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AOL Music just launched an application which allows you to display videos, photos and information about your “favorite artists.” While it’s a pretty well designed flash widget there are some definite downfalls. After adding the application you are prompted to select your top 10 favorite artists (as displayed in the first screen shot below). Well, your top 10 favorite artists within their selection of 100 artists. While not a bad selection, it didn’t include all of my favorite artists.

After selecting your “Top 10 Artists,” you are asked to select a skin for your widget. I found the skins to be slightly tacky except for the Facebook skin. AOL is definitely targeting this application at “the masses” so perhaps it will appeal to whoever belongs to their generic group of people. I think the one downfall of this application is that it is simply a widget and doesn’t encourage interaction from within the application itself. While widgets can be popular on Facebook (as my bush countdown clock illustrates), the most effective applications will be those that encourage active user involvement. This is why applications like Warbook and Fantasy Stock Exchange have been highly successful.

Regardless, for being designed as a widget, the application is built relatively well. I just encourage other developers to stray for simply building widgets but to focus instead on interactive applications. Just a thought! If you want to add your favorite mainstream artists to your profile, go grab the AOL Music: My Favorite Artists application.

Artist Selection Screen

Skin Selection Screen

A couple weeks ago I reviewed the Qloud application. At the time, the application was not ready for showtime. There were a lot of bugs that resulted in a number of features not working. After speaking with the Qloud team, they updated their app and now everything is working smoothly.

This time around they have done a great job. You can check out the most listened to artists as well as what your friends are listening to. You can also send a musical poke to your friends so that they can check out a song that you are interested in. When I first reviewed the application, I didn’t realize what the point of it was. I later found out that the real intention of the Qloud application is to enable users to listen to their music library from any computer no matter where their computer is or even if their computer with the song files is turned off. This is a great concept. While I think an iPod satisfies most of this need, the Qloud application grants you unlimited access to all of your songs.

Even though I ripped apart their application the first time, Qloud has come through with an excellent new version. They have resolved all the application timeouts and other issues. I highly recommend checking out the Qloud application, for listening to you and your friends’ musical libraries.

Almost two weeks ago I wrote about Facebook audio coming back. While Numair has yet to bring back the Audio application, a competitor has just launched. This one may be even better. You can upload songs and search any song. You can also take the songs and add them to your profile. Honestly, this one is much sleeker than the Audio application. One question remains though: is this a violation of copyright laws?

I certainly think so. Another item of interest is that there is no specified developer. The company is called “Audibie” and the domain is registered to Wing Lian. It also looks like Audibie is taking advantage of Amazon’s S3 technology. Will this one be shut down like it’s prior competitor? I would imagine so. Right now there are under 100 users but I have a feeling that this is going to spike immediately. Whoever built this definitely put a lot of effort into it. It is clean and runs smoothly. There isn’t much I can say negative about this application except for the fact that it is breaking the law. Aside from that it’s great! If you want to have a practically limitless jukebox on Facebook, go grab the Audibie application.

Cruxy, the site for digital media creators to promote their media, has launched their Facebook application. I have to be honest, I’m extremely surprised that it took them this long to launch. Cruxy was one of the applications that was discussed back at the first Facebook Developers Meetup in New York. At that point they were speaking with authority about the quirks of the Facebook platform and stated their intention to launch within a short period. Two months later, they have launched.

The Cruxy application is relatively simple. I don’t have a Cruxy account so I didn’t experience the full force of the Cruxy application. It allows you to add your own media to your profile. If you don’t have an account, the application simply displays some of the recent users to upload media to Cruxy. While I think adding media to your profile is an extremely valuable feature, Facebook already offers a number of features to allow you to do that. Ultimately, Cruxy seems like a competitor of the Kyte.tv application or other similar media based applications. Cruxy offers a simple method for uploading your custom media. The one thing I would suggest is allow users to easily register from within the application in order to upload files. If you want to upload your custom media, go grab the Cruxy application.

According to a valuable source, Audio is coming back within days. While VentureBeat has already commented on this, I have been informed that Audio has also received a round of financing to help them make a strong reappearance. When I spoke with Numair back in July, he stated his intentions to launch a bands feature. I wonder how soon he plans to launch the new feature.

So why was Audio shut down previously? According to Venturebeat, “It was given a DMCA takedown request from a record label, sent via the RIAA — then Facebook decided to take Audio offline while the matter remained unresolved.” It will be interesting to see how soon they actually end up launching. One reason that I believe Audio was actually shut down is that they added an upload feature. Supposedly all initial songs that were streamed through the application came from other sources. Once they decided to enable an upload feature they became responsible for the material being hosted on the application.

