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Posted: 12.18.2002 Hey, Mr. DJ - put a record on
I hesitate to recommend this, because, well...it's a Yahoo! product. But I grew bored of my Winamp playlist tonight and tried several Winamp streaming alternative stations which I found all sucked serious ass. So being skeptical, I went over to LaunchCast (now owned by the evil Y!). And as much as I'd like to slam it, they haven't ruined it yet. This thing rocks!
You can set up your own station based on your tastes -- mixing and matching alternative, rap, etc. They give you several choices in each category for you to check your favorite artists from the list. You can even request specific artists. Then when you get your "station" set up (took me less than five minutes but you'll have to have a Yahoo! acct.), you can rate each song that comes on. This supposedly willl help determine what they serve you in the future. The commercials have been almost non-existant, and so far in the last hour I've only received three duds. Much better odds than local radio! And you're not stuck with a crappy song either. You can just rate it low and hit the fast-forward button. After a couple of seconds of buffering you get something new. There's also a recently played list if you want more info on a song. So there you have it. I'm sure this wonderful tool will be completely destroyed in a manner of weeks seeing its current ownership -- but I plan to use and abuse it 'til then. Least I can do since they're probably tracking my music tastes in some super-secret database. They even have a Christmas music station! In the last 60 minutes I've already had some of the following on my playlist (and not just their "popular" tunes either): Weezer, Depeche Mode, Alanis, Eminem, Nine Inch Nails, The Offspring, LL Cool J, Dr. Dre, Green Day, The Cure, The Ramones, and REM UPDATE: Check out my station and listen along here!  And it's web based so your personal firewall doesn't cause it to choke...unlike Radio Free Virgin. The very first song it served up to me was Etta James' "At Last." *sigh* ¤ ¤ credit: Sekimori! | 12.18.02 at 05:31 AM | link- -this ¤ ¤ Bah! It doesn't like my WindowsMedia player. ¤ ¤ credit: a different Bill | 12.18.02 at 06:19 AM | link--this ¤ ¤ooh... thanks for sharing! sweeeeet! :) ¤ ¤ credit: C. | 12.18.02 at 09:58 AM | link--this ¤ ¤This site is awesome - found it last week when I was searching for streaming audio to listen to christmas tunes at work.. Connection to it is steady - only knocks out once in a while and the commercials aren't *that* bad.. although after a few hours I can recite them along with the audio:) Enjoy! ¤ ¤ credit: Amy | 12.18.02 at 10:41 AM | link--this ¤ ¤Yay! You're back! (I was getting an Exceeded Bandwidth error for a bit.) ¤ ¤ credit: GeekGrrl | 12.18.02 at 12:28 PM | link--this ¤ ¤i can't get the music to play :( dang it ¤ ¤ credit: Ruthie | 12.18.02 at 02:25 PM | link--this ¤ ¤I love it. You should see my mixed up mess of selections. I thought Yahoo was gonna have heart failure... ¤ ¤ credit: Solonor | 12.18.02 at 04:16 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Wow, you really hate Yahoo!. Why the hostility? -this ¤ ¤dang it, dang it. It STILL won't play. It gets stuck on buffering ¤ ¤ credit: Ruthie | 12.18.02 at 08:11 PM | link--this ¤ ¤I've been listening to it for month's now- It was actually on when I read your post, do do do do- spooky! You can even search for your favourite old 80's songs - like me I am always watching Aha's Take on Me- oh I am such a dag! :) ¤ ¤ credit: LisaC | 12.18.02 at 08:15 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Brian, I don't hate them as a search engine -- I hate them for taking over perfectly good services like Webring and GeoCities and making them pathetic shells of their former selves full of advertising and not much else. Webring after they sold it is nothing like Webring before they bought it. Yahoo has a pretty poor track record to date... ¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 12.18.02 at 08:19 PM | link--this ¤ ¤Ok... I wasn't necessarily disagreeing, just curious. Don't forget about their recent "reset" in marketing options. A few months ago they set everyone back to 'Yes' for receiving marketing information (read: spam) from them, even if you had previous opted out. You have to go back in and set your 'Marketing Preferences' to No... and it's not terribly easy to find. I logged into my mail account, went to Mail Options (top right), then Account Information (lefthand side of screen), then chose 'Edit your marketing preferences'. FYI. -this ¤ ¤My favorite thing about Launchcast (I listen to it a lot at work): you can permanently ban an artist or song from your station by giving them a rating of "X" (or 0)! YAY! Every now & then I would get some random stuff because I have a pretty wide range of music tastes. One day, they gave me som estand-up from Jeff Foxworthy. Ummm, X. ¤ ¤ credit: Alison | 12.19.02 at 11:52 AM | link--this ¤ ¤saw the little robyn/launchcast plug in Lockergnome recently and checked it out. REALLY like it, very cool! thanks! ¤ ¤ credit: ratty | 12.23.02 at 01:06 AM | link--this ¤ ¤
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