Tag Archives: music

Toastify Adds Global Hotkeys & Desktop Notifications To Spotify

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The battle among audio streaming services has been turned into a blazing hot one for the past few years. Even though there’s no shortage of audio streaming services on the internet with names like Last.fm, Rdio, Pandora etc. being some that come to mind instantly, Spotify probably takes the lead, both in terms of interface and functionality - not to mention its huge collection of audio library. For me, it’s unarguably the best music manager around that I simply can’t stop listening to. However, despite all these features, it lacks a few elements that many users would want, one of them being the lack of global hotkeys. Each time you want to change a track or turn the volume, you need to manually do it through Spotify's interface. Third-party tool Toastify has taken up the gauntlet to restore this missing functionality that should’ve been there in the first place. Read More

MediaMonkey Media Player & Manager Comes To Windows 8 And RT

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Listening to music while working is a pretty common habit of most computer users, as it helps one relax and take the mind off of stressful things. It can also help people block off any disturbing sounds from the surroundings while working on their computers. Whether listening to music while working increases or decreases the productivity and efficiency is a debatable topic. After the default Windows Media Player, iTunes and Winamp, MediaMonkey is one of the most famous audio players available for Windows. In Windows 8, Microsoft has also included a new Modern UI-based music player. However, it does not provide you with a lot of options for playlist creation and metadata editing. Today, we have the Modern UI version of MediaMonkey that allows you to manage and play your music & video collection, create playlists, adjust equalizer settings, and edit metadata. More on MediaMonkey after the jump. Read More

EQuala Is A Social, User-Curated Radio For Android & iOS With A Twist

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Social music discovery services are special in that they not only help you explore the top trending tracks from all across the globe, but also let you share your personal musical tastes with worldwide music lovers. The phenomenal aspect of most quality apps in this regard (like Hitlantis, MusicBunk, Exfm and Soundtracker) is that they add something unique to the concept in terms of both aesthetics and functionality. In EQuala, we might well have found another very impressive solution for discovering great music on mobile devices. Available for Android and iOS, EQuala (beta) presents you with a unique equalizer-like UI containing various sliders linked to selected EQuala users and friends. By adjusting the levels of these sliders, you can let the app know exactly what ratio of tracks to stream from the choice in music of each of these users. Based on your custom settings, EQuala will then begin playing a continuous stream of music, allowing you to enjoy the right blend of music from various users as you like. Read More

Serendip Brings Non-Stop Crowd-Sourced Music Streams To iPhone

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Gone are the days when everyone just relied on their phone or iPod’s local music library to listen to songs. With the advent of 3G and easy availability of Wi-Fi at many public places, a lot of us services like SoundCloud and YouTube to stream content on the go. Another advantage of these services is the ease with which you can discover new artists and songs. Serendip combines the concepts of music discovery and social networking with non-stop streaming to provide you with an online radio of sorts curated by your friends and other users of the service. Serendip’s web service has been around for quite a while, but now you can enjoy its personalized audio streams on your iPhone as well. Serendip for iOS has everything that the web variant offers; you can follow friends from your social networks and discover other Serendip users who share your musical taste. The app offers endless streaming, which means you don’t have to keep pulling your phone out of your pocket repeatedly to select the next song. Read More

Music DJ Is A Great Alternative To The Stock Windows 8 Audio Player

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There’s never been a shortage of music players for Windows, but the the exact opposite can be observed when it comes to Windows Store in Windows 8, which has yet to receive a top notch music app that can challenge the likes of iTunes and WinAmp. Since Microsoft has designed Windows RT to run Windows Store apps only, the need for a decent Modern UI music player is definitely not to be neglected. Even though the OS does include a native music app, it doesn’t even compare to the plethora of full-featured desktop media players for Windows. If you aren’t satisfied with the default Modern UI player, try Music DJ instead. While it's no WinAmp, this free app lets you listen to your favorite tunes and offers several features not available in the stock Music app. Read More

Jam For iPhone Lets You Create Original Songs In Seconds, Makes You Sound Like A Star

