTunes (19)
• Three Cool Desktops from MakeUseOf Readers (33)

Lala has become my main jukebox and is used ten times more than I use iTunes. With my setup, it doesn’t take much effort to access my Lala account. This article explains the method I use as a Mac user. I’m sure there are similar applications for PC users.

What You Need

FluidApp
Butler
Airfoil (optional)

Each of the applications, except for Airfoil, can be downloaded for free. Donations, of course, are accepted.

Creating a Site Specific Browser for Lala.com

The Lala music player lacks a dedicated desktop web application to play music. You must sign into your account and use its web application. To get a dedicated player of sorts onto your desktop, you can use FluidApp, a “site specific browser” (SSB), for a dedicated website or page. Making your Lala account homepage a SSB is like making it an application, which means it’s less likely to get lost in the clutter of all your other web pages on your desktop, especially if you use some of its advance features that I will describe below.

Instructions for creating an SSB using the application are clearly explained on its website, so I won’t rehash them here. But the following are some extra instructions for how to specifically use FluidApp to create a “Lala Player” on your desktop.

• First off, when you’re creating a SSB for the Lala music player, you’ll want a well designed icon, so download Goggans’s design posted on his Flickr photostream (once you use the Fluid creation, it won’t have the black border that you see here.)

• After your SSB is created, you can customize the browser some.
• Your SSB includes a menu bar and a set of preferences similar to what you find on any web browsing application. In the FluidApp preferences you can choose to style the window of your SSB as I have done here. I like using the black top framing or “HUD” for all my SSBs. That makes them distinctive from my main web browsing windows.

• There’s also an option in Preferences (click on Behavior Preferences) in which you can have a SSB window immediately hide when it’s not in the foreground. Using this option means you can open up your Lala Player, select a playlist or album to play, and when you click to another application, the browser window gets out of the way so you can get back to what you’re doing.

Use Butler for Quick Access

Like any other application, your Lala.com FluidApp will appear in your dock for easy access. But in my opinion, using a launcher application like Butler or Quicksilver provides even faster access.

Butler allows you to assign a Hot Key or Hot Corner to an application to launch. Since I’m more of a mouse user, I assigned a Hot Corner to my Lala app. It’s easy to do: Start up Butler and click on its Configuration tab. Drag the Lala FluidApp to the Hidden section. With the application selected, assign a Hot Key or Hot Corner that works best for you.

AirFoil (optional)

Lala is beta testing an iPhone application for its site, but until the app is released, you can use a free iPhone application called AirFoil Speakers Touch to hear music on your Lala account on your iPhone or iPod touch. The only catch with using the AirFoil Speakers is that you have to purchase Airfoil for Mac ($25), which sends audio remotely from your Mac to its mobile counterpart speaker application. This is a cheaper solution than getting Apple‘s limited AirPort Express, which can only be used with iTunes. Of course, you can also AirFoil to stream any other audio coming from your computer.

So what do you think of this? If you’re a Lala member, drop me a few comments and let me know what you think about the site and this set up.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• How To Move Your Music Library Online with Moof (11)
• How To Listen To Millions Of Songs For Free On Your Desktop (39)
• DJ The Easy Way With Top 3 Sites To Make Music Playlists (8)
• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)

Copyright and DRM issues notwithstanding, downloading music off the net is one of the most popular web trend. As Google says, two of the top 10 queries in the U.S. are music-related. That’s probably the same around the world. So where do you go in search of your music?

Do you carry out a generic search using one of the search engines? Do you use a specific MP3 search engine? Maybe you picked out one from our Free MP3 Downloads: 7 Websites That Make It Really Easy post. Or you just like to stream it over the waves using the online music players. Thank God, there are options galore for the music lover.

Songr is a desktop search software that will not only search out the right song for you but also downloads it for you.

But why a desktop alternative to download songs, I ask?

Music can be downloaded via P2P software too and you can also use MP3 search engines on the web. P2P software to download a single off the cuff track is bit of overkill and MP3 search engines are great but they might have a bad server day. Also, Songr offers some features that bump up its appeal in my ears. Songr has three noteworthy features which make downloading a single click affair.

1. Meta-search with 10 online MP3 search engines

Give Songr a song title in its search box placed on the top right and the software taps into 10 MP3 search engines to get the song. It gathers the results, removes duplicates and displays it all on its frugal interface.

Take your fine-tooth comb and go through the results which can be bracketed according to Duration, Bitrate, Size and Relevance (just click the column heads to arrange). The low bitrate results are grayed out and usually, you will find the songs with a higher relevance on top of the heap. If you choose to buy the tracks, you can check them out at Amazon and Rhapsody using the shortcut from the menu.

The search engines used by Songr are displayed in the screenshot below taken from the Songr features page.

2. YouTube audio extraction

Songr plucks out audio tracks as MP3 from YouTube videos using some sort of a FFmpeg converter. Songr uses JusthearIt.com’s engine to tap into YouTube’s resources. You can see it in the results as a little video icon. You get two options with a right click – Play it as a video directly on YouTube or download it as an MP3 audio track, an AVI video or a MPEG video to your computer.

You also get to choose between the HQ version and the slower but better HD version (if available).

3. Search by lyrics

Songr uses Bing as a search service to get you the songs when you type in a few words from the songs. According to the software’s FAQ – Songr searches the words you typed in Bing plus adding “lyrics” to the query, reads the titles of the results, filters those using heuristic techniques and tries to restore the original case.

Well as long as I get the results! I got some hits and misses with this one. I guess it boils down to Bing’s penetration and the lyrics with the song’s search engine indexed existence.

If I could add a number four, it would be its simple ad-free interface. That’s what I liked – no glitz, no glamour but just focused on the job. There isn’t anything by way of settings. It uses the system’s default music player to play the track. Such basic software should be light on resources, which it is – consuming about 3.5MB of memory at its peak YouTube conversion job.

We had covered a desktop app for searching MP3 ditties before too. You might like to try out Clickster and look at it against Songr’s performance.

Does this simple software deserve an encore?

Songr (v1.2) is a measly 452KB download and it plays along with Windows XP, Vista and 7. It only asks for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Free MP3 Downloads: 7 Websites That Make It Really Easy (20)
• Find A Song Title Just by Humming The Lyrics (19)
• Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks (3)
• Use Rapidstack To Find Favorite Rapidshare Download Links (14)
• The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online (26)

All of my files come from different locations or methods of ripping, so they are all different. One day, I will have some time on my hands (one day I hope!). With that time, I would fix up and normalize my MP3 collection – why, what would you do with that free time?

So I downloaded an application from Sourceforge called MP3 Diags – a one-stop shop to analyzing and fixing up your MP3 music tracks. Check out the application here. It is a 6.4MB installer which sets up pretty quickly.

Once you get the application installed you will see this screen:

Navigate to where your music is stored. You can have the application create backups of the files it is modifying in a different directory with the backup option. You can point the program to a different settings file as well from this screen.

I selected my folder and hit the OK button. I am a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of guy so I didn’t opt for a backup. I would recommend that you do opt for a backup – just to be safe.

You will see MP3 Diags running through your files one at a time like so:

When it is complete, you will see all your music tracks listed and the problems each track contains:

On the right hand side, is a series of check marks denoting issues like so:

Checking out the issue, it turns out it is that the MP3 does not have a APIC frame to hold it’s image. Lots of my MP3s suffer from this issue and others. By highlighting a music track, you can see all of the associated issues.

Now even though the application lets you fix the problems, it is by no way automatic. You have to use the buttons at the top of the screen to fix your problems.

Each of those buttons has a function which I will go through here but beforehand, remember the application is in beta so you should run a backup. Also if you simply left-click, all the visible files get processed. However, it is possible to process only the selected files. To do that, either keep SHIFT pressed down while clicking or use the right button, as described in its user guide.

The first button has lots of functionality as you can see below. Choose one and run with it:

The buttons labeled 1 through 4 each have custom tasks associated with them that you can see by mouse hovering them. I did this for the first option below:

Then I ran it:

I hit ‘Yes’ and it did it’s thing. It worked awesome, not as quick as I might have liked but this baby really does work. And it can fix any issues with your music files.

Next up, Normalization:
Normalization needs to be run in album mode on a single album. Or you will see this error:

Next up, tags – and the MP3 Diags tag editor. Hit the Tag button and off you go:

This is a console for editing and downloading tags. It has multiple sites to grab your tags from.

All in all, this a really comprehensive MP3 fixer for any music lover who really wants full control over their files. What do you use for fixing up your music files or their tags? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)
• Search the Internet for Music with Clickster (10)
• Remove MP3 ID3 Music Tags With ID3 Tag Remover (18)
• Normalize MP3 Volume Levels with MP3Gain (10)
• Join MP3 Files Together with Merge MP3 (19)

The makers of this Internet music player have perhaps got the right note when they describe it as iTunes meets YouTube meets Spotify.

TubeRadio.fm is YouTube at its core with the look of iTunes. And functionally it offers the streaming access to millions of songs like Spotify. It’s better as an alternative because Spotify is not available in a lot of countries including my own. The free web app has Last.fm behind it.

We have many online jukeboxes and we can always go to YouTube and ‘listen’ to the tracks…

So Where Exactly Should We Put TubeRadio.fm?

TubeRadio.fm wraps it all up and comes out as a slick dedicated Internet music player for YouTube. But the power of the web app is not merely playing the music but it’s in the way it lets you find and organize the music videos. Search for your favorite artist or band and add the track to your custom playlist. From just this single search, you can get all their available albums and build a complete playlist with a couple of clicks. And another click can take you to Amazon if you desire to purchase the albums. The whole process takes seamless seconds.

Let’s Build Our First Playlist

Let’s dive in (with a free registration) and see if TubeRadio.fm can walk the talk. Let’s build a playlist with some tracks of a favorite band of mine.

1. The first snapshot is of the TubeRadio.fm interface. The iTunes like interface should be intuitive enough for a music lover.



2. Start by searching for your favorite artist or band using the YouTube/TubeRadio.fm search field. The search yields a lots of tracks and you can mouse over them to see thumbnail previews of the videos.



3. You can click on any of the video tracks to listen to the track or watch it in the YouTube player at the bottom half of the screen. Or better you can make yourself a playlist. Making a playlist is simple – give a name in the new playlist box and click Add. Playlists can be renamed, moved up or down, deleted and shared.



4. To build the playlist, you can individually add the singles by clicking on the Add to Playlist button next to the track. But if you want to really build up the playlist go for the Discography tab. The Discography search gets you the entire catalogue of albums released that’s available on YouTube. You just need to click and select the albums you want and then click the little plus which says Add Albums to Playlist. From the little box which pops up, you can build a new playlist or add it to the existing ones.



5. The videos get processed into your playlist and a notification pops up with the status.



You can get into your playlist and fine tune it (Edit, Delete, and Find Replacement) by clicking the little gear icon next to each track. Your own playlists (My Playlists) are searchable from the search box on top.

The Shared Feeling

These days no web app is complete without a community. TubeRadio.fm lets you share public playlists. Enter the name of the band and click on Public Playlists. Click on it to see the tracks and click on the Subscribe button to bring it under your Shared Playlists. Shared playlists also get updated across the board if there are any changes to it. Unsubscribing from one also takes just a click. You can also rate the shared playlist by giving it stars.

