MeCanto – your music collection on the web

MeCanto let you Listen to your music collection on the web and your mobile phone.

Features:

• Upload and sync music using the PC client.
• Unlimited free online storage for your music.
• Music is neatly organized according to genre, artists, etc.
• Create and edit your own playlists.
• No need to manually sync again.
• Use it on your mobile too.
• Edit playlists online, search for videos on Youtube and scrobble it to your last.fm account.

Recommended by MakeUseOf.

Apple’s iTunes U(niversity)

Apple iTunes U “puts the power of the iTunes Store to work for colleges, universities, and other education organizations, so users can easily search, download, and play education content just like they do music, movies, and TV shows.”

This is Apple’s service for faculty to provide content for computers and portable devices.  Something to look into for podcasts and other online video/audio/PDF delivery services for classes.

Simplify Media – Connect Your Music

Simplify Media is freeware which lets you play your music in iTunes, Front Row, Winamp, Windows Media Player 11, or Linux’s Rhythmbox.

It’s file streaming software for Windows/Mac/Linux systems as well as iPhone/iPod Touch.

MyCast your digital media with Orb

MyCast your digital media with Orb 2.0 remote pc access software.

“Orb provides the ability to “MyCast”. MyCasting gives the user instant access to photos, music, videos, live television, and other digital content on their home PC at anytime and from any internet-connected device, such as a mobile phone, PDA or laptop. MyCasting is media anywhere.”

Freeware. Windows Vista, Windows XP (Home or Professional) with Service Pack 2, or Windows XP Media Center Edition (2004 or 2005), Wii, PS3 and Xbox.

Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better

Lifehacker has a post on how Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better.

Songbird is the younger sister application to Firefox and Thunderbird and other Mozilla freeware, and it handles the media playing.

These add-ons pump up the functionality of Songbird.

Kantaris: Unique Media Player Based on VLC

The How-to Geek has a post on Kantaris, “a Unique Media Player Based on VLC”.

Kantaris combines “the plays-anything aspect of VLC with the pleasant interface of Windows Media Player”.

Media Player Classic

Media Player Classic is available fromCNet Download (a safe source) and it’s freeware.

If your Windows Media Player refuses to handle DVDs and other video or audio formats, this is a good alternative that’s easy to install and use.

“Media Player Classic is the perfect substitute for Windows Media Player. Aestetically is identical to version 6.4 and has the same lightness in terms of RAM occupation, but it has much more usefull functions. Features: with ‘right’ and ‘left’ keys it’s possible to go forward/backward of one single frame; with ‘Ctrl + right’/'left’ it’s possible to skip one predefinite quantity of frames; with ‘Ctrl + up’ it’s possible to change faster the speed of reproduction; it’s possible to visualize with media player Quicktime and RealMedia movies (but that programs must be installed); in full screen modality it’s possible to show a scroll bar putting the mouse in the lower portion of the screen; in full screen it’s possible to do the redimension images and adopt a cinema format or a TV format; it work as a DVD player too; keys are completely customizable; it can show subtitles.

CNET Editor’s Note: Some anti-virus software flag this product as a potential threat. We have re-tested it and based on our process believe it’s clean.”

Screamer Radio

[updated 2009.7.2]
Screamer Radio “is a freeware Internet Radio player for Microsoft Windows.”

• It’s easy to use
• It’s not bloated
• It’s ad free
• It has no spyware
• It has a huge database of radio stations
• It has a cool peak meter
• You can easily record what you’re listening to
• You can hide it in the system tray
• You can play back on multiple soundcards
• .. and it’s free!

Pick a radio station (now this is really impressive — I didn’t know most of these even existed!).  Tune in, turn on, and listen.

Note: some of these stations listed have broken links.  Keep trying and some of them will work.

Didn’t find the station you wanted on the furnished list?  Here’s a possible way to include it:

Open the File drop-down menu, select Manually Edit Favorites and look at the list of possible stations you’ve already selected.

The easiest method is to copy one of the entries to a new line, and then edit it to match.

Example: I found in my Favorites:

<Station title=”Mellesleg.FM – Soundtracks (192 kbps)” url=”http://www.mellesleg.fm/”>
<Source>http://195.228.254.168:8070/</Source>
</Station>

Note: the “Soundtracks” actually read something non-English (“Foado”), so I edited that first to something that meant more to linguistically-challenged me.

Now the lists didn’t include every station from Mellesleg, so I wanted to add others that looked interesting.

I copied the existing entry to the next section.  With Screamer open, I clicked on the link to that group of stations, and found another I liked, which wasn’t on the lists provided with Screamer.  When I clicked on the new station, I got the IP address for it shown (in Firefox) which was 195.228.254.168:8120, which differed from the first one only in the section after the colon:

<Station title=”Mellesleg.FM – Musicals (192 kbps)” url=”http://www.mellesleg.fm/”>
<Source>http://195.228.254.168:8120/</Source>
</Station>

So I edited the change, made it into “Musicals” and I had a new entry in my Favorites.  Saved the file, and used Screamer to change to the new Favorite channel.

The same principle applies to other channel addresses — especially if you already have another one from that station.  If not, see if you can get the IP address and work out your own custom link.

Windows Essentials Codec Pack for media

Windows Essentials Codec Pack is”one of the most comprehensive collection of Media Codecs, Filters, Splitters and other tools that will enable you to play 99% of all the movies, music and flash files you download off the internet. WECP also includes a set of powerful filters that can enhance the video quality as well as audio quality and it comes complete with an automatic update service that will keep your computer up-to-date with the latest software upgrades as soon as they become available.

