Goombah Free Music Player

Over in the sidebar you'll see our latest goodie, the Radio Free Goombah player. It contains some totally free, podsafe music that I particularly like from the Goombah free music collection.

You, too, can make a Radio Free Goombah player and add it to your blog, email it to someone, or just listen to it yourself. Pick the free tracks you like best and load 'em in. When a track the listener particularly enjoys comes up, she can click the Keep button and it's saved to her hard disk. No DRM -- play it anywhere.

While I'm at it, I might as well make some comments about these particular tracks!

Allen Shadow is an old friend of mine. I love his music. It's not mainstream -- the lyrics are intense and attention-demanding (probably the single closest comparison is to Lou Reed) and the music is not the usual pablum. It's not background music, and it's a kind of music that's hard to mass-market, despite the well-deserved, uniformly great reviews it's received. Check out, for example, the beautiful half-step drop on the words "forty-second street" in Crossroads Of America.

There is an audience for this music, and one of the things in my mind as the ideas and technology for Goombah came together over a number of years was to enable him, and others like him, to reach their audiences. The Internet has provided the raw technological materials for quite some time, but only now is the problem really being solved.

Anyway, these tracks from Allen are from his album King Kong Serenade which is all about New York City. Don't put them on as background music. Really listen. The lyrics may be found here.

Gunnar Madsen is an artist Goombah recommended to me. He's my favorite new artist discovery in quite some time. Unusual and interesting lyrics; compelling music. If your tastes are like mine you'll love his track "Something Special."

Girlyman is a group I'd heard of but never paid attention to before Goombah recommended it. Viola is a gorgeous track.

Ani Difranco's 2 Little Girls is a longtime favorite of mine. She does a great job in this live version. And a very energetic one too!

Al Di Meola is a truly great jazz guitarist. As far as I know his first recordings were with Chick Corea's Return To Forever band in the 1970's but he quickly went off on his own. Double Concerto is a beautiful track.

Morcheeba -- what can I say. It's not in a genre that I would normally listen to -- "Lighten Up" is very much a pop track. But Goombah recommended it to me so I gave it a try, and I think the music is great and I like the positive lyrics. Even though Morcheeba is a fairly well-known group, due to my personal listening habits there's no way I would have run across them without Goombah. Probably it won't be a track I'll be playing in 10 years, but it's really great to hear it five, or maybe ten, times. And if your tastes are like mine, you'll feel the same way.

This phenomenon -- getting a track just to hear and enjoy it a few times -- is something largely new in my musical experience. In the past I've tended to stick to certain beloved artists only because finding new ones has been so difficult for me -- most recordings out there consist of music I simply don't like, and I don't have the time to wade through them. Goombah eliminates that difficulty, thereby enabling me to have one night stands mixed with my usual long-term artist relationships. This is a good thing and really fun.

You may be wondering how you can make a Radio Free Goombah player with tracks that you choose. You can do it either from the Goombah application or on the web. On the web, go to our tracks page, check the checkboxes next to some of the tracks you like the most, then click the Make Radio button. A Goombah Free Music Radio will appear. Click the Widget button there. HTML will appear that you can paste into a blog. Or, click the Share button and an email will be created with a URL that links to a radio.

I encourage you to drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Comments

[Nick Phillips]

Hi, saw your article on Goombah. I'm actually looking for a music player for my blog not unlike Goombah but something that can actually play a certain song I have from my own collection. Any ideas or tips on any sites I can find something like that? Will try Goombah by the way and check out its collections of songs.

[Gunnar Madsen]

I'm a Goombah fan as well - the best way since old-time radio to find new music for me. And, I'm glad you found (and like) my music on Goombah. Long live good music!

[Gary Robinson]

Hi Gunnar, very nice to hear from you! Thanks for taking the time to comment. I hope you'll enjoy the improvements we're putting in place for Goombah (now called FlyFi)!