What about the Player Itself?

If it’s the visual experience you want, you will be disappointed because the YouTube video player gets the shrinking treatment. It takes up very little space at the bottom of the browser. TubeRadio.fm is more about listening rather than watching. Of course, you can click on that little video and open it up in all its YouTube glory in a separate browser window. What I liked though was the extra information (Lyrics, Bio, Similar bands, Releases) that’s available with a click.

The track management features are simple. You can sort the tracks by clicking on the columns or custom sort them to play in definite order or just keep them shuffled. You can move the videos around between playlists and edit video information by clicking on the gear icon. Don’t like the video; then just replace it with another one from the same gear icon.

The Final Note

TubeRadio.fm is a wonderful attempt to bring all of YouTube’s musical goodies under one interface. It’s smooth and not difficult to navigate. For iTunes users it will be easier still because of the similar looking interface. The video player does not get much prominence but then it was supposed to be about the audio in the video anyways.

The only problem that might raise its head is with the quality of audios themselves. Not all YouTube videos have high bitrates. Bitrates in the region of 128kbps should be good for casual listening. Little things like the high definition tag on the playlist videos and YouTube star ratings for the videos would have made selection and sorting easier. But that’s minor bellyaching when the web app has the other nice things on offer.

Play TubeRadio.fm and let us know if this Internet music player struck the right chords with you.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Jogli – Probably The Coolest Music Search Engine (6)
• How To Move Your Music Library Online with Moof (11)
• How To Make Lala Your Music Player of Choice (7)
• How To Listen To Millions Of Songs For Free On Your Desktop (39)
• DJ The Easy Way With Top 3 Sites To Make Music Playlists (8)

More and more, media is making the switch from digital storage to the cloud. Away with digital storage, here comes the internet!

This change is becoming ever more apparent with online music stores and streaming audio portals springing up all around.

There’s a musical buffet waiting for the internet audiophile, but if you aren’t properly informed, you can be sure you’re missing out.

MakeUseOf is proud to present The Internet Music Guidebook, a manual for the internet audiophile. An introduction to the World Wide Web of Sound!

In fourty illustrated pages, Will Mueller from willm.me tells you all you need to know about free internet listening to music, streaming audio to your computer, and free download music sites to get all your favorite songs and albums in a whim. Learn how to share music with others and track a band’s performance and album releases!

Don’t wait, download the Internet Music Guidebook now in PDF, to view it offline and on your computer, or read it online on Scribd.com.

No strings attached, this free eBook is entirely for you to enjoy! If you liked this release, you should also check out our other MakeUseOf PDF Manuals.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The BIG Book of iTunes [Free PDF Download] (49)
• How To Build A Great Media Center For Your Home [PDF] (15)
• Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks (3)
• Who Is Connected To My iTunes Library? (Windows) (12)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)

For digital-age music lovers, the biggest advantage that iTunes has is the ability to play well with large-scale music collections. Add-sort-search and other library management tasks could be done easily and flawlessly.

But to some people, two of those great features become iTunes major limitations. First, iTunes only manages and synchronizes to Apple music players i.e. iPods. And second, the only store accessible from iTunes is (obviously) Apple’s iTunes Store.

A DoubleTwist Mac Review – Considering the alternative

Not everybody have iPods and/or iPhones. And for those who own one, it’s very likely that they also have other gadgets. To be able to synchronize our music collection to these non-Apple gadgets, we need help from other sources.

There are several alternatives that available for Windows, but the option is more limited for Mac users. So I did some searching and one of the few tools that I managed to find is doubleTwist. We’ve covered it once before.

This app is available for Mac and Windows and promises to give users the ability to synchronize their collection to other multimedia-capable devices. It also provide alternatives to iTunes Store to purchase and download music: Amazon MP3 Store.

Being the opposite of a shopaholic (especially everything related to digital online shopping), I don’t think that I would use the store feature. But I surely could use some help in synchronizing my music and movie collections to my mobile devices.

The first impression

The first time you open doubleTwist, a log-in window will appear. If you already have an account, just fill in your email address and password and click “Log In”.

Or else, click “Create Account” to open the registration window, fill in the needed information and click “Sign Up”.

The first thing that I wanted to check after the main window open is how much of my system memory used by doubleTwist. Users from Windows version reported that this app is not memory-friendly. Sadly, the same thing goes for Mac version that I’ve tried.

It consumes a major portion of the memory, even when it’s idle. I tried to compare it with the idle iTunes and the result is a bit shocking.

But memory-hog aside, let’s see how useful this app really is.

Connecting the devices

I have to admit that I’ve prepared myself to do some copying from my collections into doubleTwist library. At the very least, there should be some folder synchronization process that I must go through. But I was wrong.

You’ll notice that doubleTwist automatically uses the Music folder plus the existing iTunes Music Library and playlists as its own “Music” Library. This really is a nice time saver because no effort is necessary from user’s side.

The same thing goes for doubleTwist’s “Photos” library – it uses your Mac’s Photos folder and iPhoto library;

and “Movies” library that uses your Mac’s Movies folder and iTunes Movie Library.

The developer claims that this app is compatible with hundreds of devices – Blackberries, Androids and Palm Pre are among them – and there is the complete list on their website.

My Windows Mobile phone hasn’t been supported by doubleTwist Mac version yet, but I tried it anyway because many users reported successful media synchronization to unsupported device. But no such luck.

Then I plugged in my MP3 players one by one, and they all appeared on the device list and I could drag and drop my music to them easily. Unfortunately, doubleTwist doesn’t support folders so all the items from every folder are there in one list.

One easy way to manage the transferring process is by creating one playlist for each device that you have, and put your selected songs there. This way, you’ll only need to select the playlist and move the songs to your device in one go.

Wish list and wrap up

This app still has a lot of things to fix and is too far behind in terms of features to be in the same level as iTunes. One feature that I really love to see is the ability to automatically synchronizes a playlist to a specific device. I also hope that the memory hog could be trimmed down to minimum.

So to wrap everything up, I have to say that despite all the negatives, I still think this app would be useful for Mac users who want to make their music collection available to non-Apple devices.

Have you tried doubleTwist? Do you know other alternatives to synchronize your multimedia collection to non-Apple devices? Share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Sync iTunes Library to iPod and your Music Folder (Windows) (10)
• Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (12)
• The BIG Book of iTunes [Free PDF Download] (49)
• Move over iTunes – Mozilla’s Songbird is Here (42)
• Manage your iPod with SharePod (15)

IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library

Listed by PC Magazine as one of the Top 100 Websites of 2009, this site is a treasure trove of free public domain sheet music, as well as a thriving community of music lovers. There are over 39,000 scores for 18,000+ works and thousands are being added every month. You will find multiple versions of sheets for popular works, all available for download as PDF files. While some PDFs are typeset using software and are clearer, some are scanned versions.

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) or Petrucci Music Library has its own forum where you can participate in general music discussion, send score requests, etc. You can also follow the IMSLP on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Suffice it to say that if the sheet music of the classical work you’re looking for is not available here, you’re probably a professional musician who should not be looking for free websites to download sheet music!

The Choral Wiki (CPDL)

The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL), specializes in choral music and has over 10,000 different works. Apart from scores, you can find lyrics, translations, and information about composers. Most scores are available as downloadable PDF files, some are also accompanied by MIDI files, while others are linked to clearly marked external websites.

CPDL supports advanced search so that you can search scores by title, composer, period, genre, voicing, and even lyrics. You can also browse in different ways such as alphabetically, by category, by composer, etc. CPDL is a community driven website, with over 500 contributors, so you can add your own scores and contribute to it.

Mutopia

Mutopia offers free sheet music to print for over 1600 classical works. You will find all the popular composers like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart and works for all types of instruments like Piano, Violin, Guitar, Cello and Organ. You can browse by Instrument, Composer, or Style. The Advanced Search is very impressive, allowing you to search using various filters.

Again, this is a volunteer-driven project, using the LilyPond software to create beautiful A4 or Legal sized sheets. For each work, you get PDF or PostScript files as well as MIDI files, along with a preview image and basic information about the musical work.

Free Sheet Music.Net

This site is a combination of free sheet music hosted within the site and a searchable directory of links to other websites for sheet music. I suggest you browse the sheet music downloads within that site here, rather than experimenting with the search or clicking the advertisements.

The number of sheet music downloads is quite limited. The reason this website was worth including in this list is because of the free articles available here. This assorted collection of articles ranges from beginner guides for different instruments to information about sheet music, instruments, etc.

Free Scores

Free Scores has almost 15,000 free sheet music scores available for download as PDF files. Their search is quite impressive, as you can search in many different ways: by instruments, composers, etc. For example, within works for Piano, you can search by style (genre), and instrumentation (piano solo, or with specific other instruments). Many music sheets have accompanying MIDI or MP3 files.

If you are a composer or musician, you can register for free on the site to distribute your own music. While most of the sheet music on the site is classical and in public domain, some contemporary composers have added their own music to this site for sharing.

ABC Music.Net

This is a rare website that offers free piano sheet music downloads for popular modern tunes. You will find 270+ tunes from the Beatles to Celine Dion and Justin Timberlake. You can browse alphabetically, or by search by artist or song name. The sheets are clear PDF files, downloaded as .ZIP archives. You can register to become a member and upload your contributions.

ABC Music has their own Twitter account and Facebook fan page as well, but unfortunately there don’t seem to be any updates to the site or these accounts since May ‘09. If you are interested in getting sheets for modern songs, grab it from here while it lasts.

Did we miss any quality site for free sheet music that is your favorite? Did you get the sheets for the works you were looking for? Do tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks (3)
• Who Is Connected To My iTunes Library? (Windows) (12)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (20)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1) (66)

Today, we will talk about the top 5 online radio stations to fit your musical horizons.

(Note: Check out the radio tag for more related web apps.)

Sky.fm

Sky.fm, although not necessarily a “top-dog”, certainly features the best list of online streaming radio stations out of any site.

Sky.fm does not require a “premium” subscription for any of its radio stations, although it is optional and will get you an upgrade to a 256kbps stream (which is high quality) audio. For free users, radio stations can be played at up to 96kbp (which is slightly less than the standard 128kbps). Premium subscriptions are $4.95 per month.

Sky.fm features genres ranging from: alternative rock, classic rock, flamenco, raggea, smooth jazz, and so on. One huge reason really hits home though: commercial free. This is extremely rare among online radio stations and is one of the most annoying things about traditional AM/FM radio.

Shoutcast

The most popular of all online radio directories, Shoutcast picks up streams from all across the web, organized in a number of ways that are extremely helpful. Shoutcast makes it easy to find thousands of streaming alternative rock, jazz, reggae, country, blues, etc. Shoutcast can even show you what is currently playing on any specific stream, what the bitrate is, how many listeners, and the format of the stream. I highly recommend checking it out.

Check out this post by Jason on how to start your own online radio station with Shoutcast.

Soma fm

Soma fm, with an even smaller listening audience than Sky.fm, features a great variety of Indie, Techno, Trance, Ambient, and Lounge music. Like Sky.fm, Soma fm does not feature ads, but does not have a premium feature (their only source of income is donations).

Each of the 18 stations though features a 128kbps MP3 stream for free. Another nice thing about Soma fm is that they place an entire set list/playlist of currently playing and previously playing songs, which is something that is absent on many online streaming radio stations.

AccuRadio

Another extremely popular streaming radio site, AccuRadio has its fair share of pros and cons. Like the previously mentioned shoutcast, AccuRadio offers a wide variety of hundreds of stations of multiple genres, tailored precisely for you (with more of a Pandora kind of tailored radio).

The only con that can be easily determined, is that you must have your web browser open to listen to any AccuRadio station, unlike the more popular and convenient method of downloading a small playlist file and listening through your desktop. Still a very useful streaming site.

1Club.fm

1Club.fm is a relatively popular, multi-genre, radio station directory that will not disappoint. With over 90 different channels, finding your taste is of course not a problem. Simply click a link to any of the radio stations, listen in your browser, or download a .pls streaming audio file for quick access.

The only problem I had when listening to any of the stations was the quality/bitrate of the streams. Of the stations I tested, the only stream rate I could get was 64kbps (which is about half of the average mp3 bitrate). In any case, if your looking for a specific genre you will likely find it on 1Club.

Looking at the related articles MakeUseOf published in the past, I would like to bring your attention to:

- 3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files
- The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop

What online radio stations do you listen to? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
• The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop (12)
• Lala – Really Cool New Site for Music Streaming & Downloads (14)
• Build The Perfect Music Playlist With MixtapeMe (7)
• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)

I was very proud to own the gadget that cost me a few months of my salary, because only a few people could afford cellphones in those days, and not all cellphones from that era could play monophonic ringtones. Most could only beep.

Now, the ringtone technology has gone way beyond monophonic. Polyphonic is also outdated. Even cheap China-made phones used by the street fruit and vegetable sellers – who walk the damp narrow alleys of poor third-world countries – can use MP3 songs as the ringtones.

While you could buy ringtones for your cellphones if you want to, creating one feels more rewarding. As a bonus, you could show off to friends and relatives your unique ringtones that nobody else has. And if you use an iPhone, your path to being able to create one of your own ringtones is very clear.

Grabbing goods from Garageband

Maybe there are many Mac users who are not aware that they have a tool to create their own quick and unique iPhone ringtones: Garageband. This easy to use music creation software comes free with every purchase of a Mac unit as part of the iLife suite.

To create your own ringtone using the latest version of Garageband – v ‘09, you just have to choose the “iPhone Ringtone” menu from the start up screen, then choose either Example Ringtone (to use and edit pre-made sample), Loops (to use and build a new one using Apple Loops) and Voice (to user your own voice as the ringtone).

The next step would be giving a name to this project and choosing the place to save it. Unless you speak music language, I suggest that you not meddle with the song adjustments (tempo, signature, and key). And actually you don’t need to because we wouldn’t deal with complicated song building anyway.

For those who chose Example Ringtone, you’ll see the 17 second sample. Click the play button to listen to it. Should you want to use it, you could export it as a ringtone (more on this later).

The same thing applies if you choose Loops. But here you could enhance your tone by adding more loops from the loop library on the right pane.

Recording your own voice

Voice option will give you two pre-configured tracks: Male basic and Female basic so you don’t have to adjust anything to optimize the recording.

There are many other voice configurations available from the track info pane on the right.

You’ll also have an alloted 20 second loop to use, but you could adjust this by dragging the end of the yellow loop bar to the time position that you’d like.

Actually, the one that we call the ringtone could be anything from a standard song to a spoken word. If you have a deep broadcaster voice, for example, you can just speak out your own ringtone. But Voice option is also a good place to start if you could sing (or not) and want to record a mini-choir of yourself as the ringtone. Garageband allows its users to create songs from many tracks like Voice 1, Voice 2, Voice 3 etc.

To add tracks, go to Track –> New Track menu or use Command + Option + N

Using songs from iTunes

I personally would like to choose part of an existing song from iTunes as the ringtone. So after the main Garageband window opens, I’ll just delete the existing track (Command + Delete) and choose the Media Browser from the lower right corner of the window.

Then I dragged and dropped a song from the list to the main pane.

The song was converted into Garageband track and ready to be edited.

To determine which part of the song will be converted into a ringtone, I adjusted the loop bar to the position that I prefer. This loop bar time should be 40 seconds or less.

Exporting to ringtone

To export the part of the song into the ringtone, I went to Share –> Send Ringtone to iTunes menu.

Another conversion and export process will take place and…

The ringtone will be placed under the ‘Ringtone’ folder in iTunes as a m4r file and will automatically be synchronized to iPhone the next time it connected.

Non-iPhone users could also use Garageband to create their own mp3 ringtones, but that process requires a different method and enough to be written as another article for another time.

Have you tried to use Garageband to create iPhone ringtones? Share your opinions using the comments below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• iPhone Apps Hotlist: StartPages, cool Programs, HowTos, Reviews (11)
• How To Mix Your Own Music Online & Be An Internet DJ (8)
• How To Create a Ringtone For The iPhone In iTunes (7)
• Create Custom iPhone Ringtones with iRinger [Windows] (3)
• 6 Ways To Sync Music To Your iPhone Without iTunes (77)

Here at MakeUseOf, we’ve focused on a number of websites and tools that you can use to find a song by its lyrics, such as Brad’s article on the top 5 sites to find song lyrics online or David’s article on how to find song titles with just a few lyrics you do know. Today, I’d like to cover a very new solution that’s available for the most common scenerio – when you don’t know the title of the song or any of the lyrics, but you can hum or whistle the song just fine!

Voice Recognition Technology Saves The Day

There are a number of cutting edge computer technologies that have always fascinated me, mostly because they represent areas where computers are finally entering into the realm of artificial intelligence. Two of those include image recognition and voice recognition.

While I’ve not followed the state of the art of each field, I’ve always been under the impression that both areas of computer intelligence have a very long way to go. However, what would you say if I told you that I’ve discovered a computer program, an online application to be exact, that you could sing, hum or whistle a tune to and it could accurately guess the title of the song. Images of science fiction movies, where starship crew members seek the help of the ship’s AI computer system come to mind. Well, it’s no longer science fiction – this technology is now a reality at Modomi.

Midomi itself isn’t exactly a very special or unique website. Just like every other website where you can search for and purchase music online, Midomi lets you research music, bands and more. You can watch music videos, listen to music clips or even join the Midomi fan club for any particular music group. However, the true heart of Midomi becomes apparent (and the site absolutely comes alive) when you start becoming “fans” of particular groups. As you enter fan pages, you’ll become aware of a Facebook-like social network of music lovers. As I was browsing through this site, I noticed something rather unique compared to most other music websites. Midomi once again takes advantage of interactive audio by allowing fans to make and upload their own recordings of the music that they’re fans of.

As a fan, you can listen to any of these uploaded recordings. I joined the Green Day fan club and immediately saw user dude34bja’s recording of When I Come Around at the top as the most listened to recording. I clicked on it and was blown away by her fantastic acoustic rendition of the song. You too can record your own version of any of your favorite songs if you click on the “Studio” menu option at the top of the Midomi page.

Record your songs, and if your good enough you’ll very likely develop your own fan base right within the Midomi online community. Get enough votes and you actually appear as a “Midomi star.” In addition to recording music, the Midomi site is just completely integrated with audio at every turn. You can even upload audio comments at the site instead of typing them.

Now, all of this is very cool – but what about the whole reason we came to the site? That little box at the top of the first page that reads, “Click and Sing or Hum.”  Does it really work?  I decided to test the accuracy of this online application by humming Losing My Religion, by R.E.M.  After clicking the text box, the recording began.

I hummed the first 16 seconds or so of part of the song – no words whatsoever – just straight humming. I was absolutely convinced there was no way that this application would be able to recognize the song without a single line of lyrics. When I was done I clicked on “Click to Stop” and waited for the results. This is what came up.

The top “guess” was a perfect match. Unbelievable. I figured it was a fluke – a completely lucky guess, so decided to try it again with a more difficult tune that wasn’t so modern – I went back and hummed the first 15 seconds of “Over the Rainbow,” sung by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz. I chose this song because there is absolutely no way I can hum it perfectly in tune. After 15 seconds of forcing the recorder to suffer through my cracking and screeching as I attempted to hum some of the tune, I clicked stop and grinned. No way it’s going to know what that horrid noise was. The following were the results.

I have to say, if anything convinced me – this did. As far as I can tell, you only need to know the general tune of a song – no title and no lyrics required. This amazing little Midomi web app will remind you of the title after just a few seconds of humming. Even better – you can download the app to your iPhone and carry around this little song-title-reminder app with you everywhere. Hard to believe? Visit the site and give it a shot – and let us know in the comments section below whether it blew you away. I know it did for me. Have fun!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online (26)
• Songr – A Desktop MP3 Search Engine That Also Downloads Songs for You (14)
• Identify The Name of That Song with Tunatic (16)
• How To Conduct a Song Search By The Lyrics You Know (6)
• Make Use Of Podcast #30: More Current Google Searches (8)

A group of apps called iTunes controllers allow users to play, pause, rate and skip songs by using global shortcuts, totally bypassing the need to reach for the iTunes interface. Most of them also “scrobble” or submit the songs you’re listening to Last.fm, an online music catalogue, in order to come up with great recommendations and show the world what you’re listening to. I listen to music through my headphones most of the time, so it’s undeniable a fantastic way to “socialize” a unsocial hobby.

I came across Bowtie a couple of days ago and completely fell in love with it. Why?

Because despite being a small and simple app, it is a fully-featured iTunes controller yet incredibly elegant. Its website tends to leave you guessing and begs the question, “What exactly is it?” Let me clear all of your doubts — it is a theme-able iTunes controller and scrobbler.

Users will need to understand that Bowtie doesn’t come pre-installed with themes. The whole concept of Bowtie is to encourage users to create their own themes to use. This is might deter some but the rest who answered the calling did a marvelous job and look at what they’ve come up with.

At some point, the developer added a link to 11 of his favorite themes. The theme pack is great and comes with some sleek themes that I was surprised to know even existed! Download it, unzip the theme pack, select all and double click to add the themes into Bowtie.

Let me take you through the application. Bowtie iTunes controller is accessible through its menubar icon. There is no main application window — that’s how simple the app is. Look into the Preferences menu to choose your theme, edit the global shortcuts and set up your Last.fm account to enable scrobbling.

When I was using it on Snow Leopard, Bowtie did hiccup in a few instances. Initially, I couldn’t enable scrobbling. I’d input my credentials and check the ‘Enable’ box but it would uncheck itself. Then I found the quick-fix: Capitalize the first letter of your Last.fm username and the checkbox remained checked. Everything was smooth sailing from then on but I sincerely hope that the developers would update their app for Snow Leopard compatibility.

I’m still dumbfounded by its theming abilities and the starter theme pack that came with it did not disappoint. Here are some of its themes, most of which I found amazing.

