New Online Music Service: Finetune

I stumbled upon Finetune a few weeks ago, and at first it didn't really grab me, but I gave it another look earlier this week and I have to say that for what it is offering, it isn't half bad.

After you register, you put together a playlist of 45 tracks with a maximum of three songs per artist, though you can fast track the selection process with a single press of a button and have the site build an initial playlist based on the selections you have already made(though I didn't really test this when I developed my playlist). However you aren't limited to just 45 songs on your playlist, so you can continue to add songs to the playlist, and I gather that you can make multiple playlists for moods or for variety's sake.

I was quite frankly surprised by the amount of music that is available to put together a playlist, as I was able to find nearly every artist that I entered, most with their full catalogs, which was one of my initial quibbles with Tornadostream At times the three songs per artist does seem a little limiting when you first start, but as you add more tracks to your playlist, you will be less likely to notice the limitation.

The thing I have seen is the algorithm for choosing which songs you are going to hear seems to be a little heavy on an all-or-nothing kind of model(if you have three songs rated by an artist, it seems you are more likely to hear the other songs by them in the playlist than perhaps another song by another artist). It is a small quibble to be sure, and an issue the designers may be working on, but it was noticeable to me.

That being said, while I still prefer the wide-open nature of Launchcast, Finetune does offer a nice change of pace, and with quite a large library of material to choose from, it is worth the time of most music lover to take a look.

Tags: finetune, beta, music, internet radio, playlist, tornadostream, catalog, launchcast, yahoo, streaming, audio