Song of the Day: "I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing" by Mike Doughty

Man, I love Mike Doughty. Something about his music that just gets me bouncing. Ever since his Soul Coughing days I've been a big fan and after Doughty's Haughty Melodic album a couple of years ago I've been jonesing for what's next.

Well, the wait is just about over. The new album, Golden Delicious, comes out next week, and here is my new favorite song of the moment....

I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing by Mike Doughty

Yahoo's New Play(er)

Yahoo just announced their new web player today and released it into the wild for us to play with.



Basically, it works as follows:

Here's what it does:

1. Link to MP3s in your web page. These can be anywhere on the web.
2. Add a line of code to insert our Javascript library. We host this, so you just have to point to our URL.
3. Working play buttons appear next to MP3s.
   

More information can be found here:

http://yahoomediaplayer.wikia.com
http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2008/01/post.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/08/yahoo-releases-browser-based-mp3-player/

My first impressions are very positive. As a blogger it will make my life easier since I just embed the player code once into the body of my page, and then just drop the MP3 links anywhere on the page and they automagically get a play icon (and get playlisted).

It also is supporting some open standards (under the covers) in the form of XSPF playlists - I assume in a future release I will be able to hit a page that uses this player and download the XSPF playlist file to take with me - where I can then decide to either have it continue to resolve to the original source files or to a catalog of my choice (e.g. a subscription catalog, my local library, etc.). Check out the work going on at OpenMediaWeb that Yahoo is also heavily involved in and this previous conversation around playlist portability.

Yahoo gets their piece by linking off to a Yahoo Search based on the metadata keywords.

All-in-all, it strikes me as a web-based client version of Foxytunes. I've always been a fan of Foxytunes, and you can see my previous coverage of them here. In fact, I would not be surprised to see Yahoo Search evolve to have "artist pages" that suck in related content from the artist from all over the web - photos from Flickr, videos from YouTube, free-range MP3s (similar to the way AOL just starting doing), Wikipedia-based bios, etc. very much like FoxyTunes Planet.

The downside? Well, if you are "playing a page" you are basically tied to that page as long as you want to keep listening. The easy way around that is to open a new tab instead of refreshing the current page you are on. Not a huge deal, but you may often find yourself accidentally turning the music off if you follow another link on the page that you are playing (if that link doesn't target a new browser window/tab). The other downside that I noticed when I first implemented it, is that in a heavily widgetized page, you may have to wait a while for the javascript to load.

I speculated about 6 months ago that Yahoo was up to something based on the previous Webjay work of Lucas Gonze. It looks to have evolved a bit since then, but I think understand where the are going and I applaud it.

In honor of this new player, I've got a new Song of the Day to share too.
Thanks to Redboy I just discovered The Big Sleep. This song is off their soon-to-be-released album, and I'm diggin' it.

Pinkies - The Big Sleep

Also check out one of the instrumental tracks from their previous album.

You Can't Touch the Untouchable - The Big Sleep

Song of the Day: Manchester Orchestra - Where Have You Been?

I am a fan of Simplify Media, and their iTunes plug-in just got better by now also supporting Winamp. Now I can stream songs off my friends' machines regardless of which media player they use.

Today, I was trawling a friend's collection and saw an artist I had never heard before... Manchester Orchestra. So I just clicked and listened. It turns out that it was a great discovery, so I thought I'd share.

	The Manchester Orchestra - Where Have You Been?
	Found at skreemr.com

A nice side-effect of this use case is that all of my "scrobblers" track these so if I'm streaming off an friends machine and I missed what I had played, I can just go and check out my play history.

Song of the Day: "Drugs" by The Cons

Just found this on imeem and was digging it....

Song of the Day - "Falling Slowly" by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

Everyone has been raving about the new "musical", Once (courtesy of Moviefone). Not only is there buzz about the movie, but the soundtrack as well. I just realized (after watching a review on Ebert & Roeper) that Glen Hansard is the lead singer of the Irish band, The Frames (courtesy of Foxytunes). I'm a big fan of his voice. Check it out for yourself...

Song of the Day: "Fake Empire" - The National

You can also listen the full CD from The National on Spinner.com...

Song of the Day - Lilly White by Rocky Votolato

I know, I'm getting more and more "folky" as I get older. Must be wearing off from my beatnik parents an all the Joan Baez they used to listen to. Before a workout or a fast drive, I still love to get my Rage Against the Machine on... but while working on my computer the folk stuff just sets the right mood.