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When apps like Songify and AutoRap were first released, the novelty factor played a big part in their success. Now however, the concept of converting speech into songs is not very new, and an app in this genre needs to have something really special to garner a following of its own. Jam for iPhone seems to have this extra bit of flair. The app offers a lot of styles, rather than concentrating on just hip-hop or pop. You get to decide the category of your song, and Jam processes the singing accordingly. You can even adjust the level of auto-tune you want to add to your singing, while the ‘beats per minute’ factor can be customized as well. Like most apps of this type, Jam has a comprehensive sharing network where all the publicly recorded songs are available for everyone's listening pleasure. Read More

Listen To Your Google Play Music Library On Windows 8 With gMusic

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Google Play Music is Google's answers to the iTunes Store, Amazon MP3 and the like. It is a cloud-based music service by Google that allows users to listen to music and buy new tracks and albums from the Play Store. The mobile app for Google Play Music comes installed by default on Nexus devices and can be installed from Play Store on other devices running Google's Android mobile operating system. Using a Google account, you can also access the player from your web browser. It hosts both free and paid music depending on whichever mode of distribution the artist or the record label chooses. Each user is allowed to upload up to 20,000 of their own songs to the service for free and music can be played online as well as stored on your device for offline playback. Being a mobile platform, Windows 8 and RT-powered tablets are a great option for people who like to carry their devices around but if you are already an Android user, buying the same songs again from Xbox Music for your Windows 8 device seems like a waste of money. Today, we bring to you an app for Windows 8 called gMusic that allows you to access your Google Play Music library and listen to all the songs on your Windows 8 and RT device. It also allows you to rate songs, create playlists, and browse for new music from within the app. Read More

Fuzz Releases iOS App For Streaming Its People-Curated Radio Stations

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Services like Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody offer a huge collection of music for streaming, but all of them depend on automatic algorithms to judge your preferences and come up with music that you are likely to appreciate. While automation is good in most cases, listening to a playlist created by a computer can fall short of the mark at times. Fuzz.com is an internet radio service that is popular for hosting radio stations created and managed by its users. In addition to searching for radio stations that match your interest, you can be the DJ of your own station to share your tunes with the world. Fuzz.com has just released Fuzz Radio for iOS, which is essentially a mobile app for browsing and listening to radio streams from the website. The app scans the music library of your device and suggests stations accordingly. You can also browse through channels based on their genre or overall popularity. Read More

aTunes Is A Music Manager With Support For Lyrics, Last.fm & Online Radio Streaming

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Apple’s marquee iTunes application has earned a lot of reputation as well as notoriety, depending on your requirements and stance on bloatware. The app works great with iOS devices but for most others, alternatives like MediaMonkey and Winamp are still among the top choices. Recently, I reviewed a light-weight music player for Windows called GOMAudio that is built with minimalism on mind but today, I have a feature-laden audio manager for music enthusiasts called aTunes. No, it's not another iTunes rip off, but the application does look cool. This open-source cross-platform program holds tons of features under the hood, boasting incredible skin customization options and stellar playback performance, streaming & Last.fm support, automatic lyrics downloading, syncing with portable media players, and a lot more. Let's take a look at the player and its features in detail after the jump. Read More

Download Songs From SHOUTcast Stations With ESFSoft Radio Downloader

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Many of us listen to online music streams while doing several other activities like work, exercise, commuting and what not. While there are countless streaming services available that offer something for everyone's taste, a times you just need the music to be available offline in order to listen to it on the go, especially in areas where you don't have wireless broadband, or just to cut down on your data connection bills. Also, at times you are listening to a radio station and on comes a song that you like instantly. You keep waiting for the presenter to call out the name of the song and artist at the end but it doesn't happen, and you are left wondering which song that was. You can search for it using different methods such as Googling its lyrics, but that in itself can be a bit too much trouble, especially in case of less-known indie music. ESFSoft Radio Downloader helps you with that by allowing you to download radio streams from Shoutcast.com and automatically save them to your computer. The application downloads each song in a different file, letting you easily create a complete playlist. Read More

