Radio on Demand

December 8, 2008 7:35 PM

Want to hear your favorite song?Just type in the name and it will play. Like magic.

I don't quite understand their business model here or who pays for the rights to the songs, but my limited attempts to stump it have been unsuccessful.

posted by AstroGuy (109 comments total)

I stumped it on the first try.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 7:38 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I stumped it three times in a row, not even trying.
posted by thinkpiece at 7:41 PM on December 8, 2008

Stumped right out of the gates here too.
posted by CKmtl at 7:42 PM on December 8, 2008

Yup, here too.
posted by the dief at 7:42 PM on December 8, 2008

Can't do the first three I put in, and they're not even obscure. I WANT TO BELIEVE.
posted by tristeza at 7:42 PM on December 8, 2008

I'd stump it.
posted by maudlin at 7:43 PM on December 8, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

You all like the wrong music.
posted by qvantamon at 7:43 PM on December 8, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

(But on the other hand, it did turn up some Taj Mahal I hasn't heard for years, so that's cool.)
posted by maudlin at 7:43 PM on December 8, 2008

Songerize. Previously.
posted by whahappen?! at 7:44 PM on December 8, 2008

Hot Cocolate "You Sexy Thing"

(me happy now.)
posted by longsleeves at 7:44 PM on December 8, 2008

It can't find my stuff. I must be far cooler than I thought.
posted by Pecinpah at 7:46 PM on December 8, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

I tried about ten songs and got nothing. Yet another music service with crappy taste in music.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:46 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Stumped it four times.
posted by oflinkey at 7:47 PM on December 8, 2008

Maybe you all added that extra "g" to the end of "Don't Stop Believin"? No worries, rookie mistake.
posted by gwint at 7:47 PM on December 8, 2008 [13 favorites has favorites]

Damn, now I really do want to hear all those songs I tried and I'm going to have to open up media monkey and listen to them instead of walking the dog.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:49 PM on December 8, 2008

no matches found for Don't Stop Believing.
posted by CKmtl at 7:49 PM on December 8, 2008

It found one of my first four searches. But even popular non-mainstream bands it's unaware of: Dresden Dolls, Oppenheimer, Freezepop, Rilo Kiley and Mates of State were all stumpers. It did know about The Killers and The Flaming Lips.
posted by justkevin at 7:50 PM on December 8, 2008

Thank goodness, I finally have a website where I can not listen to the music I don't listen to on the radio.
posted by Panjandrum at 7:50 PM on December 8, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

I don't know. I tried a pretty eclectic mix. Billy Joel. Chamillionaire. Paul Simon. Harvey Danger. Neil Diamond. Peter Gabriel. I really was trying to stump it.
posted by AstroGuy at 7:51 PM on December 8, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I typed in "believin" and Don't Stop Believin' came up. So the interface has bugs to be worked out.
posted by AstroGuy at 7:53 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Stumped it five times in a row, then it started playing Nickelback.

EPIC FAIL.
posted by awesomebrad at 7:54 PM on December 8, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

"Anesthetize produced no results." Their loss.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:55 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

It seems my favourite band sucks.

Who knew?
posted by pompomtom at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2008

Hot Cocolate "You Sexy Thing"
really? I'm amazed it got that.
love,
cococat
posted by chococat at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Stumped it on the first try.
posted by jeffxl at 7:59 PM on December 8, 2008

Deezer.com has a lot of stuff this doesn't have

like freezepop
posted by jock@law at 8:00 PM on December 8, 2008

i like last.fm's radio
posted by girlthursday at 8:02 PM on December 8, 2008

I stumped it five times in a row. But for some reason it has MC Paul Barman?
posted by munchingzombie at 8:05 PM on December 8, 2008

Right out of the bat:

For An Angel, no results.
posted by empath at 8:07 PM on December 8, 2008

Stumped - "Horny In A Hearse" by Nekromantix.
Nothing on "Zulu Death Mask" by Deadbolt either.

shrugs
posted by Samizdata at 8:10 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Not even so much as "Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe."

psshh...
posted by oddman at 8:12 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Well it had Clarence Carter's Strokin', so I'm taken care of.
posted by Demogorgon at 8:13 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

munchingzombie - Good God, another person who's heard of MC Paul Barman?
posted by griphus at 8:15 PM on December 8, 2008

Stumped it about four times and then it started playing Ozzie Osbourne's "Road to Nowhere" when I searched for Blondie's "Rapture."
posted by katillathehun at 8:15 PM on December 8, 2008