It’s hard to display it to you good folks but some of the themes provide a “nano” version of themselves. Personally, I adored that. Since I only have a 13″ BlackBook, screen estate is quite valuable. If you are seeking additional themes, a quick Google search returned several great sites but this one struck a chord with me.

Bowtie works on Mac OS X Leopard and quite possibly, Snow Leopard as well. Take it for a spin and tell us if you like it. Or you’d rather part with $20 for CoverSutra? Any other iTunes contorllers for Mac we should know about?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 2) [Mac Only] (16)
• The BIG Book of iTunes [Free PDF Download] (49)
• Synchronize MP3s To Non-Apple Devices with doubleTwist [Mac] (0)
• Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (12)
• One-click backup of your iPod with podUP [Mac Only] (6)

Today I discovered Fire.FM which puts a Last.FM toolbar in your Firefox browser. Normally I shun most toolbars in an attempt to keep my Firefox browser running smoothly but after installing Fire.FM, I just know that I will be holding onto this one for quite a while!

With Fire.FM, you can play Last.FM music directly from your Firefox browser without having to visit the site.  You can also get access to your Last.FM radio stations as well as finding similar artists.

The only snag is that listeners to Last.FM outside of the United States, Great Britain and Germany will be asked to subscribe for €3.00 per month ($4), after a 30 track free trial period.  But anyone in the United States, Great Britain and Germany will not face such limitations.

Let’s take a look at each feature in more detail.

After logging into your Last.FM account via the toolbar, you can access your stations by going to the drop down menu.

You can create a station via the toolbar and it will ask you what name you want to give it. Afterwards it will load automatically and start playing :

Whether you create a new station or load an existing one, the music will begin loading and start playing within seconds. You will also receive a pop up window at the bottom of your browser telling you what song is coming :

The toolbar also gives you access to your “Top Artists” and “Similar Artists” so you can discover similar new music :

And to round off the Last.FM features, you can tag, like and dislike the track that’s playing.

This seems to be a well-made Firefox extension which doesn’t slow down Firefox. I have had it running for hours and so far Firefox hasn’t slowed down at all.  It is great if you are browsing / working online and you would like to have some music playing in the background.   An extension like this brings your music to you at the click of a button and of course every song you listen to and every change you make is more or less immediately reflected in your Last.FM account.

With Fire.FM, there is practically no reason to visit the Last.FM webpage, except perhaps to approve friend requests, visit groups or view events which you can’t do with the toolbar.   But if your only use of Last.FM is to listen to music, get the toolbar.

What do you think of Fire.FM?   An essential extension or a piece of bloatware?  Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (7)
• The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop (12)
• Record Streaming Audio with Screamer Radio (23)
• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 2) [Mac Only] (16)
• How To Broaden Your Musical Horizons Online (8)

Its offerings include full length album previews, an online store with 7 million songs, DRM-free high quality variable bit rate MP3 music downloads, a web-based music jukebox and social network, all in one tightly knit interface.

Lala turns out to be one of those websites that are great, yet somehow aren’t yet gathering the crowds lesser competitors are. With just over 20 people on the staff and consistent funding from Warner Music, you can be sure this service won’t disappear into the mist of the economic recession. While the 500 000+ members don’t stack up to Last.fm or Facebook, it isn’t exactly a niche audience.

Lala’s web designers and coders created an Apple-like experience, everything neatly integrated and in sync. A simple, functional interface reveals the minimalistic approach to the design of the web site. I wonder though if the iTunes interface is the pinnacle of media player design, designers decided to cut some corners or they intentionally opted for a similar layout to make new users feel ‘at home’.

Once you’ve created an account, which doesn’t take more than 30 seconds and doesn’t require a credit card, you can preview whole songs and albums for free (once). Your existing music library can be easily imported using the Lala Music Mover, a small application that matches songs on your computer with the catalog of music downloads available online. It works on Windows as well as on Macs and doesn’t use a lot of resources. Once the upload process is completed, you can listen to all of your songs online, with no additional charge, no restrictions or ads, from any computer with an Internet connection. It will even import playlists and ratings (using the beta version).

Individual tracks can be purchased and downloaded in MP3 format without DRM and a high quality variable bit rate encoding. Downloads are automatically added to your iTunes or Windows Media Player if you installed the Lala Music Mover. For ten cents you can purchase the right to stream a song from the website as many times as desired, a so-called “web song“. Depending on the song popularity and release date, MP3 music downloads range from $0.79 to $1.29, the same pricing scheme of the iTunes Music Store. Lala has strong connections with the music industry and currently indexes over 7 million songs.

The social networking aspect of the service combines different ideas from more general social networks such as Twitter and Facebook and does a good job of serving recommendations, aiding music discovery, while not duplicating unnecessary functionality.

The only caveat to this service is that it only works with United States IP addresses due to music licenses. Of course, you guys know how to get passed that. Go to Lala, give it a try and then come back to share your experiences in the comments. For more posts related to music, you should definitely have a look at MakeUseOf’s music section.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
• 5 Online Radio Stations To Get Your Music Fix (18)
• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• The 3 Best Online Radio Players For Your Desktop (12)

Windows Media Player 12 is streaming in with a lot of improvements but as with everything in life, most of the old tips will hold good for the new too. We all have our favorite media players. For some it’s the one which plays music best, for others it’s all about the movies. Windows Media Player 11 is no slouch in both departments. But its feature set needs getting used to. So let’s poke around and discover cool Windows Media Player 11 tips and tricks and ‘upgrade’ our experience with this popular media player.

1. Go from full screen to compact with a click

Windows Media Player 11 offers three choices of looks – the default Full mode, the Compact mode and the Skin mode (with choice of skins). While listening to music, you can just click on a tiny arrow and switch to compact mode. Press Enter to revert back to the Full mode. The Skin mode can be applied from Menu – View – Skin Mode. The better option is to become quick fingered with the keyboard –

For Full Mode – CTRL + 1

For Skin Mode – CTRL + 2

2. Keyboard toggles for volume control

Three quick and easy to remember keyboard taps to control volume instead of reaching for the mouse.

Increase volume: F9
Decrease volume: F8
Mute sound: F7

3. Resolve codecs and play it all

With the hundreds of codecs in use today, Windows Media Player isn’t bundled with them all. Fortunately, freely available codec packs fill up this lacuna and let us play everything from Real Media to DivX.

To find out the codecs installed, go to Help – About Windows Media Player – click on Technical Support Information. A browser page opens up with all audio and video codecs listed.

You can play almost everything with the K-Lite codec pack. Other must have downloads include the XP Codec Pack and Vista Codec Pack. Even watching hi-definition DivX movies is not a problem with the freely downloadable codecs. If there’s still something not right then check out these previous posts:

- Downloaded an Unplayable Movie – Gspot & Klite to the Rescue!
- 3 Ways to Play Unplayable Videos on your PC
- Audio File Formats Explained in Simple Terms

4. Search – get two birds with one search

You can search your library for audio tracks using a combination of search terms. The + or AND operator lets you search a song using two values. For instance, search by song and singer – Pink Floyd AND The Final Cut.

Use the OR operator to search across two attributes – Jazz OR Blues. Songs can be searched according to length, ratings, whether it is protected or not etc. The results depend on the media information that’s available with the song.

Look at the help file (Help – Organizing your digital media collection – How do I perform advanced searches?) for more search operators.

5. Play songs according to musical eras

Do you like the golden oldies or the more current hip-hop? WMP 11 lets you play songs according to the period mentioned in the tracks. Type in the year range, like 1980..1990 for all songs in that period. This gives you a short cut to particular songs without trawling throughout the library or creating period playlists.

6. Go Bass with the SRS WOW effects

SRS WOW Effects let you increase the bass (i.e. the lowest part of a musical range) of a track for richer quality sounds. The SRS WOW Effects can be found under Menu – View – Enhancements. Turn on the effects and choose your speaker type. Slider movement sets the TruBass between high and low. The adjacent slider increases or decreases the WOW effect.

7. Smooth the flow of streamed music

Streaming content relies on buffers to smoothly playback a movie or music track. To compensate for the stop gap of internet bandwidth due to slow speeds or packet drops, WMP stores a few seconds of content before it starts the playback. As the streaming proceeds, some content continuously gets stored in the background (that’s the buffer).

The buffer size can be changed if you feel that the streaming is not smooth enough. From the Menu (or right click on title bar), choose Options – Performance tab. In the Network buffering section choose the bullet option for Buffer and enter any value between 0 to 60 to buffer that much of content before playback. Click OK. Too much buffering can slow downloads.

8. Tweak speed for podcasts and speech audio

Don’t let your interest flag with the slow drone of an audio book or podcast. Some simple settings allow you to change the pace of the voice. With the audio playing, from the Menu choose – View – Enhancements. Alternatively, right click on the WMP title and select. The Play Speed Settings shows a slider which can be dragged to the left for slow playback and to the right for faster play speeds. Or you can choose from the three presets – Slow, Normal or Fast. You have to trust your ears as not all files will sound well with change in playback speeds.

9. Shed light on dark movies

Enhancements include another setting which helps me out with making light corrections to particularly dark movie scenes. From the Enhancements sub-menu choose Video Settings. Lighten up the scene by slightly increasing the Brightness (drag the slider to the right).

10. Censor Movies by Ratings

In my wonder years, it was ‘Blue Lagoon’. Now, I am not sure what’s PG and what’s not! But you can prevent DVD movies with ‘not suitable for children’ ratings from being played through the WMP. Windows Media Player 11 allows you to block certain movies which have higher playback restrictions using a simple dropdown. Navigate to Tools – Options – DVD tab. Select the restriction from the dropdown. (Umm…but I guess your child will be smart enough to sidetrack this lockdown).

There’s a lot we can explore under the hood of Windows Media Player to further enhance our listener experience. I have purposely avoided getting into ways to tag your tracks and manage your library with playlists as they require tutorials on their own. For tagging your music collection, lot of specialized tools like MP3Tag editor are handy .

How do you feel in general about the Windows Media Player? Is it your preferred jukebox or do you have a more specific choice? Let us into a few Windows Media Player 11 tips and tricks of your own.

Image Credit: Sabrina Campagna

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 3 Really Cool Adobe AIR Apps for Movies and Music (29)
• Top 5 Free Media Players For Windows (57)
• Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (12)
• Quick Overview: Free Media Players (17)
• MUO Polls : Free Video Players. What’s your Favorite ? (61)

In order to make MP3 copies of my CD’s (for iPod listening), I have always turned to the trusty freeware open-source tool CDex. It’s fast, it’s easy and there’s even a portable version for your on-the-go ripping needs.

So if you want to rip a CD to mp3, here’s how to go about it.   It’s really easy.

Installing CDex is a breeze and when you open it for the first time, this is what you will see -

Insert your CD into the CD drive of your computer and within seconds, you’ll see the music files appear :

Now as you can see, all the files are named “AudioTrack“.  You could rip them with these names and then manually (and tediously) rename them all yourself when they are in your computer. But you don’t have to because CDex can (mostly) retrieve the song titles for you and automatically rename the files.  I say mostly because there have been occasions when CDex failed to find the titles and the automatic renaming failed. But this is rare.