YouVue For Windows 8 Aggregates YouTube Music Videos By Genre & Shows Their Lyrics

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Websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe and Dailymotion have achieved their popularity due to their ability to host thousands of videos uploaded by users and let others view and comment on them without having to pay anything. Other than a huge number of casual users, these websites are also used by major content providers like TV channels, blogs, musicians and educators to host demonstration videos, tutorials, music videos, news coverage and pretty much anything you can think of. Due to the huge number of music videos available on YouTube, a lot of people use it to listen to music. If most of your YouTube access revolves around viewing and listening to music videos, we have a Windows 8 and RT app that lets you avoid having to browse YouTube for music videos by providing you with an interface focused entirely on them. YouVue allows you to watch music videos from different genres and gives you access to top music charts from different countries. You can create playlists, add videos to a favorite list, and view your history to listen to a track again. Read More

resonicplayer Is A Minimal Music Player With A Built-In File Browser

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Having a playlist of your favorite music playing in the background while working on the computer is a regular habit of a lot of computer users. However, most major media players such as Windows Media Player and several third-party alternatives have flashy interfaces and too many options that can easily distract a person from their actual work. Moreover, having so many options is useless for someone who just wants to listen to some music in the background. Some days ago, we covered the newly released GOM Audio by the developers of GOM Player that boasted a compact design and impressive features. However, if you are looking for a lightweight music player that does not put much stress on the system, does not have a lot of flashy options, and offers a simply way to play music from your audio collection, try resonicplayer. It is an audio player currently available only for Windows that provides you with a simple and user-friendly interface. Moreover, you can set a timer on the application to perform a number of operations after a certain time, making it useful for people who like to go to sleep while listening to music. Read More

Play Songs That Match Your Mood Or The Weather With Smart Music For Windows 8

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As different people, we all have varied tastes in music. While rock lovers consider it to be the king of all musical genres, trance enthusiasts and those in love with other genres, tend to disagree. Other than the people who are faithful to only one music genre, many (like me) like to listen to different genres, depending on their mood. For instance, I might listen to rock or trance while I am driving, but choose an ambient playlist before going to sleep. In order to listen to music according to your mood, you need to have pre-made playlists. If you have a huge music collection, creating a different playlist for each mood can be a tedious task, while just randomly playing songs from your collection can even have a negative effect on your mood. Currently, there are a lot of web services as well as Android and iOS apps that allow you to listen to music according to your mood. Today, we present to you an app for Windows 8 called Smart Music that does the same for Microsoft's latest desktop and tablet OS. It features readymade playlists for different types of moods, and provides you with a built-in player to stream the songs directly to your Windows 8 device. Read More

Auto-Sort Your Music Library Into Folders According To Song Meta Tags

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These days, hard disks are able to contain several terabytes of data. This means you can now store thousands of files in your computer without worrying about running out of space. However, if your files are not properly organized, it is very difficult to find what you are looking for in that huge pile of data. Sometimes, we save a file in a folder and forget where we put it. If you can't remember its exact location, you can use the built-in search function to look for the file, but in order to take full advantage of this function, you need the files to be properly tagged, as it helps Windows identify exactly what you are looking for. Today, we found a portable tool called Tag 2 Folders that extends the usability of metadata and allows you to sort your locally saved audio files according to their tags. For instance, you can put all the songs related to one genre or a particular artist in a single folder. If you do the same activity manually, creating folders and moving files into them will take up a lot of your time. Read More

Shazam For iPhone Now Tags Songs While Offline To Identify Them Later

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Shazam is the most popular music recognition service out there, and people love using it on their smartphones. If your iOS device is always connected to the internet, you might not have wished for an offline mode in Shazam. Those who often suffer from bad reception or loss of connectivity on the other hand, are sure to appreciate the latest update of the app. The song recognition itself will still require internet access, of course, but the song will not be lost forever when you're offline; you will just have to wait till the next time your internet connection is active, and Shazam will get to work on it. For all the Google+ users on iOS, Shazam offers a new sharing button on the tag menu. Since all your past discoveries are kept saved within Shazam, the new search feature in the ‘My Tags’ section is pretty useful too. Read More