I broke it.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:16 PM on December 8, 2008

Man, it doesn't even have my favorite Harvey Danger song, let alone anything I was actually interested in.
posted by Caduceus at 8:20 PM on December 8, 2008

I didn't have much luck with theRADIO, but that Songerize site is a gas- It pulled up "Your Feets Too Big" by Fats Waller, "Garbageman"/Cramps, some smooth daxophone stylings from Hans Reichel, some Mills Brothers, Harry Partch, and creaky novelty polka "Shaving Cream" right out of the gate. It's too bad Songerize doesn't provide the playlists and artist information theRadio does; a combination of these two sites would be a really useful music search engine.
posted by maryh at 8:20 PM on December 8, 2008

I don't know about you big stumpers, but I don't listen to the radio to hear things I know I'll like, but things I don't know yet that I like. I could whizz through those channels for days discovering new things. Of course these guys don't have my personal obscure favorites (and they number in the thousands). But they do have lots of obscure stuff that could eventually be among my favorites.
posted by Faze at 8:22 PM on December 8, 2008

Once every hundred-thousand years or so,
The sun doth shine and the moon doth glow
posted by Tehanu at 8:22 PM on December 8, 2008

Sorry - try again. I stumped it on my second artist - The War on Drugs. Which is fantastic music, by the way. FAIL.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 8:29 PM on December 8, 2008

Weeping Willow Rag - CHECK
Aretha Franklin "Think" - CHECK
Van Morrison " Moondance" - CHECK
Seems pretty complete to me.
posted by speug at 8:32 PM on December 8, 2008

I tried searching for Utah Saint's "Something Good" and all it could find was some Herman's Hermits. (Look, I was talking about Utah Saint's yesterday and it was the first thing to pop into my head. I don't really listen to them anymore. Promise!)

Anyway, I starting throwing things out like The Presets, The Wombats, old school Alphaville, some tracks by The Smiths... nada. Even worse, every time I stumped it, the damn thing started playing Herman's Hermits at me. Injury to insult, I say!
posted by bpm140 at 8:34 PM on December 8, 2008

Well that was crap.
I guess it would recognize some Kanye garbage or the Hannah Montana.
posted by 2sheets at 8:34 PM on December 8, 2008

Being a child of the 1970s their 70s channel is pretty fun.

Hard to believe "The Long and Winding Road" and "Don't Stop 'till You Get Enough" share the same decade!

hmmm, let's do the math . . . 300 million people, $20/yr/person universal content license, $6B/yr to eminent domain the entire back catalogue of all the music controlled by RIAA and ASCAP.
posted by troy at 8:36 PM on December 8, 2008

It didn't know "Ronnie Raygun Blues" by Translator so I tried something easier. It knows two versions of "I Changed My Mind" by Billy Joe Shaver but no versions by Lyrics Born. It didn't know the Loud Family so I didn't bother asking it for anything by Game Theory. It doesn't even know who Guided by Voices, YMCK, or Bedhead are.

On the other hand it's got a dedicated Richard Thompson channel, so I'm listening to "Wall of Death" right now. It's not a total loss.
posted by ardgedee at 8:39 PM on December 8, 2008

It doesn't do death metal either.
posted by 1adam12 at 8:50 PM on December 8, 2008

Rather than try to stump it, which wouldn't be that hard, I opted to see how the CHANNELS shaped out, and the old country station is off to a grand start (Merle, Hank, Webb Pierce, Nat Stuckey, Tammy W, Red Foley, George Jones). And not all of the songs are obvious choices, so that's pretty cool. But I have a habit of catching these services on the decline, so as soon as I embrace it it'll go away.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 8:53 PM on December 8, 2008

It doesn't do death metal either.

No, it seems to focus on music.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 8:54 PM on December 8, 2008 [15 favorites has favorites]

It didn't have a Kyrgyzstani mouth harp channel, so nuts to that.
posted by ikahime at 9:06 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

No results for CRISPY AMBULANCE

BLUE ORCHIDS threw up a big band tune (!)

No matches for THE CHAMELEONS

No matches for KATANGA COUNTY, a song I'd actually love to find

So, definitely great for finding music you can easilly find elsewhere. Sigh.
posted by unSane at 9:08 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

So I tried '7 Year Rabbit Cycle,' no hit, no big surprise, that was my stumper.

Then I tried 'Jungle Fever' and there's like a million songs called 'Jungle Fever' (but only one by Chakachas!) and still no hit.

