This Thanksgiving, celebrate ‘Songza’

November 20th, 2007 - by Eddie

News, Video

Songza isn’t a new religion, a made-up holiday or the latest profanity that Don Imus will utter on his show. No friends, it’s much cooler than that and more addictive than crack.

It’s a new music site that gives you exactly what you want: Music. Right now.

Visit Songza, type in an artist/band in the search bad, press enter and tracks quickly appear on the screen, all of which are ready to be streamed.

And it gets better. A lot of the tracks are rarities or live recordings (which is how I found the video above).

Other gems I’ve uncovered are:

-Elton John, Freddie Mercury and Axl Rose doing “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

-Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (from the movie “Once,” a must-see for music fans) performing “Falling Slowly” on Letterman and at Sundance.

-A rare freestyle with Eminem and the late Proof.

But there’s more. There’s a built in playlist on the right. So if you like a particular track, you can save it for later listens. There’s also a rating system which helps future listeners (giving it a thumbs up moves the track further up the list in searches).

The site was developed by 23-year-old Aza Raskin, who is the president of Chicago-based software company Humanized and the son of Apple Macintosh founder Jef Raskin. So yea, he’s kind of a big deal.

I’ve spent the entire day on this thing, searching for the odd, rare, and crazy (which are also good search words for the site).

Right now I’m listening to Pete Seeger. And I think next up is to look for some live Johnny Cash.

To be honest, some of this sounds like it’s taken from videos. I don’t know how that’s possible. But there’s one track, where Pete Seeger is explaining how he came up with “Turn Turn Turn,” that definitely sounds like it’s from a documentary…mostly because there are people talking who are never introduced.

Stop reading. Enjoy yourself on the site. I’m listening to a rare recording of Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”

And since there’s a host of live music on it, expect to hear more about it from us.

Till then, I’m going to continue wasting the rest of my day.

*UPDATE
OK in the process of writing this, I searched for “Secret Stars” and what popped up? The audio track from the Youtube video I shot a couple months back of Geoff Farina performing “Some Sinatra”  This explains the random interview-esque tracks that seem misplaced. So it’s kind of like a Google just for music? This is getting interesting…and a little scary that I’m involved somehow.

BTW: there’s a Firefox extension you can use with Songza.