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Introduction
Just almost a week ago (8Nov2007), debut to the world after round of private beta, and like honey to bee, immediately attract music lovers that looking for a better way to listen to popular music quickly and reliably.
So what exactly is Songza ? What better way to describe Songza than to perceive it as Google for YouTube Music, as the interface mimic the famous minimal Search look. Unlike Google Search though, Songza is a free Web2.0 music site leveraging AJAX in any possible way. For example, the search list area is updated without the whole page refresh.
Apart from that, Songza is much its own as it doesn’t serve advertisement, and include built-in audio player(embeddable) and playlist (kind of useless currently, non-embeddable) feature. Indeed, Songza strictly adhere to the philosophy of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) in overall design, hence making it straight-forward to use. The service doesn’t even need user registration at all (It can be a issue though, see Improvement section). It doesn’t even pretend to be anything else.
Songza is one of those useful idea that one wonder why he hasn’t think of it in the first place. It is original and innovative, and most importantly, useful and addictive.
The basic use of this simplified tool is to search for song in Youtube and then a present a list of song result which can be directly play-back, add to playlist, or be embedded. The song can be voted (though I’m not sure how it is it been used) and its URL link can also be email.
To see how the embeddable player look like, go to Geezer site
Implementation
Hang on, doesn’t YouTube serve video only ? Yes, it still do, however Songza has ingeniously and transparently extract the audio portion from YouTube video so that it play back the audio instead of video. On top of that, Songza return the exact result as though searching in YouTube, and it look like only those files that belonging to Music type under the Video Category (YouTube) are been searched. It is amazing that all this is accomplished by making use of YouTube API and is done in real-time. Searching for audio is very fast , and streaming the audio is fast too that I thought somekind of audio caching is done by the backend.
Why YouTube Music ?
There are several ways to stream audio legally, and the most common way is to partner with music company to license the song, and pay them either though revenue sharing, advertising or per song basis etc. Still, licensing does not cover all songs, and many popular songs are excluded in the collection much to the dismay of many avid listeners.
Another way is to tap on other services for content and extract out what is needed. This is exactly what Songza is doing and is a perfectly well-thought implementation as it circumvent song licensing from music company, and yet at same time leverage on the enormous resources from Youtube to stream music legally and indirectly through YouTube API.
Oddly, YouTube contains many popular video songs that is intentionally lacking in many audio streaming service like those song from concert performance and marketable, commercializable songs. This is one reasons why tapping on YouTube make sense. Most popular songs are simply found in YouTube than in other audio streaming service. Period.
Despite the quality of audio from video maybe degraded comparing to original digital encoded audio, the difference is almost undetectable upon listening.
Sometimes, stripping the video portion and just using the audio for embedding make perfect sense if one doesn’t want to show existing irrelevant/inappropriate video.
Operation
Still like any other audio streaming service, the music playback can be choppy if the traffic is overwhelming.
Improvement
Still, there are areas that I like to see improvement. I presume the playlist function is still under development. The playlist feature is just impractical because although the song can be added, the playlist cannot be saved since there is no user registration at all ! How this feature can be useful at all fathom me. I’m sure Songza will add the user playlist and embedding of playlist in future release. Embedded Playlist is very useful because it is more memory efficient to store the songs and the page tend to load faster, compare to many embedded audio players in a page. Moreover, playlist will automatically play the next song.
The embedded audio player also need to strip its size. It occupies too much space and given that its function is minimal, it should be compact.
Conclusion
Overall, the experience is very positive and I did not face any major problem. For those who want a quick way to playback music without fuss should really give Songza a try.
Review:
Type: YouTube Music Search/Playback
Cost: Free
URL: www.songza.com
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Is English your native language? If not, the mistakes you made are understandable, but you still need to proof-read your article better.
For example,
“At right side, is the sole playlist which is impractical as the songs isn’t store permanently. ”
This sentence is a little awkward but the worst part of it is ”
“the songs isn’t store permanently.”
It should be written, “the songs aren’t stored permanently.”
I’m not trying to be rude at all just trying to help you out.
There are several mistakes like this and I would recommend rereading it.
Hi Jimmy,
thank for the advise, I appreciate that and well aware that there are ton of grammatical errors in articles I have written, and I aim to correct it along the way.
English is my native language. It’s just that I write code more than I write English article everyday.
Perhaps I write code better than I write the articles, haha.
Anyway, the following is just my practice.
I always release the article after proof-read it to my best of ability first, and update it to correct any spelling or grammar errors along the way if you observe. I wouldn’t want to wait till my articles are perfect before releasing. I believe the content is more important than grammar and having to wait till the articles are perfectly correct of any grammatical error will surely make one lose enthusiasm of releasing anything at all. It might seem foolish to release something that less than perfect, still it is better than nothing at all.
Perfection is usually the cause of procrastination of getting thing done. So as long as I believe the article is good enough, I will release it first, at least it get thing started and going.
I have set aside a target to release few articles a day, and I wouldn’t want to miss that target just because of some deficiencies in English. That shouldn’t be a hindrance.
Grammer is something I weak at and still working hard at it everyday (Luckily, there is no grammar in Java, at least not those that deal with singular, plural etc. What’s a relief ! haha) .
Thank for spotting the mistake. I have updated the changes. Let me know if there is still any grammatical error.
Hmmm, let’s see if there are some online grammar checkers to help out.
[…] those are not the only game in town. Deezer (Review) and Songza (Review. Though yet to have embeddeable playlist) have recently joined the fray of legal music service and […]
hi guys,
i just started loving songza but unfortunately when i access songza from office, everything is fine but the only problem is….
the songs do get played when i click on play button but i cannot hear them. when i switch to the songs stored in my system, they get played and i can hear them well. there is nothing wrong with my sound device.
plzz help me and give me a solution plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
jini,
there are few things to check:
Are you using notebook ? Can you play and listen the song in your home ? If no problem , probably due to firewall in office. Streaming audio is not using port8080 (default for http protocol). Can you access other music service like Deezer (www.deezer.com) to play back song in office ?
hi Geekycoder…….
I use a desktop here in office and I cannot access Deezer (blocked) due the firewall but Songza is not blocked and can be accessed easily. Probably, As u say, firewall could be the reason y m not able to hear the songs
and Yes, i can play and listen to the songs at home.
Could you please suggest me what best can be done to rectify this problem???????
jini, I doubt that Songza is working at all behind firewall. The playback bar may be showing but it could be some thing not rectified if it does not play properly.
Is there anyway, you can ask your network administrator to test it ? It is very likey the network admin can configure one pc without firewall on his side so that will not jeopardise your company network. This way you can verify if it is the firewall.
Unfortunately if indeed is the firewall, there is virtually no way to work around it. If it could, it means your company network security is not foolproof.
wat up man how you doin
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