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Find new music, friends with FineTune

FineTune is a music discovery service that launched last year and is focused on letting its users build sharable playlists of popular music. You're able to browse and search through a fairly large directory of popular artists and pick out full versions of their songs based on 30-second previews. There's also a really simple music discovery system that automatically builds playlists for you based on your artist picks (see Pandora). The whole package is wrapped up in a slick, user-friendly interface. There are also some basic social networking features. You can add and subscribe to your friends' playlists, … Read more

Helio gets in on mobile music

Gizmodo reports that Helio has just announced a new over-the-air music download service a la the music stores inspired by the Sprint Music Store and Verizon's V Cast Music. Despite its ties to Sprint (Helio is a virtual carrier operating on Sprint's EV-DO network), its music store model actually mirrors that of V Cast Music. Like its competitor, Helio will offer songs for PC download for 99 cents, which you can sideload to your phone later, or you can download a song over-the-air for $1.99 and have a copy of it ready to download to your home … Read more

British pop band plays Pac-Manhattan!

Geeky, oddball music videos have been all the rage since OK Go hit it big by dancing on treadmills for their song "Here It Goes Again." Well, here's the latest addition to that trend. A similarly-named band, Britain's The Go! Team, created a music video for their song "Junior Kickstart" in which they run around the streets of New York City playing live-action Pac-Man.

The video's cool. But "Pac-Manhattan" is nothing new; the concept first surfaced as a final project by students at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program a … Read more

Amadana: Good taste, cubed

Maybe it's our midlife crisis taking over again, but we have a serious crush on Amadana, the Japanese company that created the bamboo-clad DVD player and other gorgeous products that reflect its zen-like design philosophy. If Amadana had a retail outlet, we imagine it would look like a cross between an Apple store and a Buddhist monastery. (We just wish the company would change its logo, which looks way to much like Amana's.)

Amadana's all-in-one audio system is a perfect example of the company's devotion to clean lines. Krunker.com says its 7-inch-sided cube has touch-sensitive … Read more

Music lounging for the arch villain

Most of the so-called multimedia furniture pieces we've seen are unsightly contraptions that seem to treat their media components as an afterthought. Not so with the "Sonic Chair Boom Box."

This piece of digital furniture also has brains to match the beauty of its Austin Powers-era design. Uber-Review says its insulation reserves the soundwaves for the person sitting in it, without disturbing others nearby: "The speakers are encased in a carefully crafted body that creates sufficient volume for powerful bass tones, while two body-focused sound generators, in the seat and the backrest, further augment the lower … Read more

A backpack that everyone can hear

Enough already. Why is it that some people insist on "sharing" their music with the rest of world--whether we like it or not--when today's headphones offer a far superior listening experience? We've seen everything from messenger bags to bowling bags with built-in speakers, and now we have a new backpack that will surely contribute its share of noise pollution.

Scullcandy's "Link" backpack has speakers embedded in its straps for music or--worse, as OhGizmo notes correctly--a cell phone conversation. We've got to get started building that bunker.

eJamming: Skype for musicians

EJamming, which makes software that enables people to practice music together if their instruments are MIDI-enabled, is announcing a service that works for non-MIDI instruments too: drums, guitars, voice, violins, etc. The idea is to let musicians practice together even when they can't get together physically, or to let students and teachers work together remotely.

There are really interesting technical challenges to making this work. Not only do you have to transmit very high-quality audio, but you have to do it with extremely low-audio latency. The eJamming founders, Alan Glueckman and Gail Kantor, told me their audio processor and … Read more

Midomi names the tune [with video]

In December, I covered Nayio's Humming Search, which is supposed to identify songs when you hum into your computer's microphone. It was a colossal letdown. But a few days ago I tried a new song identifier, Midomi [see News.com story], and it worked great. I tried several songs (including the acid test, "Yellow Submarine," that Nayio flunked), and Midomi named most of them just fine. It didn't hit 100 percent accuracy--during my video shoot, it misidentified Oasis's "Wonderwall" on one try out of about seven--but it's accurate enough to be … Read more

Where's Digg for music? Right here

When Digg 3.0 launched in December we wondered where the capability to Digg music was. We were led to believe it was coming, but Web 2.0 abhors a vacuum. There are already a few Digg-like services for music. Today I took a look at BandBuzz, iJigg, and ChartU.

None of these sites plays music from major labels, which is frustrating, because you'll miss hearing from artists who have signed recording contracts (unless their managers get with the program and start uploading tracks). But it's also wonderful, since it lets smaller indie bands bubble up in a … Read more