New music search and search-by-example services

Still a few weeks to go until publication, but nevertheless there are a few areas where I've know for a while that Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll as a book is slightly behind the times (I submitted a "final" draft in February this year, and further revisions on 2nd April).

Even when I was reviewing the proofs I knew that Weedshare had ceased operations and BurnLounge were changing theirs, but I didn't have scope to do the fairly substantial rewrites these would have required.

More excitingly, some of the developments I wrote about as vague promises now have many tangible examples. This is most clearly the case in the area of music search, where services like SeeqPod and Project Playlist allow you to listen to the tracks found in your search results, while Audiobaba and OWL enable you to find tracks that sound like other tracks or even the parts of songs that you most like.

I've created an updates and errata page to log and point to these developments, and link them back to the relevant parts of the book's text. As and when you read the book and know of other areas where I should add updates, please make comments on that page.

Comments

[Ron]

So much of the music I like has been discovered through just simply asking friends who have stuff I like in their discography. I've been using and loving Project Playlist for awhile. It's been a breath of fresh air for someone who tends to get stuck in a musical rut.