While comparisons with other similar services – such as Last.fm – are inevitable, Spotify has certain characteristics that make it stand out from the rest. You can search the entire Spotify music database in several ways (by artist, album, genre, decade, label brand…), create as many playlists as you want and share them with other users, and learn more about your favorite bands thanks to extensive, highly detailed biographies. Spotify also helps you discover new music through the “Related artists” and Radio service.

There are three types of Spotify accounts: Open, Unlimited and Premium. Free is limited to 10 hours of free ad-supported a month (approximately 200 songs) and lets you play each song up to five times. Unlimited has no ads and no playback restrictions. Finally, Premium includes high-quality MP3 (also with no ads or restrictions) and also includes an offline mode for playlists.

The one big criticism of Spotify was the lack of social features. Luckily the developers took note of this complaint and include a bunch of new social elements in Spotify’s next version – together with the Library, a centralized area from which you can manage your music collection – including Spotify’s lists and your own MP3 files, which you can now import into Spotify from your hard drive, your Windows Media Player Library or your iTunes library.

The brand new features included in the latest version of Spotify now let you manage and sync the music in your iPod, iPhone or Android. Also, the Spotify mobile app has been made available for anyone, and not just Premium users. Last, but not least, Spotify has launched its MP3 download service, thanks to which you can buy and download individual songs and also your custom playlists. The price depends on the number of songs you want to download – the longer the playlist, the less you pay for each track. You can pay with credit card or Paypal, though the latter is not accepted if you only purchase one song.

Just like a good wine, Spotify gets better with age. If you don’t mind the limitations in the Free version (or you’re willing to pay for the Unlimited/Premium one) it’s probably time to ditch your old desktop music player.

Spotify lets you browse, play, share and buy music, including not only your lifelong favorite bands, but also brand new styles and artists.

Download Spotify 0.8.3.222 in Softonic

After installing the program you’ll see a new button beside the search field, on top of the Spotify interface. From this button you can enable and disable Equalify, configure its 10 bands to achieve perfect sound quality, and save your presets for future use.

Equalify is really simple to use and doesn’t have any special configuration options. The only thing you need to take into account is that Spotify must be closed before installing Equalify and that it may ask you to restart your computer. Also, make sure you install the plug-in in the same folder as Spotify.

The only thing we missed in Equalify was having a few ready-made presets to start with. Other than that, it’s a great complement for an already awesome application.

Equalify adds a fully functional 10-band equalizer to Spotify with which to enhance sound quality.

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When it first appeared, Free Music Zilla was designed to rip music from sites like Last.fm, MySpace and Imeem. However, it hasn't kept up with the development of those sites and fails to pick up music you listen to on their sites.

Free Music Zilla isn't a total failure, however, as there are many sites it easily downloads content from. It's excellent at grabbing embedded video from lots of pages, including YouTube. Also, the many music blogs that feature sample MP3s work very well with Free Music Zilla.

The interface is extremely simple. If you can see a file, Free Music Zilla has found something. Because many video sites don't call files by artist name an so on, sometimes it's hard to see if the file is the one you want, but downloading is painless, so you can always check and rename later.

In its preferences you can choose which browsers Free Music Zilla should monitor, where to put downloaded files, and whether it starts on startup, minimizes to system tray, etc.

Free Music Zilla is a very basic downloader, but it's effective when it works! It's a shame it no longer functions with Last.fm or MySpace, but there are still many other sites where it's useful.

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Music subscription service, Rdio, has released a dedicated desktop application that perfectly emulates its web interface. Manage your music library, create playlists, and explore new music. Rdio subscribers can also sync their music to their devices using the app. Lastly, all of the popular and recommended music charts are still available for perusal.

One of the great things about Rdio is its social network integration. It supports Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm. Social is really where Rdio separates itself from competitors like Spotify. You can follow people on Rdio and have their music activity show up in your feed. It is a great way to discover new music and to see what your friends have been listening to. You can even create a collaborative playlist with your friends.

One interesting feature of the Rdio desktop app and the Rdio web interface is that the desktop application can scan your iTunes collection so that your iTunes library will show up in Rdio's interface. Rdio still acts as a music streaming application, but you can also send tracks to be downloaded to your mobile device if you pay for the monthly plan.

