ex.fm
I blog a song every day on my tumblog. At the bottom of the page on my tumblog is a banner which you can click and play every song in reverse chronological order. And I've gone one step further and created a website called fredwilson.fm where you can have that experience immediately once the page loads.
But this approach requires the publisher (me) to provide that stream for you. What if you find a page full of music that you want to play and there is no banner at the bottom? Enter ex.fm.
ex.fm (short for extension.fm) is a chrome extension that allows you to play all the music you find on a web page in reverse chronological order. Once you add it to chrome, you simply click on the ex.fm logo on the upper right of the chrome browser and you are listening.
ex.fm offers a lot more. The founder, Dan Kantor, was one of the team members on delicious and naturally you can bookmark (they call it note) a song and add it to your collection on ex.fm. And, of course, you can play a person's noted songs. Here's my friend Bijan's noted songs. Bijan is an investor in ex.fm. I am not, yet. So this is not a "pimp my portfolio" post. It's just a "pimp the things I love" post.
I find ex.fm works best on tumblogs. So visit a great tumblog, like this one, or this one, or this one and run ex.fm against it and sit back and enjoy.
Comments (Archived):
There’s a whole box of Oreos in this one!!
not sure about that. we’ll see. it’s just love at this point
I hear ya. It has a lot of potential. There are lots of good possibilities for Chrome extension too. I’ve thought of a few but sadly I need to focus on what I’m currently doing. All in time… 🙂
I say this not as a friend, but as a user, you need to check out what Charlie Crystle is doing. If he can build out from the extension, that would rock in a really amazing way
i’ve tried it a few times when it was still very raw. need to give it a runthrough again
WHERE LINK SO GRIMLOCK CAN SEE?
but you did use the word “yet”
ex.fm is a great concept. I’ve been using it for a while and can’t wait to see where they take it.
Hey Fred,I founded Like.fm which will create a list of songs you’ve been listening to heavily recently. It does this through Last.fm-style song tracking so it’s completely automatic.http://like.fm/chris is what a profile looks like.Let me know what you think!
it scrobbles like last.fm?
Yes. It uses identical apis as Last.fm, so I can take advantage of the tracking infrastructure they created.
cool. i am going to check it out
Just launched Monday: http://techcrunch.com/2011/…Thanks!
looking forward to the zynga “pimp the things i love” post!
do you play poker?
not really, but even if i did i think the zynga iphone poker app requires giving access to your facebook account, or other such private info, which for me is an immediate delete
Part of the reason why I use Songbird as a music browser is the stream grab that it can do, I like this as a standalone version of the same. Social functions seem lean and mean. Now we need for a very clean integration with shazam and the real-world discovery is added to the mix.One of my recent “music” favorites is 8tracks, it’s constrained but there is beauty in constraint. 8tracks is like a music sharing haiku.
i like 8tracks toohere’s a link to my playlists therehttp://8tracks.com/fredwilson
Actually, it hit me recently – with a few simple changes, you want to know what ex.fm would be awesome for -listening to podcasts. I realize i have been listening to a lot of my favorites that way recently…. (make it work with soundcloud!)Edit: typo!
Been a big fan of ex.fm since a VC friend of mine asked me to check it out last spring. They ended up not investing but I’ve been using it since.
same with me
extensions….pfft…..as if anyone besides nerds will ever install them…..wake me up when fredfox is launched (the browser pre-installed with fred’s extensions, auto-updated based on fred’s configurations)
I don’t disagree.That’s why I re-architected my current product to run entirely in the browser (or on mobile (or in the mobile browser)). Hard to get mainstream with a browser extension.
agree totally. i suppose in ex.fm’s case they could use the extensionto get a core group of nerds, who are more likely to be power users,and this activity could then be used to create a web service thatcould reach a larger mass of mainstream web users.
