Website Reviews   

Welcome to Vol. 6 of “Who's Got My Extra?” — Jamtopia's series all about the business and pleasure of concert tickets.
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I've had SeatGeek on my radar for a little while, but they just went live this week and you'll definitely want to take the site for a spin.

Similar to what FareCast does for airfare, SeatGeek provides price forecasts for concert tickets (and sports tickets) using a custom algorithm to crunch historical concert ticket transactions and “other factors” that influence tickets prices.

As you can see in the screengrab above, the site essentially tells you whether to buy now or wait til later using one of seven possible forecasts — sharp decrease, moderate decrease, steady prices, moderate increase, sharp increase, hump, and trough. For events with sufficient data, they even break down the forecast for cheap, medium, and expensive seats.

And the coup de grâce: you can sign up for an alert and they'll email you when it's the best time buy tickets, up to two days before the event. Nice.

We see this as a huge opportunity for a change-the-world type of business.
— Russ D'Souza, SeatGeek Co-Founder, via LA Times

I don't know if they're really gonna change the world, but they might just help you beat the brokers & behemoths and find yourself some cheap concert tickets.

Want more info? Visit SeatGeek.com, follow @SeatGeek, or read the SeatGeek blog.

I just discovered Twisten.fm, a ten day old website powered by Grooveshark that crawls through tweets to see what people are listening to, then lets you listen to those songs via a simple interface.

A casual scroll down the home page feed (see below) will give you a nice glimpse at the variety of music people are enjoying right now, though I kinda wish I could set it to auto-refresh.

As a bonus, if you log in using your Twitter account, you'll gain the ability to tweet right from their site and maintain a favorites list making it easy to find songs again later. And there's another bonus at Twisten.fm Twitter account which is update hourly with the most popular song.

One thing I really would've like to see is some playlist functionality — or as someone on their customer service board called it, a “stream the songs radio player.” Twisten competitor Hype Machine does playlists really well, whereas listening to free music on Twisten.fm is a cumbersome one-track-at-a-time experience.

And I'm most excited about an idea I saw over at the Twisten review on Infinate Dial — “friend radio networks” that only stream songs from a list of Twitter users you select. Or perhaps people could even create sharable public “stations” based on different groupings of users.

Overall Twisten.fm is a novel and simple way to discover and listen to free music that people are tweeting about. However, the lack of a radio player will probably keep me away from now.

P.S. I'm sure they'll be adding features over time, so head over to the Twisten.fm blog for news and announcements.

Update (February 13, 2009, 8:00pm) I just got an email from one of Twisten's engineers who said, “a radio style player is definitely in the works along with a few other goodies.” Sweet.

Find 5 more great free music sites on Jamtopia.

When MySpace Music launched at the end of September 2008, they gave users access to practically every song ever recorded thanks to relationships with all four major labels — Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI — as well as independent music distributor The Orchard.

Well apparently that wasn't enough for many critics (see here for example) who complained that the service was “extending the middle finger to indies,” the very folks who helped make MySpace a success in the first place.

Well as of today there's a lot less to complain about, as MySpace Music added five larger independent labels and indie music distributors to their service — Nettwerk, INgrooves, Iris Distribution, RoyaltyShare, and Wind-up Entertainment.

With these additions MySpace not only takes a step to silence their critics, but they're giving users access to a few hundred thousand additional free songs from the likes of Marvin Gaye, Lou Reed, Modest Mouse, Tesla, Thievery Corporation, The Crystal Method, Dolly Parton, Evanescence, and even Tila Tequila.

Gotta figure their next move will be to try and work something out with Merlin Network. The non-profit organization combines 12,000 indie labels and has so far been a vocal critical of the terms MySpace is offering indies.

Will keep you posted if anything develops. In the mean time, go listen to FREE music.

If you're still looking for a simple way to create or listen to a mix of free MP3s now that Muxtape is gone, 8track might be just what the doctor ordered.

Creating a mix on 8track is a simple drag and drop affair, and you can use songs from their library or upload your own. Give it a name, upload some cover art, and you're all set.

To listen to mixes, just type in a band or song in the search box and chances are you'll find something you like. You can comment on mixes, and even follow specific DJs Twitter style to get notified when they post a new mix.

I sleuthed around a bit and came up with these three mixes I think you'll enjoy…

As with most free streaming services, there are some small catches you'll want to know about. When you create a mix, it's gotta be at least 30 minutes (about 8 songs) to be saved and shared. When listening to a mix, you can't see the the songs in the playlist until you start to listen — though you can skip songs you don't like. The embedded player (as seen above) could also use a little love too — it's currently lacking social tools like embed, bookmark, and email that help lubricate the word-of-mouth process.

And in case you're curious, it's all legal. 8tracks operates as a small online radio station, meaning they have lower licensing fees than larger free music streaming sites like Pandora and on-demand music sites like Rhapsody.

What are you waiting for? Create a free mixtape on 8tracks today.

Find more free music sites on Jamtopia.

Every once in a while, a website comes along that is so frivolous and absurd that it somehow morphs into pure genius. That's exactly what's going on over at MoreCowbell.dj, where you can miraculously add more cowbell (and a little Christopher Walken) to any song on your hard drive.

As this post is useless without an example, I hereby present you First Tube, modified to include 62% more cowbell — and about 37% more Walken, just for good measure.

Humor aside, MoreCowbell.dj actually uses some pretty sophisticated software under the hood. Specifically, they're tapping in to the The Echo Nest Analyze API, which generates an XML file describing a track's structure and musical content (including rhythm, pitch, and timbre) accurate to the sub-millisecond.

Glad to see all that technology going to good use!

If you're anything like me, you like free music. And if you like free music, you'll want to visit to these lesser-known music sites offering unique ways for you to find free music you can listen to right now.

The five free music sites featured are:

• Jogli, a great way to listen to and watch albums for free (visit site)
• Favtape, playlist maker on steroids (visit site)
• Soundflavor, a sophisticated music search engine (visit site)
• Grooveshark Lite, where you can get paid to share music (visit site)
• Streamzy, a hyper-efficient front-end to Seeqpod (visit site)

Know another great free music site? Post a comment below.