Earlier this month we named Spotify as the best music player we’ve ever used. Today, despite quite a bit of speculation to the contrary, Apple approved Spotify’s iPhone application—in Europe.
Nobody wants to throw a party with stale music. Flavortunes invites your guests and has them RSVP with playlist suggestions at the same time.
Many workers find that the best music is somewhat ambient and randomly mixed, so it’s not a conscious thing to keep track of, but a clever audio backdrop. CitySounds.fm provides quick streams of electronica-leaning tunes from around the globe.
Windows only: Pared-down portable application Radio Sure streams and records more than 12,000 channels of music and other radio feeds. If you can’t find something to listen to, you’re probably not looking hard enough.
Windows only: Last.FM Downloader is a lightweight application for grabbing music from the popular streaming music service Last.FM and saving it for local use.Unlike some of the similar applications we’ve previously reviewed, Last.FM Downloader doesn’t require .NET or installation. The application is completely stand alone with no installation required. Usage is straight forward, run the application and plug in a URL for the song or playlist you want to download, you can even grab the similar artists playlist if you’re looking for a little variety. While the author’s web site notes that you don’t need a Last.FM account, it seems to be only semi-true: for some strange reason I could download the similar artists playlist without being logged in but I could only download individual songs when logged in. Last.FM Downloader is portable freeware, Windows only.
Last.FM Downloader [via Life Rocks 2.0]Mac OS X only: Free, open source application PandoraBoy pulls the popular streaming internet radio site Pandora out of your browser and integrates it with your Mac desktop. With features like global hotkeys, support for your Apple Remote, and even integration with Growl, PandoraBoy looks to be the ultimate Pandora companion for OS X. PandoraBoy is free, Mac OS X only. Windows users looking for a similar solution, check out PandoraBrowse or our bevy of other ways to get more from Pandora. PandoraBoy [Google Code via TidBITS]
Webapp Chilirec records streaming audio online through an easy-to-use online interface, then parses each recording for artist and track information for à la carte listening and downloading. When you sign up for Chilirec, you tell it the stations you want to record from a database of available options—you can’t currently add your own, but one would expect this option in the future. Once the app gets up and running, you can browse and download any recording. We’ve covered several apps designed to record streaming audio from the likes of internet radio stations, but if you’re at a computer where you can’t install software or you just don’t want to add another program to your start menu when you don’t need to, Chilirec looks like a great solution. Chilirec [via Download Squad]