That’s a Bingo, kid.
i agree kid. but ex.fm is moving beyond extensions, for all the reasons you outlineand in the meantime, this nerd is loving his extension
i’m not fred. And i don’t want to be him. I want to be Shana
that’s good
Glad you approve of the current life plan 😉
okay, then you can roll your own browser, operating system, hardware….and why stop at computer technology, maybe you can build your own house, your own roads, your own transportation systems, grow your own food…..then you will be truly independent…..or maybe you will then realize that slavery in fredland is better than the cruel, harsh world out there.
I believe in interdependency. Man lives in a Polis. we are part of the Demos. We build through community.It would be extremely difficult to have a community or to build if everyone was the same. There are real reasons, starting with just gender, education, background, age, that I can imagine why I wouldn’t want to be Fred and use the tools he has. Further, I think it would be damaging if I wanted to be exactly like him to the other people around me – including him. He openly states that he learns from us, but if I were like him, how would he learn?Further, I don’t think there is a Fredland. And if there were, I would not bear the burden of slavery -only the yolk of law is one I would bear (and i doubt Fred would choose omipetent style ruler ala the one in Hobbes’s Leviathan…)Do I admire him (and the GothamGal, but that’s actually for a totally different set of reasons, largely having to do with being a good eye opener about many of the choices I will have to make) for what he has done with his life – yes. That still doesn’t mean I want to him.Though I will take the ex.fm
so basically you are saying you don’t like fred and wouldn’t use any technology he created and think his opinion is worthless. wow. have you no shame, shana?
No, I recognize I have different needs than Fred. It is what makes me Shana and not Fred. If we had a Freaky Friday moment, I’m not sure what I would do, because I am not him, I don’t think the same way as him, and I don’t have the same needs as him.I’d also like to add that community efforts shows needs that otherwise would not be apparent. I remember when I first got firefox (ye long time ago) there was no crash handler if you lost your tabs. There eventually was an extension for that. Then, the firefox people saw how popular that extension was, and it got built into the browser.Community FTW!(and I like fred)
Shana, it’s going to be tough for any ‘real man’ to understand you! And nerds will understand less than average!TV showed ‘What Women Want’ or some such with Mel Gibson, etc. last weekend, and there even if the Mel character could read your mind he’d still be lost!I know what it can be like to be married to a bright woman; my wife was brilliant on any scale. My chances of really understanding her were zip, zilch, zero. English lit Ph.D. students specializing in Henry James struggle with his ‘The Golden Bowl’; my wife read it quickly, easily for relaxation! She audited a class in history, for fun. The prof wanted audits also to take the tests, so she did and led the class, of 300.Got to tell you, friendly like, men, especially nerds, have some struggles understanding bright women! Like them? Nerds? Yes. Understand them? Nerds? No. :-)!
I’ll be fine long term (or I am pretty sure). Though I doubt I’ll ever read “The Golden Bowl” for fun.And why is it in your opinion that smart women are hard to understand…if it helps I find smart men hard to understand?