WECP is clean and compact, it has no spyware / adware / or viruses, it’s easy to use and even easier to install / uninstall and it’s published under the GNU GPL open source license so it’s 100% free. But more importantly, it was especially designed to fix the many errors and software conflicts caused by other codec packs which routinely install obsolete or overlapping codecs, and it’s guaranteed to keep your to keep your computer up-to-date with the latest software upgrades.”

Amarok music player

Amarok is an open source freeware music player “for Linux and Unix, MacOS X and Windows with an intuitive interface.”

It seems to be a head-on competitor for iTunes, without the commercial aspects, and integrates with web services, along with offering a number of powerful features.

Might be what you’re looking for in a music player.

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website is a Digital Inspiration post with practical instructions on how to handle RSS feeds, videos, audio, photos and slideshows, web albums, events from Google Calendar, very large photos, charts and graphs, animated gifs and screencasts, chat functions, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheet data, PDF files, Flash (SWF or FLV files), LinkedIn profile, Google Maps, another webpage, Windows Media or QuickTime movies, other fonts, and FriendFeed lifestreams.

Whew!

MP3DirectCut 2.10 edits MP3 files

MP3DirectCut 2.10 “is a small tool for frame based editing of MPEG Layers 3 and 2. You can remove parts, change the volume (on MP3 only), split files or copy regions to several new files. All without the need to decompress your MP3 into a PCM format. This saves work, encoding time and disk space. And there is no quality loss through any re-compressions. mp3DirectCut is very fast and gives you extensive control over your MP3s: Several prelisten functions, MP3 visualisation and VU meter, Easy navigation, Fading, and volume setting. Version 2.10 includes adjustable overlap time for split save, VBR improvements and Cue sheet compatibility.”

Windows. Freeware.

TagScanner for your music files

TagScanner 5.0.525 “is a multifunction program for organizing and managing your music collection. It can edit tags of mostly state-of-the-art audio formats, rename files based on the tag information, generate tag information from filenames, and perform any transformations of the text from tags and filenames. Also you may get album info via online databases like freedb or Amazon. Supports ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis comments, APEv2, WindowsMedia and MP4(iTunes) tags. Powerful TAG editor with batch functions and special features. Playlist maker with ability to export playlists to HTML or Excel. Easy-to-use interface. Built-in player. Version 5.0.525 includes support for online databases like Discogs or Amazon.”

MP3Gain and easyMP3Gain raise the volume

Rolling along, listening to your music… and you hit that one really low-volume song you have, so you have to turn up the volume — and then hastily reduce it again for the next song.  Ever wonder if there’s a solution?

A search on SourceForge.net turned up MP3Gain, which raises the volume of MP3 files that turned out to be too low for your use.

Also here is easyMP3Gain, a front-end for MP3Gain, to make it even easier to use.

With both of these, you can raise the volume of those individual MP3s to something like that of everything else you have.

vloud makes MP3s LOUDERRRRR!

vloud is a free audio tool that makes those MP3s that were recorded too quietly a little LOUDER.

Just upload that song (you know, that irritating one that you have to turn up the sound to hear) and get it back in a louder version.

Use at your own risk — they’re your ears!

Lifehacker’s Five Best Media Converters

Lifehacker has a group of its Five Best Media Converters.

We’ve all been there: you’ve downloaded an episode of your favorite TV show to watch on your commute or stream to your living room, but the file you downloaded isn’t supported on the device you want to use it with. Once a significant obstacle to enjoying your media anywhere, this problem is easily solved by any number of free media converters. On Wednesday we asked you to share your favorite media converters, and today we’re back with the five most popular answers.”

Gizmo’s – Best Free MP3 Tag Editor

Best Free MP3 Tag Editors reviewed by Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert

“MP3 has become the most common audio format for playback, storage and transfer of music. If we need to playback MP3 files with their tag information shown correctly, a good MP3 tag editor will be helpful.

In this category, both standalone and built-in MP3 tag editors are reviewed based on three basic needs which include:

• Support basic tags, embedded cover arts and lyrics.
• Rename files using tag information, and edit tags using file names.
• Lookup online databases and save tags into MP3 files.”

iSpeech: Convert Websites & Docs To MP3

MakeUseOf has a post on iSpeech.

I blame Apple for all this “i” this and “i” that…. Now it’s iSpeech to convert text to audio files.

You can convert a file, a web site (just enter the URL), or type in text.

Once the conversion to an MP3 file is complete you can:

- playback and listen to it online,
- download and store the recording on your PC,
- podcast it,
- or embed it as an audio object on any site and let others play it as well

Features:

• Convert websites, RSS feeds, blogs and documents to audio.
• Do as many conversions as you like.
• Convert DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, RTF and HTML docs to speech.
• Play and listen to converted recordings online.
• Download recording as an MP3 file.

aTunes for your music and sounds

ZDNet has a post on aTunes which is “is a fully-featured audio player and manager, with ripping and encoding tools included. aTunes is coded in Java programming language (Java 5), using Swing, making it a highly portable piece of software. Version 1.9 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.”

Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista, Java Runtime Environment 1.4.2.  June 2008.  Freeware.  Free registration is required.

GuerillaRadio: Search, Listen & Download MP3 Files From Web

MakeUseOf has a post on GuerillaRadio: Search, Listen & Download MP3 Files From Web

“Just type the name of the artist or band and click on “Find”. GuerillaRadio will then search for it on the web and bring you a ready playlist of MP3s from that artist. You can play tunes online or download to your computer.”

Features:

• Search, listen and download MP3 files for free.
• Play and download as many files as you like.
• Clean and easy to use interface.
• No sign-up needed.

GuerillaRadio