What.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:12 PM on December 8, 2008

It is like magic, in that it doesn't actually work.
posted by nanojath at 9:19 PM on December 8, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Zero hits out of four tries, and I thought I was trying "easy" stuff from my listening habits (some GbV, NMH and other relatively big name indie acts from the 90's).

*shrug*
posted by Jezztek at 9:21 PM on December 8, 2008

Hey! It's got Rick Astley on there.
posted by tellurian at 9:22 PM on December 8, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I stumped it on the first five tries, all bands that were on mid major labels or big indies (Touch & Go, Matador). Feh.
posted by el_lupino at 9:29 PM on December 8, 2008

It does appear to set a cookie with the last song you played. Then the next time you visit it plays a different tune from the same artist.
posted by netbros at 9:30 PM on December 8, 2008

No matches for In Flames? This is *the internet* we're talking about here, right?
posted by squorch at 9:33 PM on December 8, 2008

It had no problem serving up some Wanda Jackson, and I've been happily listening to 60s Country Gold for the last 20 minutes.

On the other hand, it didn't have a band I've heard of but you've never heard of, so I guess I'm pretty cool.
posted by hydrophonic at 9:39 PM on December 8, 2008

Nickelback - Rock Star ... check.

This thing is awesome brah.
posted by clearly at 9:40 PM on December 8, 2008

I searched for The Who's Behind Blue Eyes. It started playing a song known only by its initials, ;'. I guess you _can_ call it magical, but I've become too cynical lately about bugs in a website.
posted by the cydonian at 9:53 PM on December 8, 2008

Try blip.fm instead. I just discovered it. It'll do the same sort of thing, but it's all fucking twitter-y and shit, so you know the kids'll like it.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:53 PM on December 8, 2008

I think I'll stick to Hype Machine with the Greasemonkey downloader script.
posted by amuseDetachment at 9:53 PM on December 8, 2008

I typed in the name of this totally awesome indie band I fully intend on starting next week - the Hawley Smoot Experience - but nothing came up. WTF radio on demand?
posted by chinston at 9:55 PM on December 8, 2008

It's kind of cool. I was disappointed it didn't have the music I looked for, but I could see this being fun. The FPP shouldn't have said it was "like magic" since it's really not that magical. But amusing enough.
posted by Loudmax at 9:55 PM on December 8, 2008

For those who had trouble, try Songza. or Deezer.
posted by banished at 9:58 PM on December 8, 2008

Cyrkle, "Red Rubber Ball" -- check.
Al Stewart, "Year of the Cat" -- check.
Carole King, "Tapestry" -- check.

Now my custom channel is playing Sting, "All This Time." Cool.
posted by kindalike at 9:59 PM on December 8, 2008

I am enjoying the 70s channel. Gotta love that cheesy music. : )
posted by SisterHavana at 10:10 PM on December 8, 2008

munchingzombie and griphus: I got tired of opening up and unfolding the liner notes for Paullelujah! after a while, so was very happy to find The Jew Dork Rhymes online. [pdf]
posted by carsonb at 10:13 PM on December 8, 2008

"Hurf durf, this thing is useless because it doesn't recognize my superior taste in obscure indie rock music."
--quoth the snobs


I thought it was cool.
posted by chrisamiller at 10:26 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Seems they closed a window.
posted by dhartung at 10:31 PM on December 8, 2008

Well I typed in the name of a song and sure enough, it played. This really is like magic! How did they get all of those little guys and their instruments inside my computer?
posted by twoleftfeet at 10:41 PM on December 8, 2008

"Anna Domino"

theradio: who? what?

songza:
ANNA DOMINO - TAMPER WITH TIME
Zanna Van Acker and Anna domino
ANNA DOMINO - BONDS OF LOVE
♫ Anna Domino - 88
Anna Domino - Drunk
Anna Domino - Tempting
Anna Domino - Chosen Ones
Blade Runner&Anna Domino
Anna Domino - My Man
Anna Domino - Land Of My Dreams
Anna Domino - Sixteen Tons
Paris - Anna Domino
Anna Domino - Not Right Now
Home - Anna Domino
Anna Domino - Half Of Myself
Anna Domino - with the day comes dawn
Anna Domino - Koo Koo
♫ Anna Domino - Caught
Anna Domino - The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game
Marc Moulin Featuring Christa Jérôme - Into The Dark
Anna Domino - Bead/9:15
Marc Moulin Featuring Christa Jérôme - Tenor (Fall mix)
Anna Domino - Dust
Sweet Coffee&De Laatste Show-band - Zanna (live)

I rest my case ...
posted by aeschenkarnos at 10:54 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Hurf durf, this thing is useless because it doesn't recognize my superior taste in obscure indie rock music."
--quoth the snobs

Hmmm, it just doesn't recognize what I listen to.

