For those of you who are a little tired of
the likes of iTunes, Spotify, or whoever, dominating the streaming music
market, fear not. For there is a new kiddie on the block: Freemake Music Box.
Firstly, Freemake Music Box is a 100% legal
music streaming application that indexes music which has been legally posted on
the Internet, with a special emphasis on the legal' side, especially in this
day and age of grey area legal music listening. Secondly, there are no adverts,
banners, commercials or nasty pop-ups to ruin your audio enjoyment. And lastly,
it's free; no matter what country or ISP you inhabit, and, as an added bonus,
there's also no registration of the software required. I must admit, I'm
becoming quite the fan of Freemake's list of free applications; already the
Freemake Video Converter has been used regularly enough to achieve the lofty
position of 'permanently installed' on my working system, and now Freemake
Music Box is fast approaching that Valhalla of lucky applications.
Freemake Music
To start with, point your collective
browsers to: bit.ly/KChzBp and download the 1.1MB installer. After executing,
the installer will contact the Freemake servers and download/install the
remainder of the 20MB or so of program files. After the installation has
finished you'll be presented with a clean, uncluttered, yet remarkably sparse
interface. The top right bar is the search; simply type in the name of the
artist, or track and hit enter. The results will be displayed in the section
below the search bar, along with a familiar play icon and a plus icon next to
them.
Clicking on the play icon will, obviously,
play the selected track, while clicking the plus icon will add the track to
your personal Playlist, in the column on the left. Playback, pause,
fast-forward, shuffle and repeat are all available via the mini, integrated
music player above the playlist. And, finally, below the playlist is a video
previewing window, should the track come with one, which can be hidden to
expand the playlist and improve the bandwidth of the playing track. There was
some difficulty in obtaining the odd music video, but as long as you use FMB as
a music player, then you'll have nothing to worry about.
By clicking on the My Playlist link, you
have the option to create custom music collections by adding individual tracks;
unfortunately, as of yet, there is no way to transfer those playlists from PC
to PC, but the developers have a number of new features up their sleeves for
future releases, one of which is a playlist network sync across multiple
machines, and mobile devices, and another being a web-based version that
eliminates the need to even install the software.
Oh yeah, workout music. For FREE!
With its minimalistic interface and easy to
use controls, Freemake Music Box is by far one of the better legal music
streamers available. Its fast, ad-free environment is a blessing in the world
of the modern app. being registration and commercially free also benefits those
who don't want the rest of the world to know what they're listening to, while
keeping you on the right side of the legal music minefield. All this plus the
added benefit of coming from a development company that's keen to update its
wares and is continually improving them, means that Freemake's Music Box is
bound to become the friend of the PC music fan who wants to create decent
playlists while tapping away at their keyboard. Well worth a download!
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Features at a Glance
Powerful music search
Playlist creation
Free, totally and unreservedly
Legal music only |
