31/08/2010
I thought it was worth quickly blogging about how easy it is to upload tens of thousands of the tracks you own to Psonar so that you can listen to them for free at any time, anywhere on any internet-connected device.
The Psonar SongShifter
Unlike web browser-based uploaders, where you need to manually select each track or folder to upload and additionally leave the browser open for the entire time uploading is in progress, with Psonar, this process is taken care of with the SongShifter, the downloadable app which we’ve created to both upload and download tracks from your PC, MP3 player, phone or other storage device.
Using the Psonar SongShifter is as simple as this:
- Download & install it
- Step through the simple wizard to tell it where your music is located
- Forget about it!
The SongShifter runs whenever you log in, scans the configured folders and uploads any new music it finds without any intervention from you. You really can just set it and forget it.
Additionally, every time you plug in an external storage device, the SongShifter will also scan it for your music. So you can seamlessly upload and download directly from your iPhone, MP3 player, memory card or other USB device… and configuring these devices is even easier!
We’ve also developed an alpha version of the SongShifter for both Mac and Linux users. If you’d like to get your hands on it, please email support@psonar.com.
Lastly, if you haven’t already signed up for Psonar, you can do so here and if you need any convincing, here’s a video to explain why you should right now.
Happy listening!
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Uncategorized | Tagged: ipod, itunes, linux, Mac, Macintosh, Music, music library, music streaming, PC, Psonar, psonar cloud, psonar shongshifter, stolen ipod, streaming, upload, upload music, web browser, windows, xii | 
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Posted by Richard Urwin
13/08/2010
We recently commissioned a video from the excellent animator, Mike Booth, to explain what Psonar is all about.
Amber Lamps, featured in "What is Psonar?"
You can watch it on the Psonar homepage or on YouTube instead if you wish.
Mike’s work includes animated shorts such as “God’s Voiceover” for the BBC’s Mitchell & Webb in which God does the voiceover for a dog food commercial (definitely worth a watch.) He’s also behind the popular ‘somegreybloke’ on YouTube. I like his recent explanation of “What Twitter is for”. You can also read his blog here. Psonar’s video was created using Smith Micro’s Anime Studio Pro.
The soundtrack, ‘Spaced Aged Funked’ by Le Jockey and Jamie Henderson is an outstanding homage to Chicago house in its own right. Listen to the full track here. Le Jockey also releases music on his own ‘HoresePlay’ label and you can listen to his tracks on SoundCloud or download some from HorsePlayDigital’s website. His latest EP, ‘Perfect Cadence’, released on Fullbarr Digital and available on Beatport contains several deliciously melodic, deep house tracks and is one of his best works to date.
The video and audio were assembled by Richard Millen from Cambridge Film & Television Productions.
Anyway, we hope you like the finished product. Please share it with your friends if you do!
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Leave a Comment » | Company, Music, Updates | Tagged: Amber Lamps, Android, Cambridge Film & Television Productions, CFTP, cloud, dog food, iPhone, ipod, Jamie Henderson, Le Jockey, Mac, Macintosh, manage music, Mike Booth, Music, music backup, PC, personal music player, Psonar, psonar cloud, save music, Spaced Aged Funked, stream music, upload music, Video | Permalink
Posted by Richard Urwin
21/06/2010
Today we released improved playlist management on the main Psonar website.
It’s probably still a little rough around the edges, but we figured it was better to get something out there for you to use ASAP. We think it’s a big improvement.
New Playlist Panel
The main changes are:
- the playlists panel has been made smaller, giving the main tracks display area more room
- double-clicking a playlist now displays the contents in the main tracks display area
- deletion of tracks from and reorganisation of tracks within a playlist now happens on the client. When a deletion / move operation is performed, buttons appear at the bottom of the track list to allow you to either save the changes (whereupon they get persisted) or cancel them (the playlist gets reloaded and the changes are undone)
- management of tracks in the player is performed in the same way
- we’ve added a ‘new’ button at the top of the playlists panel for 1-click playlist creation
We hope you like the changes. We think it makes playlist management much less clunky.