I honestly don’t see how Audio can continue to operate on an ongoing basis unless they sign agreements with a number of record labels. There must be features that they intend to launch that will benefit the music industry in the form of revenue. Could you imagine iTunes deciding to create a day of free music? It would be a free for all and people would try to get as many songs as they could. I think one of the main sources of protection for Audio is the fact that they don’t allow users to download the songs, only stream them. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, but look for Audio to return sometime next week.

I’ve covered a number of music management programs within Facebook already but I thought I’d feature Qloud given their robust feature set. The Qloud applicaiton allows you to track the songs that you listen to (similar to Last.fm), display the most played tracks, view the top artists and top rated songs in your playlist. Additionally, you can view the various tracks that your friends have listened to. The social component of this application is the musical poke.

I wasn’t able to tell whether or not you can listen to the song after you send it. From what I can tell, your friends can’t listen to it after they added the application. If that’s the case than I’m not quite sure what the use of a musical poke is. Qloud seems to be in direct competition with Last.fm but their Facebook application is attempting to add more Last.fm features all within Facebook. If they can work out the bugs within their iTunes plugin, I think this could catch on. Unfortunately, my songs wouldn’t sync with my Facebook profile so I wasn’t able to get much value out of the application. If you get it to work let me know. Just go grab the Qloud application and make your musical listening experience more social.

The immensely popular online radio site, Pandora, has just launched their Facebook application. The application allows you to link your existing Pandora account or simply login without your account. Pandora is known because it learns what music you like and creates custom radio stations that are tailored to your listening habits. Pandora also successfully leveraged Facebook’s social features by displaying a list of your friends’ most recent songs. You can also listen in on their custom radio station. This is a great move by Pandora to take advantage of the new Facebook platform. I personally give this application 5 stars. The Pandora application also displays a list of your custom radio stations that you have saved and lets visitors listen to those stations by clicking on the link. If you want your own free custom radio stations, check out the Pandora application. I should add that this is awesome timing for Pandora to release their application with yesterday’s removal of the Audio application. Congratulations to the Pandora team!

Yesterday, a new application called WatZatSong launched. WatZatSong is a website where people that don’t know what a specific song is can either post a recording or hum the tune that they can’t find the name for. Music savvy community members then respond to each user’s posting with the correct song name. The Facebook application picks random sets of 10 songs samples and you need to guess each one. Some of the samples include people humming out the tunes. So is this an iLike competitor? Definitely not. The application seems to be missing the viral component. I have to admit though that I was thoroughly entertained by a French girl screwing up the lyrics to the song “Cotton Eye Joe.” In comparison, the iLike application was smart in that you could compare your song naming skills with your friends. This application fails to leverage the social component of Facebook. I think this is a good start but definitely an unfinished product. If you want to go guess the songs that random people hum to you, check out the WatZatSong application.

ReverbNation just hit the nail on the head with their new application. They have made a simple and sleek application that enables band members to place all of their band’s music, shows, members and more directly on their profile. This is honestly the best band implementation I have seen so far. It is also genius how they have implemented it. The biggest challenge in launching a bands application is getting enough bands to fill a directory. This way, no directory needs to be filled. All of the bands are promoted on their own profiles. The next most challenging component of launching will be informing bands of the application. Artists are allowed to upload unlimited songs to their profile so that should make everything much easier. I spoke with the ReverbNation people a few weeks back and they told me that they were dedicating their entire development team to Facebook application development. It has definitely paid off. It looks like there is going to be a battle of the band applications soon.  Numair Faraz’s Audio application (which is soon adding band features as mentioned in my previous interview with him) and ReverbNation’s application.  If you have a band and want to promote it on Facebook, go grab the My Band application.

Last night I noticed a new bands application in the Facbook application directory created by Patrick Keenum. This is the first one to launch that is not a branded application for bands. Any band can have their own band page that includes their music, bio, pictures, gigs, lyrics and video. Additionally there is space for fands, band members and a wall. Ultimately, these are the basic features of any successful band social network site (e.g. Pure Volume). My only criticism of this application is that it doesn’t inherit existing Facebook styles effectively. If a basic version of this was created that included simple looking Facebook styles, I think this application could become insanely popular. While Numair Faraz has already stated that he is looking to launch a bands application in the coming weeks, I have a feeling that timing is critical. Maybe I am naive but I think there is a huge opportunity here. The next step though is getting good bands. If you know of any good bands that enjoy using Facebook tell them to check out this application. Currently there are only a few songs (none of which are phenomenal) but I have a feeling that this will soon change. If you want to see the competition among Facebook band applications in real-time, go grab the fBand application.

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