To get the correct song titles, you need to access something called the CDDB Database. If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see an option in the top toolbar called “CDDB”. But before you do that, you need to go to Options–>Settings–>Remote CDDB and enter an email address. Now, I have absolutely no idea why an email address is needed so I entered a fake one and you should too. Until the makers of CDex explain why an email address is needed, they are not getting my real one. I tried using the CDDB Database without an email address and it didn’t work.

While you are in the settings, go to Filenames and there you can say where you would like the ripped music files to go in your computer.

OK, now go to CDDB in the top toolbar and in the drop down menu choose “Read Remote CDDB“. After a few seconds or so, after the app connects to the database and looks up the names, you should now see all your files renamed properly -

Now all that’s left to do is rip the files. Look on the right hand side for the various options. There are a few there as you can see but I think the first two are all you really need -

The first one rips your music to wav files and the second one down rips to mp3 files. I personally prefer mp3 files and if you do too, hit that button!

It’ll immediately start churning out your MP3 files to the hard drive destination you specified in your settings in a folder with the title of the artist’s name.

And that is it. That’s the beauty of CDex. It’s as easy as inserting the CD, accessing the CDDB Database to get the titles renamed and then hitting the mp3 button. So straight forward – and it’s free.

And how do you to rip CDs to MP3 files? My father rips his CD’s with Windows Media Player and I know a few people who use Winamp. But as I said, I have always been swayed by CDex’s ease of use. What do you think?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Extract Your Concert DVD Audio to MP3 With 4 Simple Tools (12)
• Easily Rip The Audio From Online Video With VidToMp3 (8)
• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)
• The Mark Pack – The Essentials On My Computer – Part Two (24)
• The Best, Free Alternatives to Nero CD/DVD Burner (244)

How in the world are you supposed to remember what song that really is? And how are you supposed to figure out when you’ve got duplicate songs taking up space on your computer?

The answer to both those questions is one word (well, really two, but one in a Web 2.0 kind of way) – TidySongs.

TidySongs is a brand-new Adobe AIR app, for Windows and Mac OS X, that hooks into your iTunes and goes bananas all over your music library, helping you to finally organize your iTunes collection.

Before I go any further, a disclaimer: TidySongs isn’t free. It’s got a fully-functioning free trial, that’s perfect for a one-time cleanup of your songs. The Genre Renaming feature remains free, but to continue to use the rest costs $30. It’s a bit hefty, but I found the benefit of one use well worth the time to install. If you download like crazy, you might want to consider purchasing the app.

Once you’ve installed the app (it’s small, and requires Adobe AIR – which it will automatically install if you don’t have it already), open up iTunes and TidySongs. You’ll immediately get three options: Fix Your Songs, Find Duplicates, and Organize Genres.

Let’s start with the big kahuna first: Fix Your Songs. Select a playlist (If you pick ‘Music‘, TidySongs scans your whole library), and check a couple of options before you start. I recommend, at least for the first pass, making sure “Fix Songs Manually” is selected – that means you review every change TidySongs makes before it makes them.

A nice medium, though, and one that worked for me, was to select “Automatically fix songs if confidence is greater than 80%.” Every time TidySongs fixes a song, it gives a confidence level of how sure it is that it’s making the right change – my experience was that, when it’s over 80%, it’s actually right about 99% of the time. Once your options are set, click “Fix Songs” and let TidySongs go to work!

TidySongs brings up the list of all the songs it wants to update for you, with all the info (it finds album art, track #, genre, and so much more) in the window. You either choose “Skip” or “Fix,” and TidySongs takes its action, and moves you to the next one. Once it’s finished, you’ll find you’ve got tons of new album artwork, better organization and ordering of albums, and a much more information-packed iTunes. This is a good first step in organizing your entire iTunes collection.

Your next option is “Find Duplicates.” TidySongs checks the Name, Artist, and/or Album of the track to see if you’ve already got it – if so, it keeps either the longer one or the better quality one, and can either delete the duplicate or just mark it as a duplicate.

You can’t actually delete anything from TidySongs without paying, but that wasn’t a problem: the "Simulate" option worked fine, and manually deleting duplicates was super easy. In one pass of my library, TidySongs found no fewer than 225 duplicates (out of 8,000 songs, not so bad, but still). Of those, I ended up deleting about 200. That’s a great percentage, but I’d still recommend checking TidySongs’ findings. Once you run this, though, you might be surprised how much space it frees on your computer.

Organizing Genres is a more simple affair – it presents you with a list of all the genres you have in your iTunes library. Select one or more, and choose what you want to rename it to. This lets you consolidate your genres into a smaller number, based on a system you’ve devised, rather than the insanity that makes Pop Rock, Rock/Pop, and rock_pop three different genres.

As a serial music downloader, having TidySongs around to run once a week or so is a lifesaver – no manually hunting for album artwork, or renaming songs – TidySongs does it for you. Even incorrectly named songs get found, for the most part, and are updated properly. It’s an impressive app, and has kept the audio-OCDer in me happy.

iTunes users should also grab a free copy of our The Ultimate iTunes Manual. Lots of great tips there.

How do you keep your music organized?

Photo Credit : Mikey

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 2) [Mac Only] (16)
• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 1) [Mac Only] (39)
• Buying Music: iTunes Store vs Amazon MP3 Downloads (14)
• Break Free From iTunes With Amazon Music Downloads (23)
• 4 Easy Ways Fix Music Tags & Organize Music Library (25)

Now, there are plenty of ways to do a song search by lyrics. Brad has already shared with you the Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online

For the most part, Google does wonders in trying to find songs online. If you type in the lyrics you know, in quotation marks, followed by the word lyrics (something like “mmbop bop bop doowop” lyrics), you’ll usually get what you’re looking for. But, you’ll also get pages loaded with popups, tons of advertisements, and lots and lots of incorrect lyrics.

If you’re looking for an easier, better song  search engine, check out LyricRat. LyricRat is a new application attempting to make sure you always find that song you heard and liked.

Let’s start with the coolest feature: LyricRat is on Twitter. You can send any lyrics snippet to @lyricrat, and you’ll get a reply back with the name of the song, as well as a link to more information about it. This, in itself, makes LyricRat a better way to do a song search by lyrics than a Google search – when you hear a song you want to know, just send the lyrics in a text message, and the answer will be waiting in your Twitter feed when you get back.

If you’re not a Twitter user, there’s still plenty to like about LyricRat. When it finds the song you’re looking for, you’re taken to a page about the song. There’s a link to preview the song (to make sure it’s actually the song you were looking for), a link to buy the song, and another link to more information about the song or band.

There’s even a list of possible alternatives (just in case the one you want is a cover, or you entered common lyrics, or something like that). They’re all Amazon links, but Amazon’s certainly the best source of information and products for most bands, so it’s a sensible integration.

If you’re not even right about the lyrics, LyricRat can often still figure it out. No idea what Sting’s saying in any song by the Police? Just guess what it sounds like – you’re probably wrong, but if you’re hearing the same wrong lyrics as most other people, you’ll be given the right one. I tried a bunch of commonly misheard lyrics, and LyricRat got the song right more than half of the time.

As I said before, Google usually handles these things quite well. If do a song search by lyrics a lot though, as I do, you’ll appreciate a simple, attractive site that’s not totally cluttered with ridiculous popups, malware, and “buy this ringtone!” ads. LyricRat, especially since it plays so nicely with Twitter, is a great way to quickly and easily find that song that will soon be forever stuck in your head.

How do you hunt for your favorite song?

Image Credit: Kevin Lawver

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The Top 5 Sites to Find Song Lyrics Online (26)
• Identify The Name of That Song with Tunatic (16)
• Find A Song Title Just by Humming The Lyrics (19)
• Songr – A Desktop MP3 Search Engine That Also Downloads Songs for You (14)
• How To Make Lala Your Music Player of Choice (7)

To the untrained eye, buying Amazon MP3 music downloads might not immediately seem like a bargain – and let’s face it, it’s not as easy as clicking the buy button in iTunes. As with all things Apple, the whole experience of buying music on iTunes is seamless, simple and the catalog is huge, encompassing songs from the most obscure indie bands to mainstream pop.

Apple provides a slightly higher quality music format (DRM-free 256kb/s AAC), they also have variable song pricing, most individual songs costing you $1.29. Less popular songs are priced at $0.99 and $.79 (there are very few), but you can usually get a better deal by purchasing the whole album, with a typical 12 track record running you at $9.99.

There’s some good news though. Various promotions are always available if you visit the music store home, check the Facebook fan page and sign up for the Apple education newsletter. Just the other week, a 30 track sampler full of indie tracks was available for free, in addition to the free songs available every week on Tuesday.

You will also notice that certain bands/singers and genres will go on sale on special occasions, holidays or celebrations. You also have a good chance of getting the album at a lower price if you pre-order or buy it after the dust settles (after 3-4 months of the original release).

Depending on your perspective, as a PC or Mac user, an iPod or another device owner, the AAC format in which the music is available, might or might not suit your needs. The 256Kb/s AAC format is considered to be of higher quality to its MP3 counterpart, but any chance of noticing the difference will require a pretty expensive audio setup. (For more details on difference between audio formats see Audio File Formats Explained in Simple Terms)

Listening in noisy environments, on low quality ear buds (like the ones that come with your iPod) will mask any difference between the formats. You should also consider that not all devices can play the AAC format, especially older MP3 players. For most people, it doesn’t make sense to buy music from the iTunes Store without owning an iPod or iPhone – they probably have another application that syncs their device, and generally, buying Amazon MP3 downloads is cheaper.

Another nail in iTunes’s coffin is the fact that the Amazon downloader application will automatically import the Amazon MP3 songs you buy into iTunes if you choose to. Which means that you can have the songs on your iPod with just a little bit of hassle, as there’s no need to import manually.  Plus since the Amazon MP3 songs come in DRM-free MP3 format, they can be immediately synced to your iPod, without requiring transcoding. If you’re using another MP3 player, like the Sandisk ones, your device most likely syncs with Windows Media Player, which is also compatible with the Amazon Downloader automatic import.

Amazon scores more points for having a lot larger collection of promotional priced albums and songs, and also offers a selection of free ones every day. At the end of the day, there’s no discernible reason that would make a price conscious person opt for buying music on iTunes.

Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments. You should also check out Download Free Music, Videos & Movies on iTunes, 7 Sites To Get Free Music Legally, 6 Ways To Sync Music To Your iPhone Without iTunes and 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives To iTunes Store.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Break Free From iTunes With Amazon Music Downloads (23)
• 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives To iTunes Store (24)
• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 2) [Mac Only] (16)
• How To Organize Your iTunes Collection With TidySongs (43)
• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 1) [Mac Only] (39)

However, I would much prefer to be ahead of things and already know all the latest music, news and new bands. So I went out to find the best sources for alternative music novelty. Are you craving to hear what I found?

Here are five different websites that will still your hunger for fresh music, video clips, tour dates, news, gossip, and new artists.

Yahoo! Adult Alternative & Alternative Rock Stations

Before we dive into the muddy reality of the music world, let’s stick around at the surface for a bit and enjoy the result of all the hard work and advertising: the music.

