Virtual Playlist Online: Listening to Your Music Whenever and Wherever

Now more than ever is it possible to listen to your favorite music online for free at anytime. Two new websites make it possible for you to create a playlist or upload your current iTunes playlist so that you can listen to your favorite songs when you are not on your computer but someone else's.

Both of these websites use the Youtube API. This makes it possible for users to hear all of these songs from Youtube and also protect the website owners from any legal issues.

The first website is http://www.audiolizer.com/ and has been created by two colleges students in Canada. The great feature about this website is the ability to search for songs by artist or song name. The search is rather quick and returns all of the results from the songs on Youtube by that artist or with that song name. This avoids the use of having to use Youtube's search feature which will show you photos of the videos and takes a little longer.

With audiolizer when you the song you are interested in you can then add this song to your playlist, to your library, or simply just play the song. When you play the song it will pop up in the right sidebar in a standard mini browser music player. The difference is that you also see a very mini version of the YouTube video. However, you have control of the song and volume in a normal streaming music fashion. The site plans to expand to include new music that is "discovered." It is not yet clear how this feature will work but will have something to do with the suggestions by the site's owners or perhaps user input.

A more established and popular site is http://www.sonicswap.com. This site allows the users to play a playlist similar to the ever popular iTunes. The site says that "you put your playlist on the internet, you can listen to anyone's playlist anywhere, and it is legal, easy, and free." That is quite a statement and is what can be achieved with SonicSwap. However, the website is not entirely legal. A ton of content, videos, and music on YouTube is in violation of copyrights. Even so, since you are not actually downloading any songs you can't get in trouble.

Unlike audiolizer, SonicSwap does not have a search feature, which would be nice, but gives Audiolizer the edge. Even so, SonicSwap looks like it was created by a more professional and experienced webmaster. In addition, if your playlist is the most played during a month you currently will receive $1,000. This is a nice incentive and may tempt you to create a intriguing playlist. SonicSwap also has their discover feature set up on their website. This allows you to look at featured artists and perhaps find musicians that you are not yet aware of.