There’s a new version of Songbeat, a simple but powerful desktop application for discovering music online, and I like it. When it was first released earlier this year, the client only enabled you to search for music online using Seeqpod, but the updated version lets you search more engines at once and also lets you easily play, export and download songs.
The music industry will be interested to know that the new iteration of Songbeat supports integrated search for Seeqpod, Project Playlist, SpoolFM, iASK ‘and more’. You can use the client to listen to music over the web, or listen and record straight from Last.fm. Music files can be directly exported to iTunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp or burnt on a CD, and you can download tracks or albums straight from the internet, or even a complete genre or artist thanks to integration with Mixtape. Songbeat even automatically tags your music files with lyrics and album cover art when you download them from the net.
The German company behind the Songbeat player offers the desktop app for free, so you can find and listen to as much music as you want, but you can only download 25 times. An upgrade would cost you 19.99 Euros (or $ 29.9), for which you’d get unlimited downloads.
Note that it only works on Windows XP and Vista for now. A Mac and iPhone version are under development, and should be ready by the end of the first quarter of next year.
And what about copyright infringement? Songbeat’s answer:
The downloading of music is not fundamentally illegal. However, it lies in the hands of the user to discern whether or not they have the right to download the particular music file at hand.
Oh, ok then.