Look out for more similar UX improvements in the coming weeks.
We also listened to what you said in the Psonar survey (please do tell us what you think if you haven’t done so already!) about the colour scheme and toned it down somewhat. We’ve also widened the scrollbars, reduced the initial load-time for large collections and added ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ buttons amongst other things.
If you like the new playlist management, colour scheme or Psonar in general, please show your support by clicking the Facebook ‘Like’ button in the header to spread the word and help make Psonar simply the best place to keep your music on the internet. Thanks!
Richard
Psonar CTO
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2 Comments | Company | Tagged: AJAX, color scheme, colour scheme, feedback, javascript, management, playlist, Psonar, survey, tracks | Permalink
Posted by Richard Urwin
08/06/2010
I was lucky enough to be one of the 40,000 who got a ticket for the free Rage Against the Machine victory gig at Finsbury Park on Sunday which, in case you weren’t aware, was because RATM’s single, ‘Killing in the Name’ beat Simon Cowell’s manufactured pap to the UK’s 2009′s Christmas No 1, thanks to a great Facebook Campaign organised by Jon & Tracy Morter.
Rage Against the Machine performing at Finsbury Park, London. Photograph: Phil Bourne/Retna Pictures
True to expectation, RATM were absolutely amazing. I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen such incredible energy either by a band or hugely appreciative, friendly crowd, although it did get a bit squeezed down at the front!
I’ll leave the fuller review to a professional journalist and to Tracy on her blog (with her fabulous photographs).
‘We Made History’, the big screens told us just before RATM launched into their seminal track. A little bit of history perhaps, but history nonetheless. And gave Mr. Cowell rather a slap in the face at the same time. If the manufactured pop industry thinks this was a blip, roll on Christmas 2010.
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1 Comment | Music | Tagged: Finsbury Park, Free Gig, Joe McElderry, Jon & Tracey Morter, Killing In The Name, Music, Psonar, Rage Against The Machine, RATM, Simon Cowell, Victory Gig, Zack de la Rocha | Permalink
Posted by Richard Urwin
21/04/2010
I watched Aleks Krotowski’s excellent history and analysis of the web – The Virtual Revolution – when it was broadcast in February.
Aleks Krotowski by Paul Downey
Part 3 of the Series was called ‘The Cost of Free’ and looked at what we, as consumers, feed into the web in order to get the benefits of free access to so much. Not only extensive personal information but also the history of our browsing, buying and other interactions. In the case of the latter we unwittingly provide the information that allows web retailers to offer us goods or services on the basis of “people like you like music/books/films like this”. The insidious truth is that if you respond to that stimulus, like a Pavlovian dog, you’re starting to conform to some stereotype, admittedly part-defined by you, from a brave, new future.
“What about serendipity?” asks Doctor Krotowski. How do you discover stuff that’s so far from what you’ve previously liked that no recommendation engine could ever figure out that you might like it? If you’re like me, you’ll probably use a fairly random mix of music journalism, such as the Guardian’s Music Blog or the BBC’s Introducing, and other rooting around, to see what’s new. To try the music recommended in the blogs (and I’m listening to The Fall’s Your Future, Our Clutter recommended by Dave Simpson now) you probably need to go to YouTube, unless the blog author has thoughtfully embedded a We7 player in the post.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could go to an interesting interface – graphical rather than text – and tell it some random facts about you, your interests, predilictions or even kinks and have it come back with a kind of mind map with a panoply of music of greater or less relevance to the things you seeded it with. Wow! When I asked Rich if he could build it for Psonar, he raised his eyes to heaven, but I’m sure he’s got something in mind.
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Leave a Comment » | Music | Tagged: Aleks Krotowski, BBC Introducing, cambridge, Guardian Music Blog, Music, music streaming, Psonar, referral engines | Permalink
Posted by Martin Rigby
14/04/2010
My CEO, @martinrigby has a bet with an entrepreneurial friend of his about the number of signups we can get for Psonar by midnight on 30th April. We’ve had a really great month thus far and at the time of writing, need a little over a thousand more.
