Category Archives: Resources For Musicians & Music Lovers

MegaBox – A Familiar Service Now Goes The Musical Way

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Megabox

Name: MegaBox
URL: http://www.megabox.com

Who hasn’t shared a file through MegaUpload at least once in his lifetime? The service is up there with RapidShare as one of the premier destinations for sending and receiving data. It is also a good platform for the streaming of clips, as any person who has ever tried MegaVideo can tell you. And now, it s also becoming a destination for those who want to listen to music on the WWW. MegaBox sees to that. It is a service that makes both for streaming music when you are online, and for buying it on the spot (a la iTunes).

What’s more, users of MegaBox are allowed to upload their entire music collections to the cloud, and listening to all their selections from wherever they are. So long for visiting YouTube in order to listen to that song which has somehow become nestled in your head overnight.

MegaBox has been released at the same time as MegaLive. That is a service for broadcasting what you are doing in real time using your webcam. By all reckonings, the Mega family is swelling ranks more than quickly… Will we see some illegitimate offspring along the way?

Turn Your iPad Into A Fully-featured DJ System

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dj turntable djay

If you are the kind who entertains DJ notions and you have been a good boy this year, then this is what you should ask Santa for.

Presented by Algoriddim, Djay is an application that will turn your iPad into a hefty DJ setup. Once installed and launched, the iPad will take after two turn tables and a mixer which has tons of options. For example, you can instruct the app to detect beats and tempos automatically, and also get down to some visual mixing using audio waveforms. And when you have had enough of mixing but the party is still going on strong, then you can just activate the Automix mode and let Djay do the honors while you hit the floor.

As it was only to be expected, any song that you have in your music library can be mixed using Djay.

Oh, and just in case Santa fails to deliver the goods, Djay retails at $ 20.

Guitaryst – Play Your Guitar With The Help Of Automatic Tabs

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Guitaryst

Name: Guitaryst
URL: http://www.guitaryst.com

Get ready for automated and intelligent tablatures, because that is what this shiny new website has to offer. Guitaryst allows anybody to play his guitar while the relevant tablature is automagically scrolled down the screen of his computer or tablet. This means that the performer (IE, you) won’t have to leave his guitar unattended in order to flip a page any longer.

Guitaryst works along with last.fm, like.fm and libre.fm. You are given the chance to choose the one service you want for the song to be streamed. As soon as the music begins, the tab will be displayed and automatically scrolled down to the timing of the song. Continue reading →

TuneCrank – Letting Independent & Unsigned Artists Spread Their Music

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TuneCrank
Name: TuneCrank
URL: http://www.tunecrank.com

The meet-and-greet tradition upon which the music industry operates is a necessary evil… or is it? Websites like TuneCrank are here to bring that hegemony down.

In general terms, this site lets just anybody upload his tunes and have them streamed to whomever is willing to give them a good listen. The process is wholly free, and what TuneCrank aims to do is give just everybody a chance to be discovered, in a framework in which there are no favoritisms of any kind. On TuneCrank, all that matters is the quality of what you are uploading, not whose back you are scratching. Continue reading →

Bud To Bud – The Online Sharing Of Music Is About To Reach A New Height

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BudToBud

Name: Bud To Bud
URL: http://www.budtobud.com

I usually don’t cover startups that are yet to launch for the simple reason that I prefer to review sites you all can head to directly and use within seconds, but today I have decided to make an exception. Bud To Bud presents itself as a really cool way to experience music. As such, I have felt it was in order to let you know about it so that you already know what to expect when it finally launches.

In general, Bud To Bud creates a shared environment in which people get to listen to the music their pals are playing in real time. It’s just as if you were sharing headphones with the other person, only that you are going to be located in separate places. Different rooms, different cities… even different countries.

And when you discover a song that means business, you can proceed to buy it and have it added to your music collection. Of course, users of Bud To Bud can also message each other out and either compliment themselves for their good taste or pull each other’s legs. I mean, imagine what would happen if you caught someone who is mad about AC/DC listening to the Jonas Brothers! Priceless or what… Continue reading →

Durocast – Listen To Worldwide Radio On Your Computer

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Durocast

Name: DuroCast
URL: http://www.durocast.com

“What if, like the radios commonly found in cars and stereos, there was an online central hub providing easy access to thousands of real radio stations, both local and national?”

