Tech News: Ultimate jukebox is next step in net music

11:23 29 October 2009 by Jim Giles

Something exciting has just happened to online music, and it has nothing to do with Google's new music service garnering all the headlines.

If you Google search for music related terms, like an artist's name, some results now come with links to audio previews for relevant tracks. It is easy to use, but the service taps into just a few of the online music streaming sites. Lala and iLike are included but others with large libraries like Spotify and Last.fm are ignored. It also only works in the US. But more importantly, Google's service only helps people find music, and what they really want is to listen to it.

If a friend tweets about a song, for example, I don't want to have to search for it: I want a play button to appear in the tweet. I don't care which server the song is stored on, I just want to click it and hear the music. The same goes for tracks mentioned in emails, blogs or anywhere online.

A new service called Playdar tries to do just that. Its creator is Richard Jones, a programmer who developed some of the technology behind Last.fm. Playdar's stated goal is to do one thing: "Given the name of a track, find me a way to listen to it right now." more...