Shana,Generally it’s just super tough for men to understand women or women to understand men.That situation was the basis of the humor in the movie ‘What Women Want’: Until the Mel Gibson character could read the minds of the women around him, he didn’t have a clue what they were thinking, ‘wanted’, etc.Even with mind reading, actual ‘understanding’ can be difficult when the woman doesn’t know clearly in her own mind just what she wants, and men can suspect that this is often the case.My view is that, if much understanding were necessary, then the human race would have never grown. Instead, the growth was from various ‘situations’, ‘drives’, etc, that are short on actual ‘understanding’.Then, without the understanding or rational basis, there can be some rational conflicts and some ugly consequences.Also at this point, in the more industrialized countries, the birth rate is too low to keep up the population. In simple terms, in such countries, humans are dying off. So, something is very wrong in at least a Darwinian sense.Apparently one of the obstacles to men understanding women is that women have a lot ‘considerations’ active in their minds and are attempting to resolve, prioritize, or balance them and men rarely have good understanding of the considerations in particular cases.The high point in this movie played on these ‘considerations’: The theme was that before ‘presenting themselves in daily life’, women can be tormented by what others will think about their outfit, lipstick, etc. So in the movie that theme was the basis of a TV ad for Nike for women. The clip is at:http://www.youtube.com/watc…While it was just a romantic comedy movie, it did touch on some real issues.In my post responding to yours, I was teasing you, but the basis was what was in your post — a lot of ‘considerations’ something like in the movie and that men will have a tough time understanding. Or, the considerations would be tough enough to understand even after you explained them in your post; before your explanation, men wouldn’t have even a chance!And likely the brighter the woman, the more and more complicated the considerations, even if they are all rational!And the more ‘nerd-like’ the man, the less likely he will know how to perceive and understand such considerations, especially for a bright woman! :-)!!Since even for an average Joe and Mary the level of understanding so low it is part of why the divorce rate is so high and the birth rate, so low, for bright women and nerdy men, the situation has to be a grand disaster!As in the song from ‘South Pacific’, on romance, ‘fools give you reasons; wise men never try’! Sometimes art and movies actually have some succinct insight! Of course they are awash in ‘insights’, none with proofs or even good evidence, and a large fraction are actually wrong!Once I read one sentence from ‘The Golden Bowl’; the sentence was about 2/3rds of a page long, and even after several readings I couldn’t even parse the thing and had no chance of getting any ‘meaning’ from it. So I gave up. So I don’t know what’s in the book. But in the PBS ‘Masterpiece Theater’ version, James had a narrator who was giving long explanations of the complicated ‘considerations’ of the characters! But James had to be guessing or maybe he got some details from his psychologist brother William!For me the whole subject is a bit moot: I can’t save the human race!
Kid we’re just getting started. Browser and iPhone coming soon. And nerds get all the chicks now btw. 😉
is that how it is down in austin this week kirk?
Nerds are totally rock stars here.
Wow, maybe I’d have a girlfriend then..
Well at least for the week of SXSW you would. Then you’d have some stiff competition from the Frat Boys at Univ of Tex. 😉
no nerd (yet) for me. I really wish I was down in Austin….And I see tons of not-nerd guys getting chicks….
Hang in there, Shana.It’ll happen.Trust me. I know these things.
I’ll be fine long term
HOW NERD MATE STILL MYSTERY TO SCIENCE. US NEED SOLVE BEFORE WHOLE SPECIES GO EXTINCT.
🙂 As nerdette, I agree
Edit: I was more referencing that I wanted to be down in Austin because I’ve never been to SXSW. The comment about nerds-guys and dating is just observation from watching people go out
I’m biased but I kind of love it too
Maybe I’m a little jaded from working for several digital music startups, but I have a few questions about ex.fm. It seems that it’s a service that enables on-demand streaming for free — something that most record labels, publishers and performing rights organizations are not typically comfortable with unless there’s some sort of licensing deal in place.So I’m curious — how does ex.fm justify their service to these content rights holders?Do they consider themselves an interactive or non-interactive streaming service? I’d think they’d be able to say they fall under the same blanket as music blogs, but ex.fm does not deal directly with record labels (or do they?).Labels send mp3s to music blogs so they can give them away, but unless they have some sort of arrangement directly with ex.fm, I’m not sure that they’d be too happy with this type of service. Am I missing something here?On another note, when a blog takes a song down from its site, can you still play it through ex.fm? Labels often allow blogs to post mp3s for a limited time – what happens when they request a takedown?
Hey Eric, we don’t host, download, or cache any music. We reference a link on a blog or website. If record labels have an issue with a song they would need to send a take down notice to the site itself. Once it’s removed there would be no link and the song would not play.
The closest model I see is the Hype Machine, which seems to be relatively well-received by the music industry. The only difference here is that ex.fm actually requires you to visit the website to get the songs, rather than just being able to do a search/track certain artists.On an unrelated note, Kirk– any Android app in the works to go with the iPhone one (after all, it is a Chrome extension)?