That is the inspiration behind DuroCast, a startup company that hails from Portland. Its founders are Bryce Clemmer, Matt Polzin and Elliot Swan.

DuroCast empowers people to listen to radio stations from anywhere in the United States, Canada and some parts of South America (yes!). The idea is that users will be able not just to listen to their favorite radio stations, but actually discover new ones as they go along. Eventually, they will build up their own personalized radio dashboards, centralizing all the good music that they have found. And the best bit is that these radio dashboards are instantly shareable. Continue reading →

Wanabez – Where New Talent Is Discovered

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Wanabez

Name: Wanabez
URL: http://www.wanabez.com

The meteoric success of artists like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga has opened everybody’s eyes to the role the Internet can play in a musical career, and Wanabez is here to let singers and instrumentalists have a fairer chance of being discovered.

Wanabez is a brand-new video portal for aspiring musicians, a place that is comparable to a version of YouTube in which only videos of people looking for the big break are uploaded.

Just like YouTube, Wanabez can be used for free. And the videos that are uploaded can be commented and rated by just anybody – site visitors, other performers, industry folks who stumble upon them…

Besides, since videos can be sorted both by rating and by the number of comments they have received finding the most promising acts is a much easier task. Any person looking for emerging talent can visualize only those that have received the highest qualifications, and avoid having to sit through one band after the other of fifteen year olds doing their own versions of “Whole Lotta Lovin'” with the divine conviction that they are incendiary, when they are just a good couple of light years from getting anywhere near the mark. Continue reading →

Joy Tunes – Let Your Kids Learn Music By Playing Games

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JoyTunes

Name: Joy Tunes
URL: http://www.joytunes.com

All the musicians I’m acquainted with tell me the same story: the more their parents sent them to teachers to learn how to write, read and play music when they were kids, the closer they were to disdaining it forever. They also tell me that the moment they became independent and could say “no” to mum and dad was the moment they discovered the deep love they could feel for music.

That only makes too much sense. No matter how wonderful something is, if it is imposed it becomes a source of frustration and it is resisted to the bitter end.

Yet, what can parents who want their children to learn music do? Is there a way to have their little ones learn how to play an instrument without boring them to death? Continue reading →

Clean Tab – Guitar Tabs For The Rest Of Us

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Clean Tab

Name: Clean Tab
URL: http://www.cleantab.com

Clean Tab is a site that will make any guitar’s player day. It collects together tabs for most popular bands and displays them using cutting-edge technology (it is the first site of its nature that I have seen which uses HTML5, for example).

Also, the site comes with full support for social networking services (IE; Facebook and its cronies) so that sharing any tab that you find and that lets you replicate your guitar heroes to the tee is a piece of cake.

The site can be browsed by genre and by artist, and the ones that are better-represented are actually highlighted on the main page for you to know about new bands to try out, although I doubt you will make any new discovery there – the artists which are showcased are all of stature, like The Beatles, The Who and David Bowie. Continue reading →

Bender Converter – Convert All The Videos You Want For Free

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Bender Converter

Name: Bender Converter
URL: http://www.benderconverter.com

Last Friday a very good friend asked me to convert some YouTube videos into a format that her old computer could actually play, and burn a CD with the resulting files. There were about fifteen of them, and they were all by the same Finnish band: HIM. I don’t have to tell you such a thing wasn’t necessarily topping my list of priorities for that particular weekend. But there was no way I would let her down.

I came across this site when looking for a fast way to get that job done. And while I wouldn’t say that Bender Converter is “the best” website of its class, it did the job quite competently and I have bookmarked it.

You see, Bender Converter lets you supply the URL of the video that has to be converted and then choose an output format. There is no need for you to upload anything, and that’s always a big plus. So is the fact that a ton of video hosting services are supported. These include YouTube, Vimeo, DailMotion, Veoh and Blip.tv.

And some of the output formats that you can go for are .AVI, .MOV, .FLV, .3GP… in fact, you can even have a video converted into an audio MP3. Useful for these ultra-rare live clips and prehistoric TV performances that some sympathetic chums upload to YouTube for mere mortals like you and me to rejoice. Continue reading →