I value Yahoo! music because they provide high quality video clips. The Adult Alternative Station provides "a mix of pop, rock, and alternative videos without the rep, bubble gum or hard stuff" and at Alternative Rock you’ll find "all your faves, plus new bands just hitting the scene." Just what I want. The best: you can create your own playlists from this and dozens of other video stations. The only drawback: one commercial before each clip.

NME

In the music news world, NME is an authority. But the online magazine has a lot more to offer than mere news. They feature album reviews, latest video releases, behind the scenes coverage from festivals and other events, and a special section for new music.

You can browse for a particular alternative music band or musician in the Artist section and find anything that was ever published about that person on NME. The coverage also includes a Biography, Discography, Videography and Books, if available.

Free daily MP3 downloads reside on the New Music page. The Radar recommends 10 new bands you need to hear each week. If you can’t get enough or want to share your own discoveries, sign up for MyNME and post your thoughts on the message boards, while receiving access to exclusive material. The membership is of course free.

PureVolume

This site focuses on new artists and their music, with little of the other dirt. Hence it’s less cluttered than NME, but also more useful and much more novel than Yahoo! Music. This is the perfect site to listen to new tracks and discover new alternative music because the tracks are uploaded by the artists themselves!

As you see in the screenshot above, there are four main sections: Music, Videos, Events, and People. The positive surprise was finding events, i.e. shows listed for places other than North America or the UK. Dozens of shows are listed for all over Germany on each single day. Even Egypt, Bulgaria, Jamaica, and Malaysia have solid listings, including preview audio files.

The site appears to have a very big community, which actively participates in keeping it fresh and up to date. The People section confirms this assumption. The only downside is the audio playback. It’s very basic and leaving a site means closing the track that’s playing.

The video playback is much more advanced, providing social media integration, and the quality is very good, allowing full screen view. Unfortunately, videos can’t be exported to an external window either.

There is a lot more to discover on PureMusic, so dive in!

Of course these are not the only sites for awesome alternative music. An honorable mention goes out to Alternative Addiction, which probably is the US version of NME, and Bowling Stone, a Canadian Indie / Alternative music blog where Chris, Julie and Paolo recommend "new music for your iPod."

If you care for live music, also check out Will’s recent post about 3 Ways To Track Tour Dates Of Your Favorite Rock Bands.

At what places do you stop to recharge your mp3 player or discover new music, videos, news, and background information? Pandora, Last.fm, Napster or anything we don’t know, yet? Surprise us in the comments!

Image credits: greekgod

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files (13)
• 13 Alternative Search Engines That Find What Google Can’t (117)
• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• Top Indie Music Websites (100% Legal, DRM-free Downloads) (19)
• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)

However, once you take a good look around, it’s hard to go back. There are majestical pieces for every genre, whether you’re a fan of rap, rock, or symphonical orchestras. There’s a lot of musical talent in the gaming industry, and a big part of it is lost on the audiences.

Today, we’ll have a look at the most prominent sites of the video game soundtrack scene, sites where music gets created, appreciated and remembranced.

Here they are, in no particular order.

OverClocked ReMix – Creativity

OverClocked ReMix is not just an archive of video game soundtracks, it’s a scene of musical arrangements. The people at OCRM look to video game music as an art form, and put themselves towards preserving, interpretating and – most of all – participating.

The members of their scene recompose famous – and obscure – video game scores, and release them on the internet. Copyright still belongs to ‘the rightful owners’, but the art is theirs.

In their passion, they’ve rearranged complete soundtracks of video games, including Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption, which we reviewed some time ago. Over 1700 remixes can be found on the site these days, and more get added everyday.

If you enjoy Overclocked ReMix, you should also check out its bastard nephew, OverLooked ReMix. Where OCRM is dedicated to professional arrangements, with symphonical precission, OLRM’s is humouristic – ridiculous interpretations of video game music, that’s what it’s all about.

Music 4 Games – News

If OverClocked ReMix is the creative scene, Music 4 Games is the professional scene. This is where you’ll find the articles, interviews and reviews.

Music 4 Games goes along with the time, and focuses on current-day gaming music. On the site, you’ll find extensive reviews of the respective sounds of new Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 games. Although you can play a track or two of most games’ soundtracks, it’s a site you go to for intellectual, rather than listening purposes.

VGMusic – Authenticity

Although the former sites both take a unique and highly appreciable position on video gaming music, VGMusic is the most authentic scene without doubt, simply offering the original soundtracks. Over 28,000 of them.

The site went along with the procedings of time, save some aspects. They’ve adopted current-gen consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but the site’s lay-out is still in the 90’s trend and they’ve remained faitfull to the MIDI format. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide, but it’s certainly got its nostalgic charms.

With these three we close the list. There are plenty of others, like VGMix X, VGMdb and SquareSound, but the diversive three cover a pretty big part of the scene together.

Do you know any other sites to download free video game soundtracks? What do you think about the above ones? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Final Fantasy IV : Free ReMix Music Album (2)
• Yahoo Searchmonkey Expands with Playable Music Tracks (3)
• Who Is Connected To My iTunes Library? (Windows) (12)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (20)

Going to a live concert for your favorite band is one of the most fun and exciting ways of supporting the particular band you are listening to.  But what’s the best way to track their tour dates and where they will be appearing?

Here’s 3 websites that can help you out with that.

Songkick

Songkick is probably the newest and most user-friendly band tracking web application that I was able to find, and seemed to do a relatively fine job as well.

To begin tracking your favorite bands, simply sign up (a one step process), then either download the Songkick software, add artists based on your Last.fm profile, or add artists manually. If you decide to add artists based on your Last.fm profile, Songkick automatically scans and adds all of the artists in your Last.fm profile that had active upcoming tour dates.

This can be particularly helpful, as it was in my case, when you have hundreds to thousands of different artists that you would rather not add manually. (Songkick has been previously covered on MUO here.)

Eventful

Unlike Songkick, Eventful tracks all of the events in your area, arranging them in various manners, including popularity, ticket sales, genre, etc. Thus, Eventful can be helpful for those of you that may not have as large of a music library, maybe just a more wide range of musical interests, or possibly just want to go see as many live performances as possible.

Another neat feature of Eventful is that it if you see that a certain tour date is not in place for an artist in your area, Eventful will even allow you to add a concert for any artist and “demand” that they come by writing a short reason (optional) to attempt and get a large enough following for your area.

In any case, Eventful is one of the better user-friendly band tracking web apps for concert tour dates, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Gruvr

Gruvr is unlike any other band tracking web app I have seen yet. Instead of doing the “conventional” tracking, Gruvr finds all concerts in your area within X amount of miles and shows them on a map with details of each performance. Gruvr even creates a detailed RSS feed for your specific area to let you stay on top of the most recent acts in your area all the time.

Gruvr can filter performances based on certain bands, future venues, area, etc. and can even email you when your favorite band is playing in your area. Furthermore, Gruvr can filter artists, venues, and performances based on the number of ticket sales, then get you a list of the best seats with their prices, all without seemingly depending on other third-party sites.

Check out other posts by Renee and Albijheet on other cool ways to track bands.

What do you use to track your favorite bands? Tell us in the comments!

Image Credit: kainet

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Broaden Your Musical Horizons Online (8)
• Find Out Where Your Favorite Artists Are Playing With Jambase (0)
• 3 Web Apps For Staying On Top Of The Music Scene (15)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• Keeping Track of Live Music In Your City (4)

Listening to music on your PSP is as easy as on any mp3 player – plus you’ve got a whole arsenal of settings and a great visualizer to play with.

The only worry you (might) have is how to transfer music from your PC to your PSP.  In this short tutorial, we’ll explain you in detail how you do this. It’s actually quite easy.

How Do I Transfer Music From My PC to My PSP?

First of all, plug the USB cable into the back of your device. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got a big enough memory stick, unless you’re satisfied with two or three CD’s. If you’re talking gigabytes you’re usually in the ok zone, but as always, ‘the bigger the better’.

Next, go to and select Settings – USB Connection on your PSP. Your device will now try to connect, and should show up on your computer.

Open the PSP folder in your ROOT (the lowest lowest level in the hierarchy, encompassing all other directories) – if there isn’t one, create it now.

In the PSP folder, open the Music folder. Again, if there isn’t one, you can create it now.

This is where you’ll be putting your music. Your PSP’s music player will recognize any files as long as they’re somewhere in this directory, but for practical purposes, you might want to create a hierarchy of artists and albums. Only one folder level is allowed beyond the Music folder. Any further subdivisions will be ignored.

Back on your PSP, go to Music to browse your music. Currently, you’re able to playback ATRAC3plus-, MP3-, WAV- and WMA-files. If your files are in any other format, you’ll have to convert them.

If you want to listen to WMA files, you’ll need a network connection. Go to Settings – System Settings – Enable WMA Playback – you’ll need to sign a user agreement and follow the on-screen instructions.

Alternatively, you can use an adapter to directly connect your memory stick with your PC. From then on, the tutorial will remain the same.

You now know how to transfer music from your PC to your PSP. You can usually configure your local music management application to do this for you. If you’ve got anything to say, or a question you need to ask, drop a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Downgrade your PSP & Upgrade to a Custom Firmware (262)
• Ultrastar Deluxe – Play Free Singstar Delight On Your PC (10)
• Top 5 Sites for PSP Game Demo Downloads (12)
• Top 3 Sites For Streaming Your Music Anywhere (16)
• Top 2 Sites For Nintendo Wii Game Cheats (13)

I’m still debating that issue and I’d sure be glad to hear what you think. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at Moof, the newest attempt at moving your music library to the Internet.

Moof addresses the segment of the market that prefers to stream music from a web-based service rather than storing songs locally and using software like iTunes. The convenience factor cannot be ignored – I’ve noticed many people, and students particularly, would prefer listening to Spotify rather than downloading songs from via P2P or online music stores like iTunes Store and its cheaper alternatives.

It’s easier, just open it and have some background music while your work. Or instantly search and listen to an entire album that a friend recommended.

While similar streaming services, notably Mixtape, incorporates some social networking features, Moof sticks to the basic functionality of playback and playlists creation.  There’s another quite striking difference between Moof and other similar services – it uses YouTube to provide playback. If your song wasn’t uploaded to YouTube, you won’t be able to play it back.

Personally, I think that the API did a great job of retrieving songs – finding even some of my most obscure artists. Unfortunately for hard-core indie music fans, there’s no feature that allows manual uploading of songs, something that the Lala Music Mover does automatically.

To sum it up in a sentence, Moof is basically a front-end to YouTube, with an interface that resembles a desktop media player.

It’s worth mentioning that Moof also allows you to import your iTunes Library XML file – which means you will be have a sort of a backup of your music. You won’t be able to use the service to re-download the songs in case your hard drive crashes, but at least you could listen to them online.

The interface resembles iTunes although it doesn’t provide the same feature set. Some more picky users will notice that there’s no way to rate songs or view track numbers. I do prefer this layout to Groovesharks’s Apple-esque cascading menus.

