MakeUseOf » playlist creator

Use Playlistify To Get Last.fm Loved Tracks Into Spotify Playlists

Angela Alcorn — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 21:31:11 +0000

Has Spotify taken over your life and transformed your music listening habits for good? If you’re totally addicted to Spotify, but have playlists across numerous other music services online, there’s a fantastic little tool you should make use of right now called Playlistify.

Playlistify was made by music geeks who were obviously sick of putting a lot of effort into a particular online music service only to find they liked another one better. Now you can preserve all that time you used to make awesome playlists in Last.fm, YouTube and other places and bring them into Spotify for your enjoyment now.

What Is Playlistify?

Playlistify acts as a converter for your playlists, but then doubles as a database of awesome playlists converted by people. So, once you’re done converting all your favourite playlists you can search around for more that you might like. If you like a playlist you can import it into Spotify, embed it in a website or watch video clips.

As well as converting from multiple formats into Spotify playlists, Playlistify can also back up your Spotify playlists.

Bake A Playlist

For starters, baking a playlist can be done by anyone without the need for a login for Playlistify. All it does is act as a converter for you and keep the playlist information in its database.

There are an incredible amount of options available when it comes to baking a playlist in Playlistify. You can export an iTunes playlist and import it, drag and drop a Spotify playlist for embedding, use all sorts of Last.fm data to create playlists, bake any YouTube Playlist, use XSPF files, copy and paste text files of track data, or get lists from Winamp, WeAreTheHunted, Rhapsody, SoundCloud, Grooveshark, MixCloud and turn them into an embeddable, playable Spotify list. It’s pretty versatile!

The Last.fm options are incredibly useful. You can generate a similar artists playlist, a list from tags/genres, a list from a user’s loved tracks, a list of a user’s top tracks or top artists, or a playlist based on an event or a group. There’s a lot of scope for awesome playlists using these options!

Looking at the YouTube baking options, you can enter any username and make playlists from their YouTube playlists. For both Last.fm and YouTube, the user doesn’t have to be yourself, so you can use lists made by anyone with great music taste.

Playlistify Anything

While you’re browsing around online you’ll often find great lists of tunes. Use the Playlistify Anything bookmarklet to get these into Playlistify easily.

Browsing The Playlists

If you’re uninspired or just want to explore someone else’s music taste, take a wander around the Playlistify Directory. See hand-picked featured lists, popular lists, popular tags and browse or search through whatever music style takes your fancy. You can even search according to your mood, location or activity, meaning you could add an awesome jogging playlist to Spotify in no time.

Once you find something you like, you can play it in Spotify or embed it as a widget somewhere.

So, what will you use Playlistify for? Let us know all about your cool playlists!

Metafy Gives You Music Recommendations (on Spotify) Based On Metacritic Data [iOS]

Steve Campbell — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:31:10 +0000

Music – and how we listen to it – has changed dramatically over the last few years. One of the major trends, at least recently, has been the streaming of tracks online. Those of us who are really into music have come to appreciate streaming services because of their ease of use and vast collection of songs. Having all of your favorite tracks readily available saves you so much time as it eliminates the need to search for, download, and sort all of the music you enjoy listening to.

One service that has risen to the forefront of this movement is Spotify. One of the great things about Spotify is the sheer amount of music it gives you access to. Every artist, song, and album is pretty much at your fingertips, and all you have to do in most instances is type in the name of what you want to listen to. Since there is so much, however, sometimes it can be difficult finding songs you might be interested in, especially if you’re looking for something new. But what if you could find quality music that has been pre-rated for you?

What Is Metafy?

Metafy is a service that helps you discover critically acclaimed new music while you’re on the go. It searches Metacritic for songs you might like, then cross-references them with Spotify to build a quick list of albums you might want to listen to. It’s a music discovery app for iOS that uses data to rank Spotify songs according to a variety of criteria.

