Thumbplay launched its music service this week, joining Mog, Rhapsody, Lala, Spotify, Last FM, and Myspace in the already crowded battle between streaming music services. The monthly subscription is $9.99. This is twice the rate of new entrant “MOG” (and $9.99 more than the free myspace!), but you get mobile access for the extra charge. Factoring in mobile makes Thumplay’s offer cheaper than Rhapaody’s similar desktop and mobile plan.

The selling point of Thumbplay Music is the ability to move your music to the cloud in one click by importing your playlists directly from itunes. It took just a few minutes to import 20 playlists, with 500 songs. The “import” was fast and accurate because it was only checking the data with the “cloud”, not actually moving files.
You can “import” songs to the cloud regardless of where they came from.

The second differentiator is Thumplay’s mobile access. With a full subscription, you can access your music and playlists from a “smartphone”.

Unfortunately the device list is small:
BlackBerry
Bold 9000
Curve 8900
Storm 9530
Tour 9630


Does it make sense to charge everyone for access with such a small device list? Since my blackbberry 9700 and iphone are not supported I cant comment on this part of the service.

Thumbplay contacted me less than 24 hrs after the orig post, and set me what I needed to set up my BlackBerry 9760! I’m listening now – full review coming!

The site says iphone and android support is coming soon. The site also directs you to check out the service with your mobile browser at thumbplaymusic.com. You’ll get the same version of the site that directs you to download the “desktop” software.

Thumplay’s Music service requires you to download a proprietary player (the service is not web based like MOG). The install worked easily direct from the Thumbplay site and support for both mac and pc is there. No surprises in the pc based player, nothing groundbreaking in the interface, and no sharing or social services.

While the import is nice and fast, mobile is the only game changer here. The pc based service offers nothing new. I haven’t seen any hands on reviews of the mobile access, so please comment with any links showcasing the mobile player! (working now – review coming soon!)

ARTIST PROFILES – SURF AND ADD!
The best way to start playlisting is surfing Myspace the way you always have: Profiles. All profiles can now tap into the myspace music player and the player has a “+”button next to most of the songs throughout the site.

The + button next to each song spawns the “add to playlist menu”

The interface is smooth – you can add to an existing playlist or create a playlist on the fly without leaving the player. This is a nice touch and makes playlisting easy on the fly. A feature many of the paid sites don’t have. I keep several playlist as “buckets” to add stuff as I surf the site.
FEB best of myspace
FEB unsigned artists on Myspace

YOUR MUSIC PAGE
To manage your playlists, Myspace Music built out your personal music page as part of your profile. Your music page is the main place to manage your plalylists and set them to public or private.

MYSPACE MUSIC
Myspace Music has its own homepage for editarial content, album premiers, featured playlists, and more. It’s curated nicely, and updates daily. Its a good place to start if your looking for new music to add to your playlist.

Myspace music “bolted” on a standard music service hierarchy on top of the familiar profile structure. You can find Artist’s, Albums and Songs via the myspace music home page.

BROWSING FROM THE ARTIST PROFILE PLAYER

From the Artist player you can also find more that just the featured tracks. Albums, Videos and Playlists are available from the tabs on the bottom of player. The image above shows browsing Jason Derulo’s available albums within his player.
Once you select content from this area, youll leave the artits profile, and again, enter the Myspace Music hierarchy. It’s essentially the same player.

This can sometimes be confusing as you can access the same content in two different players, depending on where you start. Sometimes your not sure if you are on the Artist profile, or the Artist’s page within Myspace Music.

The final verdict is Myspace Music has some nice features and works well once you learn the system. When you swap some of its flaws with the fact its free, its hard to find much to complain about.

Post your playlists here!

Watch the message, and contribute to the Devo inc color study now!

I Originally made this on last year on Imeem and wanted to post it again. But as you know Imeem’s gone away. However it did make its way into myspace via the import! Nice work guys – and every song was there!
Hear it in full (log in required)
But I cant share it on my blog with myspace music, so I re-created it in Lala. Thats where the problem was. For some reason Lala doesn’t have the two killer songs (but myspace music does? so i can get it for free, but not via a paid streaming service??)
First one missing on Lala was “Dustland Fairytale” (so i choose the karyoke version!) and next was “This is Your life” (so I choose a different switchfoot song with the same name because that came up first in Lala’s search!) So thanks to rights issues, here it is on Lala with a few adjustments!

With all this music and information I still have trouble finding quality stuff I want. And I still miss bands I should know about, or live dates from bands I love!

I’d like a way to set up a highly customizable preference/recommendation engine that followed all my music, video, movies, purchases, streams, and could form “meta recommendations” from them all. Then combine ubiquity of preferences with context (location) and the future connected recommendation experience emerges. Moving seamlessly across sites and services, I could listen to music and media on several different devices and still capture a true picture of my media and commerce behavior. Of course I’d want strong privacy setting that allowed me to benefit from this targeted experience, not just advertisers and merchants!

Anyone working on anything like this? Anyone else want it?

Watch DEVO inc. CEO Greg Scholl’s first communique now!

Just type in the name of an Artist, and an instant video playlist is created. “Mix Tape” and “Similar artist” options give you several ways to epxplore new music and shuffle the experience. You can save also various playlists. but there is no ability to individually move tracks, or share playlists. I just minimized the video and had a pandora like experience.

You tube’s size, combined with this simple tool, and suddenly you tube is a much bigger player in the online music space. This tool also deepens role in music discovery, and connecting artists and fans.
Curious to see usage numbers, and the new features I am sure will come soon.

Check it out here: