Going as far away as possible from random-based MP3 radio stations, there's 8tracks. It offers user-made playlists on songs. The songs come either from free tracks from SoundCloud, or by uploading your own tracks. For some reason, uploading commercial tracks is accepted. When played the playlist won't shuffle, but at least it will loop.
There isn't a lot of curation from professional DJs, but then there are a lot of users uploading tracks that simply wouldn't be available elsewhere. And like an actual mixtape, having a fixed track ordering has its charms.
The iPhone app worked great, and its tagging system made it quite easy to find the combination of styles I wanted. Creating playlists can be done only through their web site, but as a music player the app was functional enough. I wish there were more 3rd party track sources, and the SoundCloud tracks are sometimes difficult to search for and could be better integrated.
Overall, I liked it. It doesn't beat Songza's incredible curation and shuffled playlists, but with its potentially infinite track collection I have to recommend it.
Published on August 17, 2012 at 19:36 EDT
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