iRadar: Hang Out On Console.fm To Hear Great New Tunes

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Hang Out On Console.fm To Hear Great New Tunes

Are you addicted to music? Do you love finding new tunes? Are you keen to find out about another new way to hear new music while you work? Well, we’ve found another neat thing you might like, called Console.fm.

You may have heard of Turntable.fm before – it’s a service which lets a bunch of people hang out in a virtual venue and take turns to DJ while everyone gets to listen to the tunes. But sadly, Turntable.fm is restricted to US listeners only. Fortunately for those of us outside the US, Console.fm has come along to let us explore music in much the same way, but with curated content. Plus, the music is sourced from Soundcloud.fm, which is great for emerging artists and those of us who like to download free MP3s of the music we liked.

What Is Console.fm?

Console.fm is a little like Turntable.fm in that it allows a group of listeners in a virtual room to listen to quite a variety of music within the designated theme of the room. The music is curated by the Console.fm team and mostly sourced from Soundcloud.fm, meaning its grass-roots MP3s are freely available to be played and are often available to be downloaded for free.

Sign Up With Console.fm

Console.fm is available for anyone worldwide to use and is accessed by signing in via Twitter.

hear new music

Console.fm Genres

Listeners can choose from a variety of genres of music to listen to. You might start by listening to some chill out, indie dance or electronica and later move into some trance, psy-trance, dubstep or house. It’s easy to swap genres if you need a change by using the drop-down list once you’re in a genre.

listen to new music

Listening To Console.fm

Once you’re in a Console.fm genre you can pause and skip tracks as you wish. You can also click on a track you’d prefer to listen to and jump around at will.

listen to new music

If you’ve really liked a track, search for it in Soundcloud.fm and you will often find it available for download — sometimes for free.

Being Sociable In Console.fm

It’s never just about the music. Often you want to talk to other fans of the music genre and generally learn more about what else they listen to.

Console.fm shows a list of all the current listeners and lets people set a status within Console.fm. Setting your status here doesn’t reflect in Twitter as a Twitter post. Users can join in a group chat or chat individually to other listeners from within Console.fm. Since you’re viewing Twitter usernames, you could also take the chat outside Console.fm and follow the user directly on Twitter. If you’re not being sociable, you can turn off Console.fm chat.

hear new music

Console.fm For Musicians

If you make your own music, Console.fm is a great way to promote it. To get the Console.fm team to find your tracks, upload your tracks to Soundcloud.fm and tag appropriately for people to find. In this case, you will want to ensure your tags match the Console.fm genres. Then hang out in Console.fm in the appropriate genres and occasionally chat about one of your own tracks. Don’t do it too often and be upfront about it being a shameless plug. If you’ve picked your audience well it should be well received if you only promote on occasion.

Feature Wishlist

Console.fm is still quite new and busy implementing all sorts of new features, but nevertheless some feature requests can still be made here. My main wish would be for Console.fm to incorporate Last.fm scrobbling. There’s a couple of useful browser extensions which may incorporate it in the future, but it’s always best when offered natively.

It’d also be great if listeners could easily right-click and either be taken to the Soundcloud.fm page for the track or to instantly see download availability for the track.

More Music

We know you want more ways to find and hear great new music, so here’s a few more things to read about:

Did you try Console.fm? Find any great music you liked?

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