Anyway I find another website works pretty well [even for tracks without official videos]: youtube.
posted by meech at 10:56 PM on December 8, 2008

Ok, so, I thought you guys were all being pretentious shits, but then I entered my favorite song, Iggy Pop's "The Passenger," and...nada. That song is in a Kohl's commercial, ffs.
posted by naoko at 11:01 PM on December 8, 2008

no matches found for thank you for sending me an angel
posted by Faux Real at 11:02 PM on December 8, 2008

12 songs, all reasonably non-obscure but not top 40, and the only one it found was Orange Crush.
posted by cerulgalactus at 11:03 PM on December 8, 2008

I stumped it 100% of the time! Booo!
posted by stuffedspacedog at 11:20 PM on December 8, 2008

No Stalingrad Tractor Factory? Lame.
posted by Jawn at 11:32 PM on December 8, 2008

Hurf durf, this thing is useless because it doesn't work as well as songza or last.fm or youtube or blip.fm or hypem.com
for finding my favorite obscure indie rock music.
posted by benzenedream at 1:43 AM on December 9, 2008

I typed in "The The", that brought up some classic jazz.
I thought " OK, I'm just some liberal dude who was brought up in the 80s."
Sa I typed in, "Iron Butterfly"... I got "Sailor, your Home is the Sea" by Lolita. Eyes Wide Shut Soundtrack".


...


SO I THOUGHT FUCK IT
typed in FEAR
and I got MOHAWK ROCK BY FEAR!
so far, 1/3....

And I typed in X....

no X.

typed X again.

Got some country.

typed in X again.....

got 70s Dolly Parton.

No thanks.
posted by eparchos at 1:47 AM on December 9, 2008

No results for CRISPY AMBULANCE

Did you try Joy Division? It may have gotten them confused. It would be an easy mistake for an AI to make, mistaking a poor imitation for the real thing.

I typed in "the replacements", no results. Then I tried "replacements", and it said no results, but "I'll Be You" started playing. Then I closed it, and when I went back again, "Shiftless When Idle" came on. So the search interface is kind of weird and non-intuitive, but at least it seems to work. Oh wait, now it's randomly started playing some crappy crunchy-granola-folk for no apparent reason. I closed it again and went back, and "Can't Hardly Wait" is on now. So I guess it remembers your last search, starts off from there and then moves on to something totally random.

Kinda cool, but this will be shut down within a month.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:09 AM on December 9, 2008

OK, I tried "Big Star", and it came up with Kenney Chesney. EPIC FUCKIN' FAIL.

It's kinda pointless anyway, because if I like it and know what it is, I'd have it in some form where I could listen to it whenever I wanted, wouldn't I? And we already have last.fm and iTunes' Genius for recommending new stuff I don't have based on what I like.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:18 AM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I use Jango since Pandora got shut down in the UK. It's covered in ads, but it's pretty good at finding stuff.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:19 AM on December 9, 2008

Spotify is made of win. The catalogue is not very epic, but anything that has Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fantomas, along with most of the artists from my hiphop question in askme is fine by me. Being able to save playlists is a nice feature too.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:18 AM on December 9, 2008

Whenever a site like this appears, for a few short seconds I think that it won't be like the last one and that this time it will work. Another music site that sounds theoretically great but one that I will never go near again.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 4:11 AM on December 9, 2008

I searched for Iron Butterfly and it played In A Gada Da Vita. Seems to work OK.
posted by RussHy at 4:29 AM on December 9, 2008

I found the first song I looked for
it appears you can pass your song query in as http://www.theradio.com/?q{song you're looking for}
posted by seanyboy at 5:29 AM on December 9, 2008

How many times did you stump it?! Metafilter is dying to know!
posted by Kwine at 5:44 AM on December 9, 2008

Totally love this! Thanks.
posted by nickyskye at 5:44 AM on December 9, 2008

Fail. No Glenn Mercer.
posted by limeonaire at 5:50 AM on December 9, 2008

Stumped. No results for Anal Cunt.
posted by LilBucner at 6:27 AM on December 9, 2008

We asked for Mojo Nixon. They said "He don't work here." We said "If you don't got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin'."
posted by Fat Elvis at 6:37 AM on December 9, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

I just spent the past 5 hours entering in all the song titles from my collection of obscure Japanese noise bands. I stumped it 2,451 times. I am demonstrably hipper than all y'all.