You can think of Metafy as a rating system for Spotify tracks. You can use it to browse the latest releases based on what is most current or most popular, as well as see tracks based on their all-time score. If you’re looking to stay up on all the latest music that is currently circulating the interwebs, then you’ll appreciate Metafy’s timeline browsing capabilities. You can view all the high scores, which will give you some insight into which tracks were the most popular during a given period of time.

All songs on Spotify are fair game and all of the information comes from Metacritic.

What Is Metacritic?

Metacritic is a well-known website that rates music based on the opinions of some of the most respected critics writing online and in print. It takes all of the ratings given to a particular song or album and compiles them into a single score, allowing you to view the best songs in a given year or all-time.

Metacritic is pretty precise, and takes into account the opinions of all of its users, constantly tweaking the voting process and fine tuning the scoring system.

With Metacritic, you’re sure to find songs you will like based on the criteria from which you search for them.

Conclusion

One thing to note is that Metafy requires a Spotify Premium subscription, which may come as no surprise if you’re a hardcore Spotify user. Use it to find great music to listen to and you won’t be disappointed. And once you’ve discovered some great music for all of your Spotify usage, you can also Explore and Share Awesome Spotify Playlists With ShareMyPlaylists. You will become the person that all of your friends turn to in order to find out what new music is out there that they should be listening to.

SongSprite – A SUPER Simple Way to Create & Share Audio Playlists From YouTube

Steve Campbell — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:31:26 +0000

In an article I wrote back in February entitled, The 4 Best Websites To Check Out New Music Releases First, I pointed out that YouTube is a great place to find new music. Simply put, there are lots of music videos on the site and no matter what you’re into I guarantee they’ve got it.

But do you know what the problem is with YouTube as a music-listening platform? It wasn’t really built for that, and because it wasn’t, it lacks a few key things that a typical music platform would have, like the ability to save music playlists. Okay, so YouTube does technically have a playlist feature for music, but you still have to wait for the video to load in order to listen to your song, and sometimes that can be a pain. I’ve found a simpler way to do things, and it’s called SongSprite.

What Is SongSprite?

SongSprite (directory app) pulls the audio from YouTube videos and lets you make your favorite tracks into a playable playlist that you can share with others. You simply get the URLs of the YouTube videos you’d like to play or share, paste them into SongSprite and then you will be able to listen to them or send a link to your newly created playlist to whoever you like.

SongSprite allows you to connect, collaborate and share playlists on YouTube in real time with your friends.

The process of creating a playlist is SongSprite is extremely simple.

How Do I Use SongSprite?

The first place you need to go is YouTube and start browsing for music you would like to add to your new playlist.

Once you find a song that you like, just go up and copy the URL for it. Shortened links won’t work, so make sure the URL you grab is of normal length. Paste the link into the box on SongSprite and click the Add button to the right. If you’re using Google Chrome as your browser, the Split Screen extension would be great for this. Check it out.

You’ll know you entered the information correctly because it will place the name of the song into your list below. You can keep adding songs in this way until you are happy with the playlist you’ve created.

To share your playlist once it is done, just copy the URL below the player and paste it in an email or IM, or click the Share icon to send the link to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.

Conclusion

While having the ability to take content from YouTube and listen to it via a site like SongSprite is extremely convenient for all of us, I doubt that YouTube would really take kindly to this type of “extension”, seeing as none of YouTube’s ads or copyright permissions seem to come with the music you’re getting with the service. Having said that, I do think SongSprite is a great resource and a site that I could see myself using again and again. I invite you all to check it out and let me know what you think.

NaviX – Must Have Media Browser Addon For XBMC & Boxee Users

Justin Pot — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:31:35 +0000

Browse thousands of TV shows, movies and podcasts from one interface, and keep track of your favorites. Navi-X, a plugin you can add to XBMC and Boxee, brings a variety of content from around the web to a single interface you can easily browse from your remote. A content aggregator made up of user-contributred playlists, Navi-X can seem overwhelming at first. Do some exploring, however, and you’ll soon find a treasure trove of multimedia content.

A media center application is only as good as the content it can play. Navi-X certainly brings a lot of it. Compatability with XBMC and Boxee means you can use Navi-X on Linux, Mac and Windows machines, but if you have a jailbroken Wii you can use Navi-X via WiiMC.

A Series Of Playlists

So what is Navi-X? It’s hard to explain, so perhaps it’s best to use their words, from the Navi-X FAQ:

Navi-X is a “content aggregator” that provides access to all kinds of multimedia content, listed on a public directory of user contributed listings or playlists for playing on your TV or PC!

Simply put, Navi-X is a collection of playlists. Some of these playlists are official RSS feeds from around the web; some are user-generated playlists. All off them offer content you can stream. The point is, there’s a lot of content collected here. Take some time to look around.

Sub-Plugins

Fire up Navi-X from within your media player and you’ll see a number of choices to start with:

These are sub-apps; the main sources of content. Navi-Xtreme, the first choice, offers a shockingly deep collection of user-created playlists. Search the content to find whatever you want, or browse to find something good.

The “Site Scraper” section of Navi-Xtreme, for example, features direct links to media from around the web. Whether you’re looking for YouTube channels or network television, you’ll find it here:

You can also browse a wide variety of user-created lists here. Beware: a lot of the content in the user-added sections is pirated. Use at your own risk.

The next channel, LiveTV, is identical to the Boxee plugins LiveTV. Other highlights include the Video & Audio Podcasts plugin, which gives you access to the entire iTunes podcast library. If you’ve got a favorite you’ll find it here.

Other highlights include full access to Apple’s movie trailers and NASA’s videos. If you’re looking for radio, you’ll be happy to find Shoutcast and Radiotime.

Note that, while browsing, you can mark any item or list your “favorite” by clicking the right button, then clicking “Add to Favorites“. This will make things easier to find later: all you need to do is click left until you bring up your favorites panel.

Installation

So how does one get access to all this content? Well, first of all you need to install either Boxee or XBMC. Download Boxee here or find XBMC here.

Once you have your media center application of choice set up you’ll need to install Navi-X. Boxee users can do this by adding “tinyurl.com/navixforboxee” to their repository list; XBMC users can download XBMC here and install it using XBMC’s settings panel. Need more information? Check the Navi-X FAQ for precise instructions. Fans of Internet multimedia can never find quite enough content, so Navi-X is great to have around.

What do you think? Will you be using Navi-X, or do you have some other Internet media source in mind? Share in the comments, as always.

Create Music Playlists For Every Situation With Playlistnow.fm

Nancy Messieh — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:31:53 +0000

There is no shortage of ways to listen to music online, whether it’s by creating your own playlists on popular websites like Grooveshark or listening to online radio stations. Playlistnow.fm is a service with a new spin on how to choose what to listen to online.

Rather than listen to music based on your mood, or based on your favourite genre, Playlistnow.fm is all about listening to music according to your situation.

Whether you’re at the office, relaxing, or partying ““ there’s a playlist for just about every situation you could imagine on the site. Playlistnow.fm is part social network, part online radio. Create your own playlists or listen to other people’s playlists. Playlistnow.fm is not only a great way to listen to music depending on your situation, it also offers a way of discovering songs and artists similar to those you already like.

Playlistnow.fm does not have a registration page, but rather allows you to connect either your Facebook, Twitter or Google account to access the site. It is worth mentioning though, that while they provide a method to revoke permission for access to your account ““ it doesn’t work. If you change your mind about using Playlistnow.fm ““ you will have to revoke permission directly through the account you connected to the site.

Once you’ve signed in, you will be prompted to fill in your name, email address and location. If any of your friends from the service you connected are on Playlistnow.fm, you can follow them, and if you want, follow some suggested members including Playlistnow.fm staff members and popular users.

Playlistnow.fm focuses heavily on the social network side of things, with collaborative playlists, allowing you to add songs to other people’s playlists. Another social network feature is a feed of your and your friends’ recent activities on the site. Other users can comment on and “˜like’ each other’s activity on the site.

There are two ways to search for songs on the site. If you use the search bar at the top of the page, the search results are accompanied by a wealth of information.