While Moof doesn’t bring anything groundbreaking to the equation, as the idea of a cloud music library was already implemented some time ago, it’s definitely worth checking out. Visit Moof and don’t forget to tell us what you think in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• TubeRadio.fm– A Slick & Cool Internet Music Player for YouTube (8)
• Top 5 Websites To Listen To CDs Before Buying (22)
• Search the Internet for Music with Clickster (10)
• How To Make Lala Your Music Player of Choice (7)
• DJ The Easy Way With Top 3 Sites To Make Music Playlists (8)

It seems as though there is an unending list of file formats that accomplish the same task – saving a bunch of data. What is the purpose of the existence of these seperate formats, and why do they extend the list of available formats to “Save As…“? Is there any real difference between which extension a particular file is saved as, as long as it’s appropriate for the media being saved? Why, why, why do they plague me with their endless resistance to conversion?

The list of questions could go on, pretty much for the length of this article, but I believe I should provide some answers, since the questions are probably what led you here in the first place. So here goes nothing – a guide to the inner workings of the common, but still unusual file formats.

Technical Jargon:

File Format: a specific way to encode data that is to be saved as a file. Please note that the file format does no encoding on its own – the encoding is left up to the codecs.

Codec: a program/algorithm that encodes/decodes data to convert a file between different formats. The popular media codecs are generally for shrinking file size. Laurence did a post on codecs last year.

Lossy Codec: refers to a codec that sacrifices file quality for the sake of compression.

Lossless Codec: does not destroy any data, regardless of whether or not the data is necessary for the file’s integrity.

Metadata: information about the file that is stored within the file itself – for example, when a picture was taken and what type of camera it was taken with, or the artist of an audio track. Karl has done a post on how to remove metadata from photos.

Container: a file format that concerns itself more with how data is stored, and not necessarily coded.

Bitrate: the number of bits processed per second. To put things into perspective, mp3’s generally have a bitrate of 128 kbit/s, while CD’s generally have bitrates of around 1.4 Mbit/s.

VBR/CBR: the difference between variable bitrate and constant bit rate is just that – VBR uses a higher bitrate to encode (and thus, allocates more space to)  more complex parts of the audio file.

Audio File Formats Explained

.aiff /.wav

.aiff /.wav – These are both uncompressed, lossless formats, which means it takes about 10MB to save a minute’s worth of music. aiff was developed for Apple’s OSX, and wav for PCs, although both formats are compatible with both operating systems.

Wav is the format preferred by PC wielding audiophiles; mac users generally rip CD’s into the aiff file format. There are codecs like FLAC and WavPack that will compress .aiff and .wav files, although the resulting file will still be huge compared to the ubiquitous mp3 format. Simple Help has a great tutorial about playing .flac files in iTunes here; it is for Mac OSX users only.

.aac

.aac – Apple’s default audio format, AAC is a lossy compression scheme that was developed to replace mp3, but never achieved the prominence that mp3 has with listeners. Some argue that AAC produces the same quality audio at 96 kbits/s as a mp3 does at 128 kbit/s, but with the recent developments in mp3 codecs (particularly LAME), mp3s have performed far better in listening tests against AAC than in previous years. Nevertheless, when it comes to a sound quality to file size ratio, AAC beats MP3.

.ogg

.ogg – Vorbis, which is the name of Ogg’s audio format, is an open source lossy compression format that is favored by developers of free software for its patent-free nature. Despite its claims of being able to produce better sounding music at smaller file sizes, Vorbis is not widely used because of its slow encoding time and the lack of native support from popular music players such as iTunes and Winamp.

However, many video game makers and programmers have begun using Vorbis because it is open source, and thus does not demand licensing fees like mp3 and aac do. If you are interested in testing the sound quality of Vorbis yourself, try the aoTuV modification of Vorbis and install the XiphQT plugin for iTunes.

Conclusion :

If you’re willing to sacrifice the storage space, and have ears sensitive enough to tell the difference between a CD and a ripped track, go with .wav or .aiff. Otherwise, .aac and .mp3 encoded at bitrates above 256 kbit/s are indistinguishable from CDs for the average person.

Vorbis performs the best at low bitrates around 64 kbit/s, whereas the LAME encoder for MP3 performs better at higher bitrates. Regarding VBR and CBR, the general rule of thumb is that VBR will produce better sound quality at a lower file size than CBR can.

Ultimately, it is up to your own ear to determine which codec to use, and which format is best for you. Perhaps you’d like to perform your own listening test, to determine how picky your ear is. If so, try WinABX, which is a program that performs double blind listening tests. When you finally decide which format and bitrate is optimal for you, get yourself a codec pack, and convert your music with the multitude of audio converters that are out there.

Not to ignite a flame war, but which format/codec/bitrate do you use? Do you think AAC or Vorbis will ever gain the type of popularity that MP3 has right now? Leave your opinion in the comments, and stay tuned for Part 2: Video!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Free Alternatives to 10 Popular Commercial Mac Applications (Part2) (13)
• FormatFactory – A multifunctional Media Converter (17)
• An Introduction To Codecs, Converters and Rippers (19)
• 10 Great Apps to Convert Audio & Video Files in Linux (49)
• The Mark Pack – The Essentials On My Computer – Part Two (24)

You just have to look around a bit, and marvel about the great scores you’ll find. Classical music lovers will feast on Scorpio Fire, and have I mentioned the Tetris song yet?

Other games come with a complete soundtrack for you to appreciate. Final Fantasy IV is one of those games. Composed by Nobuo Uematsu, these are amongst the most popular video game music in the world.

Whether you’re a fervent Final Fantasy fan yourself, or a proud audiophile, this music can be enjoyed by nearly everyone. The majority of the songs are on the classical side, with a flavour of rock, but other styles get thrown in the mix as well.

Final Fantasy IV : Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption

There have been numerous reproductions of the Final Fantasy IV soundtrack, but none could’ve been as notable as this one.

Thirty-five members of the video gaming music site, Overclocked ReMix, worked on Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption; all of them half musician, half gamer. Together they played the 46 arrangements of the soundtrack, each artist giving his or her personal touch to the score.

“[The] album is divided into three acts: Betrayal, Strife, and Redemption. We aspire to recreate the journey from darkness and evil to light and redemption, a recurring theme of the game. (…) The tracks are not arranged in chronological order of release in the game’s original soundtrack, but appear in a new order, to further heighten the drama of the music.”

The result is a wonderful soundtrack, with 46 fan-made songs. A complete double-CD, as well as a work of art.

Sample

Below is a sample, to whet your appetite and awaken your curiosity. This is the first song of the soundtrack, the opening of the Betrayal act — Full of Courage, arranged by Nutritious.

Full of Courage is based on the Nobuo Uematsu original song, The Red Wings.

Free Download

The complete soundtrack of Final Fantasy 4 : Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption can be downloaded for free. That’s right, you don’t even need to sign up!

The easiest method would be to download it via the Torrent file. Due to the participation of the community, the torrent is more than well-seeded, and even though you’re looking at a total of 413 MB (if you prefer mp3) or 1.3 GB (if you’d rather have lossless flac), downloading should go past in a flash. If you don’t know how to use torrents, check out The Big Book of BitTorrent by Saikat Basu, an extensive PDF manual featuring everything you need (actually, really ought) to know.

If you don’t like torrents, you can also download the mp3’s straight from your browser. There’s a page on the website here, featuring http links (and mirrors) to all the individual tracks. This is however not recommended. Although you might avoid torrents, you’re looking at the tedious task of downloading each song individually, or having to deploy a site grabber on the mirror directories.

If you used the above torrent link, be sure to pay a visit to the site as well. There’s a lot of interesting stuff on there, including cover art and more information on the subject.

Any questions or comments you have can be directed to the comments section below. Don’t be shy, we’d love to hear from you.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Sites For Free Sound Effects Downloads (22)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)
• Top 3 Sites For Video Game Soundtracks (17)
• The Best 6 Sites to Get Free Ebooks (140)
• Record audio files with Audacity (12)

Increasingly, you’ll turn to Twitter. Twitter is rapidly becoming a place for people to share and discuss music, and is a great way to find new and interesting things to listen to. Lots of artists are active on Twitter, as are countless fans. But Twitter presents a new problem: how do you weed through that to find the good stuff?

Well, for a long time, according to The Hype Machine, a tracker of popular music around the Web, there was no good answer. There were answers, sure, but none did what they were supposed to do.

So The Hype Machine created the Twitter Music Chart, a brand-new way of tracking what is the most popular type of music in the Twitterverse. It’s the Billboard Hot 100 meets what you actually care about – a winning combination, in my book.

The Twitter Music Chart is created based on a very particular formula, simply described on the website: “Each tweet gets points based on the user’s influence, then we add them up to find what’s hot in the past 3 days.”

This is a novel, and smart, way of creating the charts. It’s not just measuring what people are talking about (though it’s certainly doing that) – it’s figuring out how many people are likely to be listening to a song that got tweeted. If Ashton Kutcher tweets a song, odds are some of his 2.5 million followers are going to listen to it – thus, it gets more points from The Hype Machine than if I tweeted it.

When you go to the Twitter Music Chart, you’ll see the most popular songs on Twitter over the last three days. You can see the title and artist of the song, who originally tweeted it, who else has tweeted it, the number of points it got (the number used by The Hype Machine to figure out where the song belongs), and even gives you a chance to listen to the song.

If you click on a song, it’ll take you to a page that lets you share the song on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere, as well as see more of who’s talking about it and how to buy it. If you vote for the track on Twitter, it’ll immediately get added to the votes on the Twitter Music Chart.

The biggest problem is that the list is only pulled from, and The Hype Machine only cares about, links from Twitter to The Hype Machine. Because of that, the list tends to be very niche-heavy, but I’ll say I still loved a lot of the music that came up. Tons of remixes and mashups, as well as some old classics – the music really runs the gamut.

If you’ve got an account with The Hype Machine, you can log in to favorite a particular song to your account, for easy access later. Otherwise, pretty much everything on the page is available to you. Across the bottom of the screen lives the player, where you can play, pause, or even buy a track from a variety of sources.

If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow the Hype Machine Twitter Account for tweets of the latest popular songs – delivering the popular stuff right into your Twitter stream.

One other thing I enjoyed about the Twitter Music Chart was the link, on the right side of the page, to check how many points The Hype Machine would give you for a tweeted song. It’s another measure of your Twitter influence, but is fun to cross-check with all the other people promoting songs.

It’s not a perfect chart, and nothing will be until it deals with all the music around Twitter, but it’s a great step in the right direction, and a cool way to find new music online.

What other online music charts are out there?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Scoopler – Cool Real Time Search Tool for Twitter (12)
• Four Free Sites to Share Your Music On Twitter (15)
• 8 Most Useful Plugins For Gnome-Do (6)
• 8 Adobe AIR Apps that DON’T Suck (45)
• 5 Unique Websites with Very Useful Tag Clouds (14)

The application is installed on your computer and then it acts as a server and allows for your computer to be connected to. You can then access your iTunes library through your browser and stream any song that you have or share your iTunes library with others.

Since it acts as a server you will need to keep the computer turned on that you wish to access. If it is turned off then the application is not running and therefore you won’t be able to access your library. If you want to be able to access your iTunes library all the time but not leave your computer on, then the best solution would be to purchase a cheap computer that you can leave on all the time.

Installation and Setup

To download pulpTunes simply go to the pulpTunes website and click the Download Now button to being downloading the application. The file that will be downloaded is a zip file so expand it then open up the application named pulpTunes in the folder that is created.

