5 Rdio Features for Music Enthusiasts

I've been using Rdio a few weeks now thanks to Glenn Peoples, and I'm impressed with their service. Below are 5 features that make Rdio a great experience for music enthusiasts:

1. select and listen to a specific artist, album and/or a specific track
2. create and share custom playlists, subscribe to your friends' playlists, or collaborate on their playlists
3. effortlessly write a review for a song and/or album (this data could be a great resource for artists, labels, managers and the like)
4. great social interface allowing users to easily see what their friends are listening to (vice-versa), as well as other Rdio users, and who is listening to the music you like (creating new opportunities for music discovery)
5. nice visualization of music collections (i'm assuming they'll add more visualizations)

Rdio will likely influence other music service providers to modify their offering with similar features and design, benefiting all music listeners, but there are a few areas where Rdio can improve:

• increase content, especially from unsigned artists with services like CD Baby and Tunecore
• easier queue creation/management for individual songs and albums (e.g. the drop down to add is cumbersome)
• tighter integration of music recommendations based on a user's listening activity; it's a bit separated from the experience at present

SoundHound vs. Shazam

Out of curiosity, over the weekend I compared SoundHound and Shazam to see which one is the superior music identification app for the iPhone; below are my results:

Install time:
Shazam was slightly faster

Identification time:
no significant difference

User Interface:
SoundHound seems to offer slightly more features, but Shazam has a clean UI

Identification Test (all songs tested were played over my laptop via Pandora):
Airstream Driver by Gomez
SoundHound - identified the song/version/artist correctly
Shazam - failed first attempt; identified the song/version/artist correctly the second time

Hang 'Em High by The Meters
SoundHound - identified the song/version/artist correctly
Shazam - identified the song/version/artist correctly

Hope She Falls In Love by The Blue Dogs
SoundHound - failed to correctly identify the song/version/artist (tested twice)
Shazam - failed to correctly identify the song/version/artist (tested twice)

Hurricane Party (Live) by James McMurty
SoundHound - identified the song/version/artist correctly
Shazam - identified the song/version/artist correctly

Come Talk To Me by Get Busy Committee
SoundHound - failed first attempt; identified the song/version/artist incorrectly the second time as Come And Talk To Me (Remix) by Jodeci
Shazam - identified the song/version/artist incorrectly (tested twice; each time Come And Talk To Me (Remix) by Jodeci was identified

Artist Information:
Once the song/artist has been correctly identified, Shazam provides useful and readily accessible artist information (e.g. tour dates and Twitter/Facebook profile information), but SoundHound provides features Shazam does not, like a list of the albums the song has been featured on.

Price:
Both offer trial versions where Shazam appears to allow 5 free identifications per month, while SoundHound appears to only allow 5 total. Their paid versions both cost $4.99 and include unlimited music identifications. However, they should both increase the number of identifications provided with their trial versions to 10, as seemingly this would encourage use, which would probably lead to higher purchase rates.

Conclusion:
It's a draw, as both seem to identify music equally, and both have difficulty identifying non-mainstream music (interesting to note that it was the same songs), so it's going to come down to your personal preference.

ReadWriteWeb on Band Metrics

Many thanks to Richard MacManus, Founder and Editor of ReadWriteWeb for his great write-up of Band Metrics - very much appreciated!

5 Things StumbleAudio is Doing Right

While another music recommendation app may not be interesting, StumbleAudio is doing at least 5 things right that their competitors should take note of:

• StumbleAudio does not require you to register and/or login to listen to music. With so many sites to test, this is a huge plus.
• There is no limit as to how many songs you can skip when listening to music.
• If you find an artist you like, you can listen to every song available from that artist
• The site is simple and fast, enough said.
• They're focused on indie music, and they're apparently paying indie artists when their music is played on StumbleAudio - how much, I do not know. Maybe someone from StumbleAudio will respond to this post and provide us with some details.

As an added bonus, their site is ad free, at least for now. StumbleAudio has plenty of product/technical challenges ahead, not to mention the music recommendation space is already crowded, so it will be interesting to see how they differentiate themselves and monetize their offering.

Dumpstaphunk

Recently, Greg Hester turned me onto Dumpstaphunk. If you love the Meters, than you gotta check these guys out. Led by Ivan Neville (piano/organ) and Ian Neville (guitar), sons of Aaron Neville and Art Neville, and rounded out by Nick Daniels (guitar), Raymond Weber (drums) and Tony Hall (bass), Dumpstaphunk pushes the envelope of exploratory funk jams to a new level with tunes like Stinky, Meanwhile and Livin in a World Gone Mad. These players are simply fantastic! Having played with musicians like Trey Anastasio, Robert Randolph and Etta James, these guys are living up to their disclaimer: "the nastiest, most serial crushin funk to ever come out of New Orleans and beyond." They're playing NYE if you're heading to Fish City; I don't think you'll be disappointed.

These guys are just too good not to get the word out.