Tubufy – Turn Your Spotify, MOG & Last.fm Playlists Into Music Video Channels

Tubufy – Turn Your Spotify, MOG & Last.fm Playlists Into Music Video Channels: "

Before music videos, there was just music – and a lot of people were happy with that. In August 1981, MTV launched, with the first ever video broadcast proclaiming that “Video Killed The Radio Star”. Now, 30 years on, we don’t really need MTV any more. Why let someone else behind the scenes pick what music you should listen to (or watch, in this instance) when you can create your own personalised music channel using your existing playlists?

Tubufy is the name of the service that lets you do exactly this. If you’re a Spotify, Last.fm or MOG.com user then it couldn’t be easier to create your own personal broadcast – you can even share it afterwards.

Introducing Tubufy

Naturally, Tubufy has one single purpose – to turn audio playlists into video playlists. How you then use your video playlist is up to you. The service wouldn’t be out of place at a party or in a bar, especially if you’ve got a spare TV or projector you’d like to make use of.

Once created, your video playlist can be used in fullscreen mode, automatically switching tracks without reverting to a smaller window view. What’s more, it’s so easy to keep track of the channels you have created with a simple bookmark in your browser.

It’s worth mentioning that some songs actually have no official “video”, and in many of these instances a YouTube video has been uploaded with just audio and usually album art. Still, it’s a nice way to access your playlists from a browser, without logging in and without the need for extra software. To top it off, the channel creation process couldn’t be easier.

Creating A Channel

In order to generate a video channel, you’ll either need to be using Spotify, Last.fm or MOG and have created some playlists. Each of these services support public playlist sharing, and this is how the service operates.

Once you’ve chosen a playlist, visit Tubufy and select either Spotify, Last.fm or MOG. Note below the playlist input area for each service is an example format. Both Spotify and MOG require the playlist to be entered in the following format:

• Spotify – Playlist URI (not HTTP Link), example: spotify:user:topsify:playlist:5iwkYfnHAGMEFLiHFFGnP4
• MOG – Playlist URL, example: http://mog.com/playlists/694727

Last.fm users will simply need to enter their Last.fm username in order to reveal their list of playlists, and choose one from there.

There are several checkboxes below the playlist entry, and these allow you to search for live videos, covers, acoustic versions or instrumentals. You don’t have to worry about this too much now, as there’s an option to apply these rules after your channel has been created.

Once you’ve clicked Load videos! Tubufy will do its thing and present to you a list of videos that correspond with both the content and order of your playlist. At this point it is worth checking out the URL, as this is undoubtedly the quickest way of accessing a playlist you particularly like – simply bookmark and return at your leisure.

Your playlist should begin playing immediately. If Tubufy has returned the wrong song or you fancy an alternative version, click the Show Alternatives toggle at the top of the video to bring up a list of potential replacements.

Things To Look For

Of course there’s always the possibility that a song on your playlist does not correlate with any video results, and in this instance the song in question will be displayed in black on your Tubufy channel. The player will automatically skip to the next available song for any missing entries, though I found plenty of lesser-known tracks appearing in Tubufy.

If you can’t think of a playlist and fancy testing out Tubufy anyway, below the playlist entry box is a selection of pre-made playlists to choose from, including the UK & US top 40 charts.

The player has a few extra buttons including next/previous track, Shuffle, and Reload which reloads the entire channel and puts you back at the start. There are also share buttons just below your playlist title, allowing you to easily share your channel across Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much all there is to say about Tubufy – which is certainly a good thing. The service is lightweight, quick and not bogged down with advertisements (other than YouTube’s own). The videos displayed in any channels you create are of course only there thanks to the original uploaders, but that’s not to say that Tubufy doesn’t do a stellar job of finding and matching songs.

If you’re interested in converting Spotify, Last.fm and iTunes playlists to Grooveshark instead, then you can read our how-to right here.

Have you used Tubufy? Any thoughts for the developer? Any other services you’d like to see working with Tubufy? Let us know what you’re thinking in the comments.

Tubufy – Turn Your Spotify, MOG & Last.fm Playlists Into Music Video Channels is a post from: MakeUseOf

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