Slacker is yet another attractive playlist for Websites. You need to download the Slacker Software Player first, and create "radio stations" similar to Last.fm and Pandora, but with more control on which bands you want in the station.

You can also choose to have a slimmer-looking player.

After a bit of getting used to it, I find I like what Last.fm offers, and the widgets aren't half bad either. Clicking directly on the track will only give you a 30 second preview. The only way to hear complete tracks is by clicking the big "Play" button, which then plays songs randomly. A way to go around copyright issues I guess.

However, b2evolution was allergic to the code as it was, and I don't have right now the time to convert it all. So, for the time being I'm only placing a stripped-down version of my Last.fm playlist widget. It doesn't look 100% correct in IE7--the Play button is not centered--but it looks perfect on Firefox and Opera.

Their downloadable AudioScrobblerapp is similar to Pandora: generating a streaming "radio station" tailored to your music tastes. Pandora's interface is far simpler, but I must admit I like using Last.fm's app quite a bit. The AudioScrobbler link I posted here is for the BETA version 1.4, which gives far more control than the current version on what you want it to run. For instance, when you open the app, it also activates LastFMHelper.exe, which doesn't help you very much if you don't have an iPod (and it stays active even when you turn off AudioScrobbler). You can tell the app NOT to open it next time. In version 1.3 (the current stable) you can't do that, only terminate the helper app manually and then renaming it to something else so it doesn't run next time (Windows will pop up a nag screen telling you it can't find the file each time you open AS though).

I have to be upfront about this: I HATE music videos. I like to listen to my music without the unnecessary baggage of some music vid director's "vision" (which oh-so-many times don't have anything to do with the lyrics, or simply ruin the song, period). My imagination is vivid enough, thank you very much. If a song cannot stand on its own two feet without eye candy, it goes straight to my recycle bin.

On the other hand, I must also admit that not all music videos suck. Some are pretty good (enough that I don't feel embarrassed watching them), and there are a rare few that are actually brilliantly done. Which brings me to the latest vid from the "new" Nightwish. I honestly expected to groan, but it was pretty cool, and the song wasn't half-bad either. Enjoy.

Here's the playlist I assembled with Deezer, a service located in France. From my end of things, it streams audio just as good as ProjectPlaylist, Imeem, and Finetune (except on a few tracks). It probably has less selections than Finetune. Still, there were enough to keep it interesting. As with the previous playlists, I scrapped the EMBED and OBJECT tags and replaced them with a call to SWFObject.

Some tracks don't stream for some reason (although they play in my Deezer account), but most of them do. From what I've read in their forums it seems that other people are having similar problems.

Finetune features an attractive player, and building lists with it is a breeze. Unfortunately, you are limited to three songs per artist/band, per playlist, which in turn can have no more than 45 songs (so each playlist will have a minimum of 15 artists).

I'm having trouble getting the player buffer the tracks smoothly (if they buffer at all). At first I thought it was my mediocre connection, but it plays smoothly in the Finetune website... so the problem lies probably elsewhere. Mea culpa. The problem was that I added the flashVars "pinst" incorrectly. The music now streams very well.

It's a pity that one cannot display a complete list within the player, but must cycle through all of the songs in order to see what's in it, or by opening a new window to my Finetune profile. This gives the player some minus points in useability IMHO, but I still like Finetune quite a bit, enough to put it in second place next to my currently favorite freebie, ProjectPlaylist.

Again, I switched the EMBED tags given to me by Finetune with a call to SWFObject.