Song search results are accompanied by the audio track, similar songs, and a list of the playlists the song has been added to. You can “˜like’ the song, comment on it, or add it to your playlist. Artist search results are similar, accompanied by similar artists, a bio, and the available songs from that artist on Playlistnow.fm. If the song you want isn’t on the list, you can expand the search results to include YouTube songs.

You can also preview a song before adding it to your list, share the song via email, Facebook or Twitter. If you don’t feel like creating a situation-related playlist you can add the song to your “˜tiny playlist,’ a public list of your favourite songs, by clicking the heart icon.

To create a playlist, click on the “˜Create a playlist’ button at the top of the page and fill in the fields ““ the situation, tags, and the category.

On the playlist page, you can then search for songs to add to your playlist. These search results are not accompanied by the information included using the first search method, allowing you only to preview and add songs to the playlist.

If you’d rather browse other people’s playlists, there are several ways to do so. You can browse playlists by tag, by categories, or even through the entire list until you find something that appeals to you.

Playback is controlled by a player at the bottom of the browser screen. Through the player, you can skip and pause songs, set the playlist to play on shuffle or repeat, or share what you’re listening to on Twitter or Facebook, watch the video, or add the song to your tiny playlist.

If there is one major criticism to be made of Playlistnow.fm, it’s that you won’t always find the song or singer that you’re looking for. If your taste in music is less than mainstream, you will struggle to find songs to create your music playlists, despite the fact that the music is partly powered by YouTube videos. If the artist does not have a page on Playlistnow.fm, their YouTube songs won’t show up in search results.

Have you tried out Playlistnow.fm? Let us know what you thought of it in the comments.

Use iTunes Genius Mixes As Your Personal Music DJ

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:31:38 +0000

If you don’t have a lot of time to keep up with all the latest music you like, finding fresh tunes can often be a challenge. You might also have a rather a larger collection of albums and songs in your iTunes library, but you have very little time to organize and create your own playlists. Well, Apple has you covered with an awesome iTunes feature called Genius Mixes.

Genius Mixes creates playlists of songs based on the songs it finds in your iTunes library. It also recommends other songs and albums by the artist or group of a selected song, as well as music by other artists in the iTunes Music Store that match the currently selected song.

How It Works

It’s fairly easy to set up a Genius Mix. Open iTunes and start playing a song that you want your mix based upon.

Now, click the Genius Mixes button at the bottom-left of the iTunes interface. iTunes will create a playlist that includes 10 artists similar to the current song you’re playing. The list is based on the songs you have saved in your iTunes library.

If this is all that Genius Mixes does that would be great, especially because it saves you the time of having to go through your library and select songs yourself to make up a playlist. But it does more.

Other Selections

After looking over your list, you might decide that the mix is not exactly what you want. Well, first you can select a song(s) you don’t want in the list and simply delete it. It won’t delete it from your iTunes library, but it will remove it from the Genius playlist.

You can also click the Refresh button which re-mixes the list.

You also might want to increase the limit of songs in the list. For the most part I have found Genius Mixes to be pretty good about matching songs, which seems largely based on the genre of music.

And finally, you can simply manually add songs that you would like to be included in the list. But you can’t add them to the Genius list itself. You need to turn that list into a regular playlist (File>New Playlist from Selection) and then add the songs you want.

Save Playlist

You no doubt will want to save your Genius Mixes playlist once it’s set up the way you like. Apple has set up the left side of the iTunes interface to include a section just for your saved Genius Mixes playlists.

Also if you click on the Genius Mixes icon in the left column of the iTunes interface, iTunes will deliver up a bunch of random mixes, based on your iTunes library.

Other Recommendations

In the Genius Sidebar you will notice that when you select and play a song, iTunes will recommend songs and albums not in your library by the currently playing artists or group. Above that list will be a link to the artist page, if there is one, in the iTunes Music Store.

Below artist recommendations, you get other Genius Recommendations that are based on an algorithm of songs and albums similar to your selected song and played by other iTunes users throughout the world. These songs and albums are also ones found in the iTunes Music Store.