The first time you start up the application a window similar to the one pictured below will be displayed. This is telling you how to access the library within your browser and to open port 15000 on your firewall so that you can access your library from outside your network. If you do not know your IP address then this will also be shown so take a note of it.

When you click OK if you go to http://localhost:15000 you will see all of your songs and playlists. Your iTunes server has now been setup locally – you’ve now shared your iTunes library, and anyone on your network should be able to access it if they know the port number. If you do not want everyone to be able to access it then you can setup an admin username and password by clicking on the icon in the tray and then selecting User Management.

When the window opens up check Enable User Management and then enter the username and password that you would like then hit save.

If you return to http://localhost:15000 you will now notice in the upper right corner that there is a hyperlink called Log in.

When you click the hyperlink you will be asked for the username and password that you have just entered into the User Management window.

If you successfully log in you will now notice a hyperlink in the upper right corner called User Management.

If you do not want anonymous users to have access to any of your library then uncheck the Has access box. If you want anonymous users to only access certain playlists or songs then you can do this by clicking All Playlists and selecting the playlists and songs that you want to allow an anonymous user to listen to.

To add a user that you do not want to be an Admin you must first create a group. I created a group called Users and I will allow them to rate songs so I check the Can rate songs box. To create a user, click on the Accounts tab and then press Add User. I named my user user1, the group Users and other required information. When I click save it is now possible to log in as user1 and listen to my library.

Advanced Settings

By default when the page loads, the first song automatically plays so to stop this, click on the pulpTunes icon in the tray and press Advanced Settings. If you uncheck Start playing songs, hit OK, then restart pulpTunes then the first song will no longer automatically play when the page has loaded.

The Advanced Settings window also allows you to change the port number that is used to access the library, so for example if port 15000 is used by something else on your router you can change it to a port that is unused.

If your iTunes XML library file is located somewhere else than the default location you can also change this here.

If you want to see who is accessing the pulpTunes server and what songs they are listening to, you can enable logging to keep track of this. Click OK and restart the pulpTunes server and the changes will be applied.

Please let us know what you think of sharing your iTunes library with pulpTunes by posting a comment below. If you know of a similar application feel free to discuss this below with other readers.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Music Sharing with Mojo (18)
• Liberate, Sync and Share Your Media With DoubleTwist (6)
• 3 Ways To Access Your Music from Mobile (11)
• Who Is Connected To My iTunes Library? (Windows) (12)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Server (Part 2) (20)

However, one night I was sitting at the computer and came across one of the coolest MP3 downloads of the Beatles song “Revolution” and I realized how cool it would be to download the songs that I want, exactly when I want them. So, gritting my teeth, I decided to get with the program – and the most popular music download application of choice was iTunes.

I had an MP3 player already, and figured since iTunes had one of the coolest interfaces to find music downloads, I’d go with that. After my first purchased download, I realized that while the song played fabulous within the iTunes player – there’s no easy way to transfer iTunes music that you purchase over to MP3 devices. You need an iPod. Great. I wasn’t about to go out and buy an iPod since I already had an MP3 player.

I spent a few weeks struggling to rig up a system that would convert my iTunes purchases into MP3 music, and then testing out a variety of freeware and hacks that promised to convert iTunes over to high quality MP3, I realized that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get a high quality MP3 from my iTunes purchases.

Sure, I could go to Wal-Mart or Target and download music files – but I’d already purchased a whole collection of iTunes tracks. Frustrated and disgusted with iTunes, Apple and the whole mess – I went back to listening to the radio.  However, a few years later and a few years wiser, I’m back in the game – and I’m back thanks to Amazon Music Downloads.

Amazon Music Downloads Combines Instant Play With Flexible Options

Here’s what struck me as perfect about the Amazon Downloader. With iTunes, you have a slick interface to browse through music, listen to small samples and download and play tracks or albums. In my opinion, iTunes is still one of the best interfaces around for browsing and playing music.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to stay attached to your computer – you’re really out of luck if you don’t have an iPod. On the flip side, places like Wal-Mart or Target would let you purchase and download specific MP3 tracks, but it was a very manual process where you purchase and download the file and then load it into whichever player or device you like. In a way, the Amazon music downloader is very similiar to the Wal-Mart and Target approach, however it provides a slick and convenient way to integrate the online song browsing area of Amazon’s website with your Media player.

This year, the UK’s Guardian took notice of the fact that Amazon is coming out punching with competitive pricing on music downloads in order to compete with iTunes in a big way. Just browsing through the main MP3 downloads site at Amazon, you can see that for yourself. The prices are competitive enough, and just like on iTunes, when you click on a song there’s a “play” button that you can use to listen to a sample clip of the song. I found a cool track from the movie Transformer’s – Linkin Park’s New Divide, a very cool tune based on the sample (I can’t wait to see the movie).

Installing the Amazon Music Downloader

In addition, if you look at the top of Amazon’s MP3 Download section, you’ll notice a link to Install the MP3 downloader. In my opinion, it’s this feature, in addition to the fact that the downloaded music can be played in any MP3 capable device that you may own, that’s going to give Amazon the competitive advantage. People don’t like to have their hands tied when they pay for music. The download is available for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Once you download and install the application, it runs in the background and shows up in your taskbar. The software takes up hardly any resources, and it handles all of your music downloads while you can continue surfing – this includes managing the download of multiple files as well as automatically inserting them for you into your Media Player library (in the case of Windows – Windows Media Player).  Whenever you’re browsing Amazing MP3 downloads and you decide to buy a song, you’ll first have to pass through the purchase review screen.

Once you click “continue,” the file download box will pop up – make sure to unclick “Always ask before opening this type of file,” before you select “Open” so that the next time you go to download a song, it’ll just automatically allow the Amazon Downloader application to handle the file for you without any interaction on your part.

Once the download is complete, your new song appears in the Amazon MP3 Downloader title list that shows you all of the songs you’ve downloaded. The application is really less of an interface as it is a tool to seamlessly pass your downloads through to your media player library.

To make sure that “pass-through” takes place as it should, within the downloader applicatoin click on File -> Preferences. On the following screen, you’ll want to make sure that the “When a track finishes downloading…” selection box contains the option to pass the track into Windows Media Player.

Integrating With Windows Media Player and MP3 Devices

Once your download completes, the media player will automatically open. Your purchased title appears in the “All Music” category, where you can listen to it or move it into your own playlists. This feature means that there’s no need to keep track of where your file downloads, and you don’t have to go through the extra steps of opening up the media player and manually adding the song into your library. Once you purchase and download – it’s done.

If you want to open up the file to transfer it over to your MP3 device, just click on the “View Download Folder” at the top menu bar inside the Amazon MP3 Downloader. The directory where your files are located will open, and you can either burn them to a CD, download them to your favorite MP3 device, or simply admire what it looks like to truly own music files that you can do whatever you want with – you don’t have to play them in a specific device!

I don’t mean to knock iTunes, we love the application and write about it all the time, like Saikat’s awesome article on how to fix a lost link to the iTunes music library.  Ultimately, it really does have one of the best written music browse/music player applications in the industry. However the desire to maintain a proprietary stronghold of the music format is probably going to keep iTunes at a major competitive disadvantage. I, for one, intend to become a loyal Amazon MP3 Downloader fan from now on. Another great option, if you’re interested in more of a player/downloader application, check out Mark’s review of Mozilla’s Songbird.

If you’re not really a fan of iTunes, let’s hope Jackson can turn you into one with his posts: How to Improve Your iTunes Experience Part One and Two. Also, not forgetting, MakeUseOf has put in a lot of effort into creating a PDF Manual for you iTunes newbies: The BIG Book of iTunes. Grab it now!

What’s your favorite source for cheap MP3 music downloads? Have you read 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives To iTunes Store? What do you think of the Amazon Music Download application? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 2) [Mac Only] (16)
• Buying Music: iTunes Store vs Amazon MP3 Downloads (14)
• Move over iTunes – Mozilla’s Songbird is Here (42)
• How to Improve Your iTunes Experience (Part 1) [Mac Only] (39)
• 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives To iTunes Store (24)

Unfortunately, mixing audio not only entails picking the tracks to mix, but also downloading beats, sound effects, and an audio mixing program. Sometimes, doing all that is worth it, but if you’re looking for something simpler, like an online audio editor already packaged with beats to mix, then give the following websites a shot.

DubStep Studio

Previously known as Electro-House Blender, DubStep Studio’s interface is beautiful and extremely simple, and it includes a decently sized sound library for your mixing pleasure.

To add a track to a song, simply click the “Add Sounds” button, and a panel will pop up that splits the available sounds into further categories, such as “Keyboard” or “Sound Effect.” The tracks are not named according to how they sound, and there is no search box, so you may need to preview all of the tracks before you find the right one. Adding the track to the song is as simple as clicking the plus sign next to its name, and then clicking the beats in which you want the it to be heard. From the workspace, you can delete tracks, change the volume of each track, and control whether the track is heard primarily from the left or right speaker.

You can try DubStep Studio to mix your own music without registering, but in order to save or open files, you must register. Even so, users cannot upload their own music into the mixer, nor can they export the song so it can be accessed offline. Despite these shortcomings, DubStep Studio’s ease of use and polished presentation make it a worthwhile app to check out– at least, for someone who wants to try mixing music without any heavy duty commitment.

Jam Glue

Though Jam Glue is not the eye candy that DubStep Studio is, its wider range of features outshines DubStep Studio in every aspect. Not only does the search function exist, but it also gives the user the option of searching by the song’s approximate tempo.

Registered users are allowed to either upload a .mp3, .wav, or .wma file, or import audio from an URL, although there is a large statement warning the user not to upload copyrighted material.

The process of editing is virtually the same in both webapps – there is no option to scale the size of the track to inspect the waveform more closely, and Jam Glue’s “snap clips to beat” feature replicates the effect of clicking where youwant your track to go in DubStep Studio. However, Jam Glue has the added functionality of being able to scale the speed of any track and sync the tracks to a user specified beats-per-minute. Jam Glue also allows users to rearrange the order of their tracks, making editing overall a much smoother process than it would have been in DubStep Studio.

After you have completed and saved the track ( assuming you are a registered user), Jam Glue gives you the option of downloading the track. However, this option is hidden in the bottom of the mix details page and is only accessible after the song has been “published” to Jam Glue’s database.

After you have tried these two webapps to mix your own music, perhaps you will decide that DJing is indeed your forte. In that case, I would highly recommend Audacity, the tried and true software for editing music, or the previously covered Mixxx. Or, if you’re just looking for a simple editor to make ringtones, check out Zedge or Make Own Ringtone. Both are browser based, although Zedge requires registration before use.

Have you tried any of the aforementioned apps? Do you have your own secret weapons, to be deployed when you suddenly decide you really really want to mix music? Lets hear about it in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Rock On With Free Mixxx Music Mixing Software (11)
• Normalize MP3 Volume Levels with MP3Gain (10)
• Record audio files with Audacity (12)
• Manage your iPod with SharePod (15)
• Make Use Of Podcast #48: How to Podcast Pt. 3 (7)