Category Archives: Resources For Musicians & Music Lovers

Plug.dj – Create A Party, And Share Your Music With The World

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Name: Plug.dj
URL: http://www.plug.dj

Sharing music videos by cutting and pasting URLs is so Web 2.0. In the age of social media, a new way of sharing music is needed. And you know, Plug.dj might as well take up that mantle. This new site lets you have songs and music videos shared in a virtual setting of its very own. By signing in with your Facebook, Twitter or Google account, you’ll be able to start streaming songs to all of your friends in a really lively setting. Or (to use the expression used on the site) to “start a party”. You’ll have your own avatar, and so will your friends. And these avatars will dance to any song that you play.

What’s even better, Plug.dj comes with a multilingual chat. Anything you type there can be translated into 8 different languages, so that using the site to make new friends is really easy. And the more you use the site then the more features you’ll unlock for your profile. These include new dance steps, strobe lights and laser shows. And also, all-new avatars. In more places than one, Plug.dj resembles a big social game.

And leaving aside how cool something like this is for making new friends, there’s no denying how useful Plug.dj can be to DJs and artists. The former will get to share their latest mixes with everybody, and the latter to release new music videos in the most interactive of settings – one that will encourage new fans to provide their feedback like never before.

BaxoBeat – All The Songs Your Facebook And Twitter Friends Share In The Same Place

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Name: BaxoBeat
URL: http://www.baxobeat.com

More and more each day, social networks are becoming the way in which we catch wind of new stuff. It happens with movies, it happens with TV shows. And it also happens with music, of course. Who hasn’t tweeted a song he’s just discovered, or posted a music video he’s fallen in love with on Facebook? I have done it, you have done it. And so have all our friends. And the result is a mountain of links as big as a small country. Because a fact is a fact: who hasn’t got tons of Facebook and Twitter contacts? If we went by what experts say, we should have no more than about 150 of them. That’s the number normal people can handle, it seems. But no, we’re all born show-offs that have to friend every single thing that moves. And so, we end up having news feeds where the good stuff and the stuff which is insignificant go hand in hand.

And that’s what this new site is here to remedy. BaxoBeat is a service that creates an online library of music links, as posted by you and your social network friends. BaxoBeat lets everybody check his feed everyday, and find nothing but these songs posted by his Facebook buddies and Twitter friends from all over the world. And nothing but that.

As a user of BaxoBeat, you can create a portfolio and share it as publicly or privately as you want. You can let just anybody listen to the same music you listen to, and you can also restrict the access that people have to your music library. Which is important if you claim to listen incessantly to nothing but Lamb Of God and Slayer, when the truth is you also “happen” to listen to a song or two by Maroon 5. Continue reading →

Sworly – Listen To The Latest Hits For Free

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Name: Sworly
URL: http://www.sworly.com

That you can listen to mostly any song you want online is common knowledge. And so is the number of fakes and dupes you’re forced to endure on sites like YouTube before you find what you’re looking for. Oh, and that’s not counting the number of live and rare versions of songs that are found there, and which are labeled as the real thing. And as if that wasn’t enough to drive you to the point where you turn into the smoke monster from “Lost” and go on a rampage, you also have to deal with songs which have been pitched, in order to keep YouTube from taking them down. Which would be great fun if what you wanted was to listen to Chip and Dale singing in unison. Which you’re not.

This new site is here to change that, once and for all. Sworly gives you nothing but real songs that you can listen to on your browser, and at no cost. Sworly scours the Internet for you, and it brings together all these songs you’d might be interested in. The site is really easy to navigate, with the coolest songs being highlighted on the homepage, and a search box for looking music up straightaway. In all cases, the songs you’re playing can be easily shared with all of your pals on Facebook. Continue reading →

Vibin.fm – The Pandora For Electronica

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Name: Vibin.fm
URL: http://www.vibin.fm

A visit to this website is mandatory for those who love electronica. Vibin.fm is brimming with nothing but quality mixes that you can listen to without even having to register for an account first. The site’s usable on the fly, and all of the music that you can listen to on Vibin.fm is available at zero cost.

And in addition to letting you play the latest mixes for free, the site makes for having music streamed to all of your rave-oriented friends. What better way to start curating a party list together? The minute you’ve found a mix that you think’s got potential for rocking the house till your neighbors either call the cops or ask you to join in the fun, then you can simply stream it to your most discerning friends. They’ll tell you right away whether that mix is a keeper or a dud.

The site comes with lots of categories such as trance, deep house, trip hop, dubstep, lovestep, dirty dub and psy-trance, and finding a song suiting your exact mood (or the mood of the party you’re about to host) is a piece of cake.

And what’s even cooler is that the site can recommend you new mixes based on these songs that you’ve been listening to. In that sense, it’s quite similar to Pandora.

I feel I must mention that accounts are also available, but you’ll only need one if you’re interested in saving your favorite mixes and playing them back again. But if all you want is to have some music quickly played in the background while you’re doing something else (such as working out), then Vibin.fm is a winner.

Mashroom.fm – Create Music Clips Using YouTube Videos

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Name: Mashroom.fm
URL: http://mashroom.fm

Mashing up online videos is the order of the day here. Mashroom.fm is a service that lets you take different clips as found on YouTube, and then have them mixed in order to create something unique. You can choose up to six different YouTube videos, and use them to create a single track. And you can also record yourself, and add sounds to what you’re mashing up.