These recommendations are a great way to discover music new to you, even if you don’t purchase your music in the iTunes Music Store.

ï»¿If for some reason Genius Mixes are not delivering good recommendations, you might try selecting Store>Update Genius, in the iTunes menu bar. This will send your iTunes library data to Apple so that it can in turn make better recommendations.

Finally, if you prefer, you can turn off Genius Mixes all together by also selecting Store>Turn Off Genius in the menu bar.

On occasion you may have songs in your iTunes library that are not available in the iTunes Music Store, and in that case Genius Mixes won’t work. But for the most part, I have found that the Genius Mixes feature creates a good playlist of songs – many of which I forgot I had.

For other iTunes related tips and features, check out MakeUseOf’s Big Book of iTunes Guide for free.

Let us know if you use Genius Mixes. What do you like and dislike about it?

DJ The Easy Way With Top 3 Sites To Make Music Playlists

Tim Watson — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:01:20 +0000

In my younger days, one of my favorite ways to pass the time was creating mixtapes. I’d spend hours flipping back and forth between tape-decks A and B, painstakingly coming up with the perfect soundtracks for gaming or just hanging out. I recall coming up with some wacky (or just plain wack) combinations.

When I happened upon each of these three sites, those old feelings came back, although the compilation of the mixes do not take nearly as long this time around.

MixTurtle

Mix Turtle is among the first of these sites that I came across, and I feel that it’s still one of the better ones. Once you’ve signed up you can fill playlists with tracks found by Mix Turtle’s search engine, which appears to hook into YouTube and Google Video as well as index audio files from around the Web.

Results tend to contain duplicates, and some turn out to be broken links, but it’s quick and easy to find a good copy of a song.

Clicking the “live” light lists recently-played tunes which are one click away from your own playlists, which are in turn listed at your username.mixturtle.com page.

You may take a listen to my Mix Turtle playlist here.

8tracks

The makers of 8tracks seem to subscribe to the Apple school of Web design. The Flash-based interface is clear and simple. You’re just about guaranteed to find a good file for the song of your choice, but if not, 8tracks accepts uploads.

Playlists require a minimum of 8 tracks, or about a half-hour. It’s easy to browse and play other users’ mixes, and follow your favorite mixes and DJs.

Spin my 8tracks playlist here.

Maestro

I have been looking for a service like this for some time now. Some of the sites I’ve used have come close, but Maestro.fm surpasses them all.

First, a downloaded client uploads your iTunes library. As long as that client is running, you may access your library from any browser. In an effort to save bandwidth, your songs are NOT uploaded to Maestro’s server until the first time you play a song. Mac and Linux users, I’m afraid you’ll have to take the manual upload option for now. Playlist creation and library browsing with the highly-responsive interface is swift; you may add tracks individually, or save search results as a new playlist.

Finally, my extended “Ridiculous Beats” mix on Maestro, which has already been played by site users 75 times, is right here. You’ll end up either banging your head, bopping it, or scratching it.

How do you roll your playlists? Tell us what we’ve missed in the comments. Be honest, but gentile, and above all, enjoy the music!

Create Online Music Playlists with Actionext

Tina Sieber — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:20:31 +0000

actionext describes itself as a music discovery site. Yup, yet another one. But it wouldn’t appear on Make Use Of, if it didn’t offer something new and exciting that made it worthwhile. Now what would that be?

In fact, I would not describe actionext as a music discovery site. It’s different and maybe even better than that. I would say it’s a music lyrics search engine. You don’t have to listen to random tracks based on a pattern you seem to enjoy. Rather you can search for what you like yourself and create a custom music playlist. Additionally, actionext offers lyrics that anyone can edit in a wiki-like manner. Dive in to see more…

I know, there are other music search engines. However, this is the best I have seen in a long time!

Without signing up you can go ahead and search for artists or songs, browse lists of artists from 0-9 and A-Z, pick a featured album from the frontpage or browse the Top 100 list.

The best thing is that while you’re looking for music and adding tunes, the music player will stay with you and you can listen to what you have collected so far continuously, with only minor interruptions to to page loads.

A search will usually return a long list of results. The quality of songs greatly varies, the volume is not equalized, some songs are live recordings, others are album versions. You can’t necessarily tell the quality by the title the creator gave the song, so of course you can test play tunes before adding them to your playlist. Just click the play instead of the plus button.

Results always come back with two rows. On the left are the audio tunes and on the right you’ll see available lyrics. This is where the wiki-like system comes into play as you can edit the lyrics and submit your changes for review.

As you see you can download tracks and get them as ringtones. But don’t get too excited, both links will take you to services that will charge you for the favor.

To save and keep your playlist, you have to sign up. From there you can copy the code and share it through your website, blog or even myspace profile. That’s right, you can easily add actiontext music player with your playlist in it to your Myspace or other social networking profile. The code will be available when you save the playlist and at the bottom of the page when you’re playing it.

Interestingly, playlists can only be deleted when they’re open. You’ll see a “Delete this playlist” link in the top left above the player. A delete button next to each playlist in the “My Playlists” section would certainly be more comfortable. Also I’m not sure whether the amount of playlists you can create is limited. For this test I made 20. That’s plenty and the site probably allows a lot more.

Here for example is a playlist of artists I have seen live during the past two years. Not all of them, just the best of course.

actionext does not disclose the source of its tunes, but I assume it depends on search algorithms, much like the previously mentioned Cr3ation B3ta, the meta mp3 search engine.

What is your impression? Is it worthwhile? Are you gonna share some songs with us?

Discover Music & Videos The New Way With Soundflavor

Tina Sieber — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:01:02 +0000

Music is an indispensable part of our culture and with the internet we have almost instant access to a variety of genres and artists like never before. So is it any wonder that free music services flourish? Are we saturated, yet? I don’t think so.

Soundflavor combines well known music discovery formats with a few more features to make it even more interesting. Basically it is Last.fm or Pandora spruced up with videos, advanced discovery options and easy social network integration. Does that sound good? Let’s dive in and see how it works.

The website is very clear cut and easy to use. On the start page you can enter an artist or song to find music the traditional way. Alternatively, you can browse music by genre, lyrics, decade or go through a list of songs that can be downloaded for free.

Let’s say we’re browsing music by lyrics, which seems like the most unique option. You can select music by lyrical subject or mood. Mellow sounds good. Once you made your selection hit Go.

In the next step Soundflavor will present a list of matching tunes and even more filter options. To fine-tune the results you can now really go into details and combine all sorts of specifications. I specified the genre, instrument and mood. Et voilÃ , the tool came up with one of my favorite songs from Coldplay as its number one suggestion.

Once happy with the result, click “Play This Page” and Soundflavor will launch its Video Jukebox (Flash required) in an extra window and begin playing the playlist you still see on the website.

The videos are streamed via YouTube. Hence they can be anything from homemade video clips, live recordings, to the actual, original artwork. Nevertheless, all videos appear to be of high quality and most are in fact original music videos or at least live recordings of the original artist.

Should you like a song, you can make a one-click playlist based on the sound of that song. Should you dislike a video, you can simply skip it. Thankfully there are no limitations as to how many times you can jump straight to the next song. Besides, you can play a song directly from the playlist on the website.

Should you decide to sign up with Soundflavor you can add songs you enjoy to your favorites or save playlists. Within your profile you can access this information and replay the songs or playlists later on. Additionally, you can upload your iTunes playlists and Soundflavor will convert it into video playlists.

You can connect with other users, browser their favorites and playlists, leave comments on their profiles and add them as friends. And you can “Grab Widget”, implement it on your homepage, blog or social network profile and share it with your existing friends.

Certainly established services like Last.fm and Pandora retain unique features and are not endangered. However, Soundflavor opens up a new niche and enhances music discovery by several more options and degrees of freedom. Definitely a great tool!

Try it and let us know what your impression is.