So – what’s at stake? For us: a bottle of Verve Cliquot. For the people who sign up: we couldn’t have a drink without giving one away to a lucky user, so the 1000th new signup gets a bottle too. Everyone also gets all of their digital music, stored safely in the Psonar cloud for ever. Once uploaded, the music is accessible everywhere, from any internet-connected device so it can be streamed, downloaded to a computer, laptop or directly to an MP3 player or phone – all for free (not to mention the incredibly powerful aspirational discovery we’ve got in the pipeline).
The good stuff
What techniques are we employing to drive traction? Well, we’ve been reviewed on tech websites (in many languages other than English), we use the addthis.com buttons to allow easy sharing, we’ve tweeted (@psonar), commented on relevant blog posts and of course written blog posts of our own. We’re currently doing a lot of work on our SEO, developing Facebook and MySpace applications which will allow users to share tracks, playlists and charts with their friends, we’ve got a Facebook group and we’ve also put on music nights to raise awareness of what we’re doing locally. And that’s just a selection.
Of course what we’re really after are users who are willing to embrace cloud technology and help to create the world’s biggest music community. But I can’t help thinking it would be great to taste just a drop of the good stuff come May 1st. If you’d like to do the same, do sign up here for the chance.
Will we do it? Will it be you who gets the bottle? Sign up or follow me (@rich_urwin) on Twitter to find out…
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2 Comments | Company, Music | Tagged: cambridge, cellphone, champagne, desktop, digital music, facebook, ipod, laptop, martinrigby, MP3, Music, music chart, music library, music streaming, myspace, phone, Psonar, psonar cloud, psonar presents, Rich Urwin, Richard Urwin, rich_urwin, SEO, signup, streaming, traction, tweet, veuve clicquot | Permalink
Posted by Richard Urwin
17/11/2009
As you may have noticed, we’re organising a gig soon and you’re all invited.
You see, Psonar was set up by people who love music; Rich, our Chief Technology Officer and co-founder, has been to see Orbital so many times this year it’s become a running joke and our Chief Executive Officer’s love of progressive house is legendary.
Even our lawyer loves European dance music and visits Berlin regularly. The rest of us aren’t as cool, but we try.
So as well as offering a really useful, cutting-edge service for music lovers, we also want Psonar to be a channel through which you can enjoy finding, and listening to, interesting new music that we like and we think you’ll like too.
Soon, we’ll be launching a new Discover area on psonar.com which will allow you to anonymously listen to clips of anyone’s tracks in the Psonar Cloud (where all the music is stored) and buy the music you like. You’ll also be able to hear and buy tracks from an eclectic mix of the UK’s best new and unsigned bands and check out interviews, tour dates, features and charts – all regularly updated.
In the meantime, with our regular new Psonar Presents night we are giving you the chance to check out some of our favourite new music live and, in Cambridge on Thursday 10th December, three of the region’s best up-and-coming bands will be gracing us with their presence: The Perfect Crime, Paris Like This and The Whisky Jax.
© Danny Sambuca & www.myspace.com/theperfectcrime
We picked a really nice venue to host the event – Hidden Rooms in Cambridge city centre – and we also have two DJs (TheSmithKid and Nick B) and an after-party at Niche, if you fancy partying with us until 4am.
It’s just £3 to get in before 10pm (doors open at 7.30pm) – that’s a pound a band, which we think is a pretty good deal plus you get into the after-party for free. Think of it as a small (but early) Christmas present from Psonar.
We’ll be posting more about Psonar Presents in the next few weeks, including some MP3s for you to check out and interviews with the bands, but we just wanted to tell you about this as we’re really excited and we hope you’ll be able to come and join us, the Psonar team, for a night of drinks, potentially-bad dancing and, most importantly, some great new music.
