Who doesn’t listen to music? Music is a universal language, and everyone can speak or hum it. Here are some good sites which should get your musical taste buds tingling and excited.
Coolgoose.com has nothing to do with geese, or any other animal. What’s behind the name is not known, but it is a small web portal (as compared with Yahoo and MSN). They offer a variety of services, but the focus here is only on their music engine. It’s big and has all sorts of music. This has been its advantage when it comes to an “all-in-one” service, as others are dedicated to English songs only. Registration is required to download songs (which is free). The songs are in the MP3 format, playable on common CD players and other walkmans. Search is clean and easy, as well as disappointing. If you are unlucky, the search will be very slow. Apart from that, it’s precise. You may either choose the basic search, or use advance search to minimize bad results.
Downloads only take a couple of clicks, or if you wish to stream the song (play it directly from the server without downloading it first), you may. However, you must make sure that you have a high-speed connection. If you wish, you can upload a song of your choice to the website, and your name will appear besides your uploaded songs and others will be able to contact you.
Apart from the search, the website is fast, quick and simple. but be prepared for pop ups.
Singingfish.com was recently given a “Webby” award (given to websites). This site, again, has nothing to do with animals. It’s fast, and clean too. The best feature (and the main feature it excels in) is its meta search engine — it searches different websites for audio and video files of different types. What’s more, you have the option to determine which file types are to be included or excluded from the search, the genre (music, news, sport etc), and the length. It searches Windows Media files, Real Media files (playable by Real Player), Quicktime files and MP3 files.
All files from the server can be streamed (including MP3 files), and if you know the trick, all files can be saved on your hard disk. And with each file it gives you the file type, the duration, quality (often synonymous with the connection speed) and the website (source of the file). If offered more than one stream, it’s best to select the one which matches your speed (or is near it) so that you can view the clip without long delays. You may, if you wish, view clips instead of the whole song by changing the duration’s length.
AOLMusic.com is a site brought out by AOL — one of the largest (and popular in terms of different viewpoints) ISPs in America, England, Canada and elsewhere. You can navigate a huge collection of songs (audio or video), by genre or artist, on their music section. They do have a search feature (which is sometimes better than browsing, as the site does take a while to load), which is extensive and quick. You have the option to choose from news clippings to music videos and it searches Singingfish as well.
Besides each media type, you get the duration, the file type, video quality, etc. Files on the AOL server automatically determine your connection speed and start playing. Again, you can determine how long the duration should be. Moreover, songs from the Live8 (www.live8live.com) concert can be seen here too.
Rootv.com, according to them, is a new concept in video streaming (only video, no audio). You have a player (your web browser) and everything is in it. No additional pop ups or anything like it. All is centrally controlled. You can get virtually all sorts of videos on the site. It’s a comparatively new site, but they have a huge collection of songs in their database. It acts just like a TV channel! A video window is present, another window is present which shows text, and below, it shows you either your search results and other information. Searching is easy, and uninterrupted. I found this site to be pretty good in almost all senses, as it requires no registration whatsoever to view videos and is not filled with advertisements.
Yahoo Music (formerly Launch and Yahoo Launch) can be accessible via either www.launch.com, www. music.yahoo.com or www.launch.yahoo.com. It’s Yahoo’s entertainment portal. It’s complete — music news, online shopping, videos which you can watch, radio — pure entertainment. On the main site, you can see which videos are being played a lot, what’s new, shop songs, get news, charts, and a link which allows you to login using your Yahoo account.
Search is fast and easy too. Key in the description, make a selection, and you’ve got the results. You can see the artist’s biography, discography, songs list and buy the albums. View a selection of their videos online if you wish, but after a few tries, you’d be prompted to log in, if you haven’t. They’ve launched regionalized versions too — UK/Ireland, Australia/New Zealand, France and more. So if you don’t find a video on their main site, you can search it on the other regionalized sites. The full list is on their main web page.
If you don’t want to watch, then just listen. You can create a radio station, select a theme (or genres), ban artists you don’t want to play and force the computer to play more of an artist you like. You can choose what you want on your own personal radio station. The songs are complete, and there’s no RJ or DJ - it’s completely automated. The song info changes each time the song changes. If you want to see the videos — simply click on one video, and when it finishes, the next one automatically plays without any prompt. It is, indirectly, a music videos station.
To date, there hasn’t been a site which is as extensive as Yahoo Music. But if you want more, you can get “unlimited” access for $5 a month (which again, only serious people will pay for). However, there will be some videos that you cannot watch due to regional restrictions but you can overcome this if you can “disguise” yourself as if you’re appearing from another region. But that is too technical.
For the ultimate experience, it’s a good idea to have the latest version of Windows Media Player (which is currently Version 10) but an older version is usually preinstalled on your system, or Real Player (currently, Version 10 is their latest release). They can be easily downloaded from http://www.windowsmedia.com (free) or http://www.real.com (free or paid) respectively. The free version of Real Player has some limitations such as recording, cross fading and equalizer, to mention a few. For Quicktime (“iTunes” isn’t Quicktime, but uses it’s technology. You may download either), visit http://www.apple.com. MP3 files can be played on the players mentioned above.
Who doesn’t listen to music? Music is a universal language, and everyone can speak or hum it. Here are some good sites which should get your musical taste buds tingling and excited.