Hey Andrew. Just saw this. Yeah, there will be an Android app along with an iPhone app. Don’t have an exact date though other than “soon”
Exfm rocks. It’s great for music nerds like us who scour Tumblr, music blogs, SoundCloud, our friends scrobbles, and the rest of the web for new tunes. If they can figure out a (legal) way to extend the experience to more casual listeners, using the web as their music catalog and us heavy listeners for curation, it could be huge.
Is there anything like that for mobile? I find I listen to music mostly off various streaming apps on the iPhone these days. The closest to collection building is Last.fm, but it would be interesting to have an Instapaper equivalent for music, so I can send songs I like there.
Hey William, the iPhone app will allow you to listen to songs you “noted.” SImilar to Insta-paper, though we don’t download or cache (for legal reasons) anything so you will still need a connection for the song to play.
Hey Kirk,Just curious, if browsers can cache, why can’t you? I of course wouldn’t make the files accessible/downloadable, but a 100MB cache or so would make the iPhone app way awesome when commuting through places where a network connection isn’t available (aka the subway).
Hey Daryn. Just saw this. Not sure why I got the notification so late. Sorry about that.Can’t really get into details, but I can say we believe in the model we have of streaming only. For quite a few reasons. We also have what we think is an elegant solution to handle the offline/lost connection aspect. We’ll be testing it in the next few weeks and hope to roll the app in the next few months.Hope you are well, btw!
No worries, Kirk.Whether you call it caching or something else, the goal is to have access to some music when offline, so I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with!
you can listen to ex.fm/bijan on your mobile
I did & also listened to yours on the iPhone. Cool! I’m converted.
This reminds me that I need to post music more often.I often use Tumbltape to liten to someone’s Tumblr songs but I’ll definitely give ex.fm a whirl.
why Chrome? I don’t use chrome, I’d love to try it on Firefox
Any licensing issues with posting others’ songs on playlists like this?
Big fan of ex.fm (and Charles), too – there is a lot of potential for services that help passionate fans discover new music
I used to love anywhere.fm – was an early YC startup that was sold (and subsequently shutdown). It’d be great if Ex.fm had a similar feature – which allowed you to upload local songs from your drive to play in the browser alongside songs from around the web. Would make for the perfect playlist imo.
I don’t get this. Given the way music publishing rights are managed by BMI and ASCAP, someone should be legally responsible for paying the songwriters for the broadcast of these songs you and others post on the web. Traditional radio and even jukebox owners have to pay each time a song is played. These monies go to the songwriter(s) (not necessarily the musicians). There is potential for legal action against your use of this material on your site, especially as you have a big footprint. ASCAP and BMI routinely go after small local bars and nightclubs all over the country so they have the bandwidth.It is interesting that the subject of rights has not been brought up by any commenters. As a former musician I have to remind folks that music isn’t free.I’m interested in hearing how this works from a legal perspective.
I read this blog quite a lot, and have never commented so far. So here it goes my first comment on avc. Now to music. I think the best platforms for music are those that engage me towards discovering new music without actually searching for it. I think last.fm does a great job of this, but the innovation factor in last.fm has been lost for years now (since it got bought basically). The new platforms I use, and wanted to get your insights towards this are, shffler.fm (great service which actually plays directly from different artists blogs). I think they ex.fm beat for now with the kind of service they offer.Second is wearehunted.com. Again, its a great service built on top soundcloud, which presents the best of online music trends in an absolutely simple UI.
ex.fm – man, what great idea. I love discovering things I should have thought of. Well done Kantor and Wilson for pointing it out. Amazing.SSS
I think it is striking that I return to this thread and everyone is still ignoring the elephant in the room: Unless someone with a legal background can clarify, this looks like stealing, pure and simple. If I write a song and it gets broadcast via these sharing services, I see no publishing income. What is my incentive to do the hard work of writing and recording if anyone can immediately share my work, for free, with millions of people?I know this is an old story, vis a vis Napster, but it is still out there. Music lovers but not artist lovers…
Fred,Great taste in music! Loving fredwilson.fm
It is pimping nevertheless. 😉