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Firefox Add-on to Download Music from Grooveshark

Thilak — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:18:11 +0000

Grooveshark has pretty much changed the way we listen to music. We no longer need to worry about copying songs from our desktop to our laptop or smartphone, just so that we can listen to them while you are on the move. Grooveshark lets you enjoy music, share it and even subscribe to your friends playlist. Though we love the idea of cloud hosted music services such as Grooveshark and the benefits associate, we are not entirely ready to ditch our offline music library. Last month, we wrote about a tool called Groovedown which lets you download songs from Grooveshark in a convenient MP3 format. Groovedown pretty much did what it’s meant to do, but now there is a new kid in the block, who does it even better – Groove Shredder.

Download Music from Grooveshark with Firefox

Groove Shredder is an experimental extension for Firefox that lets you download Grooveshark music while listening to them on Grooveshark itself. Once installed, the add-on will pop-up “Save As” dialogue box whenever you start listening to a song on Grooveshark.

Works great, but if you are completely hooked to Grooveshark, you will have to keep disabling the extension every now and then. You won’t be able to stream music from Grooveshark with the add-on enabled, and it gets pretty annoying when the add-on popups up the save dialogue each time a new music starts playing. Even though the author says there is a button to toggle Groove Shredder on and off, we weren’t able to find it after installation.

Considering it’s still in a very experimental stage, and works with the latest version of Firefox (3.5 – 4.2a1pre). We say, it’s worth checking out! – Get it from Mozilla Add-ons

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Control Foobar from Your Couch Wirelessly with Foobar2000 Controller for Android

Thilak — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:00:54 +0000

Unlike most audio players available in the market today, Foobar2000 is very minimalist and powerful alternative for those who only care about the music with no bells and strings attached. If you are one of those Foobar fans, here’s something you would love – Foobar2000 Controller for Android. It does exactly what the name suggests – Remote Control Foobar running in your computer using your Android phone.

What can you do with Foobar2000 Controller for Android:

1. Common controls such as Play/Pause, Next/Previous, Shuffle On/Off,

2. Control the timeline of the song using progress bar. Skip the song forward or backward

3. Playlist based functions such as making new playlists, add/removing songs from playlist, search for songs

4. Configurable Shake gestures.

5. Use the volume rocker of your phone to control Foobar’s volume

6. Rate currently playing music or music from your playlist.

How to Install: It’s a two-step method. You will need to install three components to your Foobar installation, so that your Android device can communicate with your Foobar2000 setup. You can either manually install these components or use the automatic installer.

Next, you need to install Foobar2000 controller app on your Android device. You can get the Pro version (1.2 USD) or ad-supported free version. Both free and pro version has exactly the same set of features. Download it from Android Market or point your Android device to this QR Code:

Complete installation instructions available here.

This would be great application if you are hosting parties in your house and want to remotely and wirelessly change music from your couch or bed.

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Download Songs from Grooveshark using Groovedown

Thilak — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:20:14 +0000

Grooveshark is a very popular online music search engine/music streaming website. According to Wikipedia, they presently stream over 50 to 60 million songs per month. Grooveshark lets its users to search for music, stream music and even upload music free of charge. Streaming music however isn’t the best part. They have personalized recommendation system called “Grooveshark Radio” which finds music that suite your taste based on “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” feedback. You can listen to Grooveshark radio and then add your favorite songs to playlist, which is accessible via web or from your iPhone or Android device. That being said, there is no easy way of downloading songs from Grooveshark. You cannot download songs from Grooveshark and make it play in your car stereo, or listen to it from your iPod. To overcome this limitation, you must download the song to your computer.

Previously, downloading songs from Grooveshark involved installing Firefox add-on + Orbit downloader. Downloading music in bulk wasn’t possible or painful to say the least. But not anymore, thanks to Groovedown.

How to Download Music from Grooveshark?

Groovedown is third party software which works on Windows, Linux and Mac. You can use the portable program to download music straight from Grooveshark.com. Just go to groovedown.me and download Groovedown.

Extract the Groovedown.rar to some location, open Groovedown.exe and download songs from Grooveshark:

Once downloaded, you can add it to iTunes or burn it on a DVD and use it wherever you want

Update: There is a new Firefox extension, which can download music from Grooveshark while you are listening to them. Check it out!

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How to Remove Broken Songs from Your iTunes Library [Windows]

Thilak — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:40:10 +0000

I was trying to move my iTunes library from my dead laptop’s hard drive to my desktop PC and accidentally I ended up getting a lot of duplicate songs into my library. After Googling around for a duplicate file remover, I was able to physically remove those duplicate songs from my file system, but iTunes still listed those songs with a little exclamatory ("!") mark next to it. Even though iTunes can list duplicate tracks, it cannot sort the library by broken songs which it canâ€™t play. Manually clicking each song and removing it wasn’t an option for me as I had countless broken song links, even if I was willing to take the pain, it would take me forever to clean up my library.

Solution:

I came across a clever idea from Apple Forum, using which I was able to put all the broken song links into one playlist and mass delete them. Here’s how:

1. Create a smart playlist (shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+N) called "All Songs" with this rule: "Artist" is not "123456789? (or any random name from that matter, but make sure it won’t be in your library).

2. Now make a regular playlist (shortcut: Ctrl+N) called "All Live Songs".

3. Create a second smart playlist called "Missing Songs" with these rules: Match all of the following rules, Playlist is "All Songs", Playlist is not "All Live Songs"

4. Select everything from "All Songs" and drag them into "All Songs Files". The broken song links marked (!) will not be copies over to that playlist

5. All your broken songs will be in the "Missing Songs" playlist. Select all (shortcut: Ctrl+A) and delete them!

Note: Mac users have a simpler solution, using a script called Super Remove Dead Tracks.

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Lala.com – Not just another music store

Thilak — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:23:46 +0000

I recently stumbled on Lala, an online music store that aims to be different than any of its predecessors. My friends tell me that Lala used to be a CD exchange site, co-founded by four friends, Bill Nguyen, Billy Alvarado, Anselm Baird-Smith, and John Cogan III. Since its launch, more than 500,000 CDs have been traded on this site. Not only that, last year in June, Lala.com launched the largest record store on the planet, offering music fans CDs for merely 1 U.S. $ during its enormously successful Beta program.

Lala allows you to take your iTunes library and all your digital music online. You can play and share digital music from the convenience of the web, without worrying about viruses and taboos related to P2P sharing.

Using the Preview feature, you can listen to the entire album of a new artist, and not just 30-second samples. This is the biggest USP of Lala.com.

You also have the option to buy music, including physical CDs or digital albums. Anything you buy from Lala.com is ready for your iPod.

Lala has its own music player that seeps through your entire digital music collection and uploads whatever songs are missing on its site, thus increasing its own library. This has dual advantages. First, it makes your songs accessible even if you are logging in from a different computer, and second, it helps more people find the music they are searching for on the web.

Like lastfm, you can create and share your own playlists with other users. You’ll mostly find albums from independent artists on this site but the site also features a large number of mainstream artists, courtesy: the Warner Music Group. The catch, however, is you need to sign up to listen to songs.

If you are a music aficionado just like me, go ahead and listen to your favorite artists on Lala.com.

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Happy 6th Birthday, iPod

Thilak — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:36:53 +0000

It’s hard to believe that iPod is celebrating its 6th birthday. Six years ago, on this very same day, iPod was born at the Steve Jobs Special Event. Generation by generation, iPod has just been getting more spacious and smaller, so that you can fit your music library in your pockets. Here’s a recap of the history taking place:

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