From the sweet sound of your iPod, to the burning of CDs, to your car radio finding music is never a problem?  Even finding music you like is pretty easy these days.  But new musical search tool Songza allows you to find that one song stuck in your head or have been jonesing to hear.  After Techlife published that article we were reminded about how our office rocks to various music using a few different solutions, including Pandora, Slacker and Jinzora.  So after reading this article, you might want to unplug your iPod and try your hand at some other options.

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Techlife’s recent Songza article has had some reader’s emailing about Internet Radio. FM radio has always been about commercials, DJs, and maybe a bit of wacky news. Listeners are now getting to play radio station owner with a few great radio station options. Techlife has been using two free options lately.

Pandora is of Techlife favorites of internet radio, but sadly it has been losing global audience with constant country restrictions. The idea is simple offer a customizable radio station that helps program songs based on other songs and artists you already told it you like (or don’t like.) They use a fancy rating system, called the Music Genome Project that is often discussed in depth. We have been using Pandora for years and really enjoy how easy it is to use. Pandora is great for exploring lots of new music. One issue I had with Pandora was I might have customized my station to much, I often would hear a few songs repeat in the same day.

Slacker is a newer entry into the internet radio business. It too offers a simple interface where you can quickly setup a station, add artists you like and start listening. It is a bit less featured than Pandora right now but it is easier to ensure the people you like you get to hear. They do less adding new artists music and play a bit deeper cuts from artists you know. I also like all the comedy Slacker has in its library. Slacker has a mobile media player, like an iPod, that allows you to take the custom station options with you. Techlife has not yet had a chance to review this hardware.

Overall: If you are looking to have a new radio experience give either or both options a try. They are both easy to use and certainly are a nice change from “my music library.”

Bonus: If you are really technically savvy, run a Jinzora Media Server and Do-It-Yourself broadcast your own music collection. A friend is doing this and it is nice to be able to explore their music collection all just using a simple web browser.

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Techlife has been rocking recently to an easy-to-use music search engine, Songza. Type in an artist or song title and get a choice of various versions of songs that might be what you were searching for.

Google simplifies searching for web content. Songza simplifies searching for audio content. Part of the trouble of audio search is text descriptions might not do justice to what you want to hear so Songza has a flash player that allows you to listen and keep searching. They also use crowdsourcing, which means you can help clarify if a song is what you wanted, and rate it thumbs up or thumbs down which helps make Songza better the next time around.

With Songza’s elegantly simple interface, great search, the ability to build a playlist without even giving them your name or a login, an audio player, crowdsourcing, various sharing options and vast library it is interesting to see where it goes next. Songza’s free, doesn’t ask for any information and right now is really advertising free except for a link to buy the music you are listening.

My only complaint is the very rudimentary music player. I would like to see a fast forward or reverse capability, as other sites that search video, like Techlife TV, offer this.

Overall: Give Songza a Grammy for technical achievement. Songza may sound simple, because it is. But when simple is done right it rocks.

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