Then I found the Jazz Cave.
posted by googly at 7:18 AM on December 9, 2008

I asked it for a nice cup of tea.


Still waiting.
posted by everichon at 8:19 AM on December 9, 2008

Bluebeat performance FTW (US XP only).
posted by squalor at 8:24 AM on December 9, 2008

I asked it for a nice cup of tea.


Still waiting.

If the internet breaks today, I know who to blame now.
posted by Tehanu at 8:29 AM on December 9, 2008

I asked it for a nice cup of tea.

Earl Grey, hot?
posted by availablelight at 8:53 AM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Distinct lack of Rune Lindblad.
posted by FatherDagon at 9:18 AM on December 9, 2008

Holy cow you people are annoying. Do you do this at parties while examining the host's cd rack?
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:56 AM on December 9, 2008

Only if the host says that he has all the music I would want to hear.
posted by ardgedee at 11:14 AM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

tsh. It's like Lets Active never existed. The heck with this web application!
posted by everichon at 11:39 AM on December 9, 2008

FAIL
posted by ericbop at 12:16 PM on December 9, 2008

Thanks, Fat Elvis--I realized that I hadn't listened to the Dead Milkmen in years. They only had two tracks (one was the one you quoted--hooray!!!) and then I realized that I hadn't heard Mojo Nixon in forever--they had one hundred forty tracks!! Rock!

Er... this was Deezer, mind you, theRadio.com didn't have any of this. And now I have to go to an office christmas party. So, you know, win some lose some...
posted by Squid Voltaire at 12:54 PM on December 9, 2008

I too stumped it three times without trying. I wasn't picking obscure indie rock, I was picking top 40 hits. And when I typed in "Heaven Must Have Sent You," it never heard of Bonnie Pointer's 1979 version (#11, for fuck's sake) but it wanted me to listen to The Elgins' version, which sank without a trace in 1966. Huh?
posted by languagehat at 1:12 PM on December 9, 2008

I TYPED IN "NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP" AND IT PLAYED "VIVA LA VIDA" BY COLDPLAY AAAARRRGGHHHHFFHPHTHMBL

WHY COLDPLAY

OF ANYTHING

WHY
posted by tehloki at 2:03 PM on December 9, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Wow! Cool! And from the other threads I've learned about the other alternatives as well. Thank u all.

So I tested them with "Velvet Underground" and "Sister Ray" (YAY!)

theradio and songerize both pulled up one hit, the standard track from the White Light White Heat album.

SeeqPod turned up six hits, a mixed bag. The standard of course and also part 2 of a youtube video. Wins the prize for weirdness though - because a version of the song done by a Japanese group must be the most craptastic rendition ever.

Deezer requires a download. Didn't have time to do that.

Spotify: "not available in your country". Wha? This is Canada. Land of Mounties and beavers. How could this happen?

Jango: doesn't allow a song search, but when i put in VU, it came up with a half a dozen of their songs and Sister Ray was one of them. It reminds me of Pandora with its 'station' concept.

The winner is Songza. It returned 36 results. Including the impossibly amazing 36 minute extended version. Sadly, the track isn't labelled differently from the standard track which is also here, so you have to click on different links to find it. As well, the search engine is wonky. You get 30 odd results if you search for "sister ray" but none if you search for ' "velvet underground" sister ray'.

Based on this inadequate test, if you're looking for album cuts and 'official releases', theradio and songerize are fine. If you're looking for live versions, obscurities and covers then Songza would be a good choice.
posted by storybored at 7:41 PM on December 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Once again, I point you towards blip.fm, which I'm liking more and more as I start to play more with it. Shitloads of returns on your suggested searches, and you can preview any song it brings back before you play it/add it to your playlist/'blip' it/whatever.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:03 PM on December 9, 2008

Seeqpod and blip.fm seem to do the same thing (search and play publicly available MP3 files) but I prefer Seeqpod largely because I could figure out how to build playlists in it -- blip.fm's process is opaque to me -- and it doesn't have the annoying social networking overlay.
posted by ardgedee at 11:34 AM on December 10, 2008

This is a pretty nice site OP. (as long as you don't like alterna-college-rock. Thankfully, I don't)
posted by Cyclopsis Raptor at 4:53 PM on December 10, 2008