The end result will obviously depend on how much time and effort you’ve put into the edition of what you’ve created, but even if you’re in a bit of a hurry you’ll still be able to come up with something to make your Facebook friends laugh a little. And in any case, there’s no 1000-page treatise defining what memes are made up of. You never know what might end up happening to a video you’ve created on a whim, just as a way to humor a good friend…

Mashroom.fm is a free service, and you can start using it just by authenticating who you are via Facebook. Once your mixes are ready, then they can be spread in all the usual ways – email, Twitter, Facebook, Megaupload…

Wait a mo…

Forget that last name.

(Sobs and sighs)

New Releases Now! – All The Latest Music Releases

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Name: New Releases Now!
URL: http://www.newreleasesnow.com

The Internet makes it dead easy to discover new music, right as it’s become available. And the way things stand right now, you don’t even need to subscribe to lots of different sites to stay on the loop. There’s services that can do all the hard work for you. New Releases Now! (NRN) is one of these.
Presented by Almighty Music Marketing (a company that’s been devoted to the promotion of music ever since 1995), NRN is constantly updated with the latest music releases, and every imaginable genre is covered. Rock, pop, metal, punk, country, synth pop, cajun/zydeco, neo soul… All in all, over sixty different genres are included. And you can find more than music through this site, as NRN also keeps track of comedy albums.

The site features the most recent releases on its homepage, and you can find both the newest albums and songs using a simple search tool. And you’re also given the option to browse entries by genre and by release date. If it’s a new release, you’ll find it. In all cases, titles come with iTunes and Amazon “Buy” buttons, and a “Find A Retailer” widget that lets you locate the nearest points of sale. Continue reading →

RecordTogether – Crowdsource Tracks For Your Recordings

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Name: Record Together
URL: http://www.recordtogether.com

Think of all these albums in which bands couldn’t afford to hire extra instrumentalists. Just how good would they have been if a service like Record Together had existed back in the day? What if The Who had managed to hire cello players for “A Quick One, While He’s Away” (the mini-opera after which their second LP was named)? Would real cellos have sounded better than the jokey “cello, cello, cello” the guys ended up chanting in the finished record? Would that have taken away from the charm of the piece? That could be debated for longer than it took Brian Wilson to release “Smile” as he had originally conceived it, and we’d never come to any kind of agreement. Integrity, ingenuity, imnocence… the people who would veto using outside instrumentalists always end up talking about such things.

Yet, they have to admit that some classic albums could have been nothing short of perfected if artists could have had access to accomplished session players. If The Smiths had hired a full orchestra to play on their epic “The Queen Is Dead”, the end result could have been even better than it was. When the album was originally recorded, the band had to hire the services of “The Hated Salford Ensemble” (IE guitarist Johnny Marr playing everything using a keyboard) to get the accompaniment they wanted for songs like “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” and “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Continue reading →

ShareMyGuitar – Social Network For Guitar Players

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Name: ShareMyGuitar
URL: http://www.sharemyguitar.com

Check this site out if your New Year resolutions included one that went “Learn to play the guitar like John Petrucci”. ShareMyGuitar is a social network that will let you see to that. The only people who use it are guitar enthusiasts. By signing up for an account, you’ll be able to share pictures and videos of your favorite guitars and players. You’ll get to read interviews and news. And you’ll also be able to create polls and post questions for more knowledgeable folks to come to the rescue.

Alternative guitar tunings, chord charts, rare tablatures… you can request (and get) all that through this site.

And when it comes to polls, you can ask whatever you want. You can ask who’s the best rhythm guitar player under the sun (pointless – everybody knows it’s Pete Townshend), what’s the most famous guitar in history (pointless – everybody knows it’s Lucille), who’s the hottest chick who’s ever played a guitar (pointless – everybody knows it’s Orianthi)… all these things you’ve always wanted to ask but kept to yourself can be elucidated here. Continue reading →

Free & Legal Music From Ibero-America At CancioneroAzul.org

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Cancionero Azul [Blue Songbook] is a website that gives you free and 100% legal music downloads from all over Ibero-America. And that includes Uruguay. Artists that I hope to review in 2012 such as Ismael Collazo and Martin Barea Matos have all made their albums publicly available on CancioneroAzul.org. You can download Ismael’s “Rincones” [Corners] and Martín’s “Odisea En El Parking Planetario” [Odyssey In The Planetary Parking] at absolutely no cost on this well-designed site.

For its part, those of you who want to have your own music featured on CancioneroAzul.org should read this page.

As one of the few sites with this scope and depth, Cancionero Azul comes highly recommended. It’s not every day that you get to sample music from Spanish-speaking countries this accurately and legally.

StoryAmp – The Place Where Musicians And Journalists Meet

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Name: StoryAmp
URL: http://www.storyamp.com

This new site brings together musicians and PR agencies in a grand way. If you’re an artist, you can turn to StoryAmp.com to create dispatches by uploading your music, bio, photos, videos and concert links. These dispatches can then be shared using any of StoryAmp’s press lists, and brought into the hands of journalists. That doesn’t mean they’ll write about you and your wondrous ensemble, but at least you’ll make your presence known to them. It’s a start.

And any way you look at it, using a site like this one is infinitely cheaper than trying to hire the services of a PR agency. StoryAmp can actually be used for free, and if you need to flex some additional muscle then you can sign up for a premium account. This will give you unlimited audio streaming, unlimited password-protected downloads and the chance to upload an unlimited number of photos and videos to be used in your dispatches. Continue reading →