[Giveaway] Hypegram: Stream Unlimited Songs Gathered From Music Blogs

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A big music appetite is hard to satisfy, but if your taste in music isn't particular to a specific genre, or you  find online radio stations from services like Pandora or Grooveshark aren't picking the right kind of music, try Hypegram. Hypegram is a  $4.99 Mac and Windows app that allows you to search for and listen to unlimited music. The app is essentially a client for music blog aggregation and discovery service Hype Machine. It allows you to follow blogs and view music selections from them. The app differs from other online music services because the music is selected by people and instead of following radio stations for a particular artist, you can follow music blogs. This gives you a larger variety of music to listen to. You aren't restricted to a particular genre, and you can refresh the app to get a new playlist each time. Songs can be favorited and purchased on iTunes. Read More

Discover New Music On iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch With eMusic Infinite Explorations

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eMusic might not be the only iTunes alternative out there if you want to purchase songs for your iOS devices, but the music discovery features offered by this service certainly have no match. The just-released eMusic Infinite Exploration app doesn’t have much to do with eMusic’s song purchase service, but that doesn’t make it any less useful. Infinite Exploration is all about discovering new songs by searching for different keywords and just browsing through the staff recommendations. The app even lets you stream previews of each track, and if you have an eMusic account, it is possible to add your discoveries to an existing music collection. As the name suggests, the suggestions served up by Infinite Exploration are presented in an endless stream of thumbnails. The relevance to your searched keyword will keep diminishing as you go down the list, but the overall interface really makes the app a fun way of discovering obscure but interesting music. Read More

DJ Player Brings Filters, Effects & Great Music Mixing Tools To iOS

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Garage Band pretty much kills the competition when it comes to apps that can be used to create new music using iOS devices, but even Apple’s famous music app might not be enough if you actually want to DJ a party. There are a few nice apps available in the App Store for that purpose, but most of them don’t offer tools that come anywhere near professional music mixing software. Even when they do, either the price tag is too high, or there are restrictions on using tracks from your own iPhone’s library. DJ Player is an app that comes with a slew of music effects, sound filters and a full suite of mixing tools, all at the unbeatable price tag of free for a limited time. There are a couple of decks for making remixes, meaning you can run two songs side by side and apply the effects of your choice to each one separately. Apart from all the music mixing stuff, the app also has some extra awesomeness like gyro-based controls and intelligent background themes that change automatically based on the time of the day. Read More

easyMute: Pause Music Playback On Android By Covering Proximity Sensor

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We have previously covered a lot of Android apps that bring your device’s proximity sensor into play to help you easily accomplish various tasks. For instance, ShakeCall lets you receive and hang up calls by shaking your device, SpeakerProximity is capable of determining when to switch calls between your device’s earpiece and speaker, whereas Wave Control supports various gestures to let you control music playback totally hands-free. New to the Play Store, easyMute is yet another handy addition to the list of apps from this genre. Just like Wave Control,  this particular app can prove to be a godsend for music enthusiasts who are looking for a viable solution to temporarily pause music on their devices without having to unlock them. easyMute uses your device’s proximity sensor to automatically pause music once the sensor is covered. That’s not all; it also presents you with the option to set a volume level to which your music should automatically be shifted after you cover the sensor. Read More

ShoutOut Radio For iPhone Lets You Share & Stream Music On Facebook

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Every once in a while, you are bound to come across a song that really hits the spot. It's at times like these that you feel the need the share. ShoutOut Radio is a new iPhone app that lets its users scrobble songs from their own library or through Last.fm. This app uses your Facebook account to send public and private messages to your friends regarding the songs you are listening to. There are plenty of radio streaming services available for iOS, and a lot of apps offer scrobbling, but ShoutOut Radio combines the two in a perfect meld. Even if none of your friends are on ShoutOut Radio, they can still stream the music you share with them right from their Facebook Walls. You can also create personalized radio stations of your choice by letting the app know of your taste in songs and artists. Read More