PS you can also follow us on Twitter : )
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1 Comment | Music | Tagged: cambridge, cambridge gigs, christmas present, hidden rooms, ipod download, music tech, netbook music, new music, paris like this, Psonar, psonar presents, streaming, the perfect crime, the whisky jax, twitter | Permalink
Posted by benhmurray
09/11/2009
Who saw that recent documentary about Mike Perham, the 15-year-old who sailed round the world on his own?
Poor bloke got dumped by his girlfriend halfway round and by Panama he looked really bored and was probably missing his Xbox and Hollyoaks an awful lot. What a monumental achievement though.
Anyway, this got us thinking about situations when psonar.com would be really useful and travelling in general and sailing both seem like scenarios when the service could really come into its own.
For example, if you use a netbook when on the move (say you own a nice yacht or cruiser and like disappearing for long weekends up the coast) but you store your music library on an external drive or full-size PC, then using Psonar would enable you to sail off into the sunset, free of anything bar your netbook, and still access your entire music library whenever you have an internet connection.
Many modern marinas also now have wi-fi (there’s always a dongle or mobile option if not) and, once connected, you could stream all your music without using the extra space and power required for a larger computer or external device.
Think how useful that would be if you’re off on a long voyage, like a round-the-world trip.
The same goes for any laptop or PC, but everyone and their dog seems to have a netbook these days and the one thing they lack is a hard-drive to store vast amounts of data, like a music collection. Using psonar.com as a mobile music hard-drive solves this problem instantly.
Backpackers and travellers could also find the service incredibly useful. Not only would you be backing up your iPod (or similar device) into the Psonar Cloud thus insuring against the theft of your music collection whilst hanging out in the less desirable parts of whatever far-flung destination you find yourself in, but you could also access all your tunes from any internet connection in the world simply by logging in and hitting play on psonar.com.
Just think how many hostel parties that could get started. Our livers shudder to think.
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Leave a Comment » | Music | Tagged: back packing, back up, backing up, backpacking, ipod, ipod backing up, ipod theft, Music, music access, music archive, music library, music storage, music streaming, net book, netbook, Psonar, round-the-world, sailing, travel, travelling | Permalink
Posted by benherveymurray
29/10/2009
One of the best things you can do in any company is use the products you create, or eat your own dog food. After, all, if you don’t, then why should anyone else?
For me, last Saturday night was a perfect example. I’m at home, working on Psonar and my girlfriend is out partying at a friend’s house. The only problem is, she txts me, the music leaves something to be desired.
So, I quickly log into the Psonar site, whip up an appropriate playlist: Stuck on Repeat (Fake Blood remix) a selection of Soulwax, Freeland / Justice & Orbital, a couple of High Contrast remixes plus a host of others. Finally I throw a couple of jokers into the pack (some classic house tunes) for when the punch has got to work on the guests’ inhibitions.
She logs in to her account and in less than 5 minutes, the party’s definitely moved up a gear or two and all the guests are rather impressed. And iTunes goes home early.
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Leave a Comment » | Music | Tagged: adam freeland, adele, candi staton, dog food, fake blood, high contrast, itunes, justice, little boots, most of the remixes, Music, one perfect sunrise, orbital, Psonar, soulwax, streaming, stuck on repeat | Permalink
Posted by Richard Urwin
18/09/2009
A couple of weeks ago we decided to have a re-think regarding the images we use on Psonar.com. Nothing major – we just wanted them to reflect who the users of the website actually are and what they do with their music. So we went for a wander in Cambridge with a camera and some friends and took these around the Mill Pond area.
What we’d like to know is: do you reckon you can do better? Send us interesting or arty pics of you and your friends listening to music in interesting places and we’ll award the two best photos a Premium membership for a year, in recognition of Rankin-style greatness.
Either post your photos on our Facebook page or email them to us (benhm at psonar.com) and we’ll announce the winners in a few weeks.
Happy shooting!
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Posted by benherveymurray