There are still a few areas that Rdio could improve upon, like including more artists. Its library is not as extensive as Spotify's. It would also be nice to see a section for lyrics.

Overall, Rdio's desktop application retains all of the functionality of its web interface while providing a couple of improved features like iTunes matching.

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RadioSure allows you to browse through a huge variety of stations, sorting by language, country, genre and title. You can also add new stations and toggle a variety of configuration settings that run from enabling hotkeys to recording radio.

There are various ways of listen to RadioSure - via the main interface, minimized to a smaller bar, or minimized completely to the taskbar. The taskbar option will let you carry out the majority of actions you need by right-clicking.

Even though RadioSure has lots to recommend it, the problems Elena mentioned in version 1 still stand. Some radio connections are dropped and some won't connect at all. This is a common problem with streaming music apps, however, and RadioSure has so many stations available that you won't be stuck for music to listen to. There's still no in-built payer to listen to your recordings though, and I felt that the search function wasn't as good as it could be.

Despite a few small problems, RadioSure is still a great option for listening to internet radio.

Download RadioSure 2.2.1022 in Softonic

Indian Radio is an application that gathers a total of 77 India-oriented radio stations, playing them via a built-in player. The stations are organized by station number, name, genre and language. Since I'm not familiar with Indian radio, it was hard for me to judge just how good the selection was, but it includes stations that seem to be relatively well-known, such as DesiZone Radio, Akash Radio and IBN7. The stations are based in different countries, broadcast in different languages and cover interest areas such as music, news and entertainment, so you are sure to find one to suit.

The main Indian Radio interface is an attractive Word 2007-inspired design, but the program doesn't have many configuration options. You can only chose hotkeys and the interface skins, but you can't add or remove stations. At the time of testing, the radio stations seemed reliable, but the TV options weren't so great. One thing that was missing is the ability to sort stations by the columns, a small feature that would make Indian Radio much easier to use.

Indian Radio provides a great selection of stations, but a lack of configuration options really lets it down.

Download Indian Radio 1.0 in Softonic

Screamer Radio's not much to look at, but that doesn't matter too much because it means it’s very light on resources. You find your radio stations through the presets, which are divided into Genre, Language, Network and Region. There is also an online web directory and you can add stations to your favorites for quick access later.

When your station is playing, the information available about it and the track are displayed in the Screamer Radio window. You can also record the music that’s playing, although the success of the recording depends on how much information the station provides. There are few basic effects and stereo settings available to play around with, and the more technical among you will be able to manually edit Screamer Radio's more advanced options.

All in all, we were really impressed with Screamer Radio. The interface is clean and informative, there's a good selection of stations and music quality is high. It’s a really streamlined tool - is does what it has to do, excellently, and there are absolutely no unnecessary distractions. Perfect!

Screamer Radio. It's popular for a very good reason - it rocks!

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The presets in Tapin Radio include stations from all over the world, classified by region, genre and network. They’re all accessible via the Presets menu, which can be a bit annoying sometimes – especially when dealing with lists of hundreds of stations. That’s why it’s probably best to open them from the search tool.

Besides playing streamed music, Tapin Radio also records it to your hard drive in several formats (MP3, OGG, WMA and AAC), by simply pressing the Record button. Other tools included in Tapin Radio are a sleep timer and an auto volume feature.

Both the player and the recorder in Tapin Radio offer very basic functionality, as well as a simple interface design. The program doesn’t include any documentation, but then again, it doesn’t really need it. Some users might consider the app a little too pared down, but others will surely appreciate the simplicity.

Tapin Radio lets you listen to free internet radio stations from all over the world and record them to your hard drive.

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The beauty of the Last.fm Scrobbler is that it encourages you to find similar artists to the ones you already like and pushes you to interact with users who share the same tastes. Search results appear as a tag cloud, with the biggest elements being the most popular. With thousands of songs available on Last.fm, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll listen to the same thing twice. The Last.fm Scrobbler is streamed and you’ll have to be connected to the internet and have a Last.fm account for it to work.

Although slightly bulky, the Last.fm Scrobbler is sleek and accessible. We like the shiny control icons and the “now playing” window. This is where you’ll find artist information like album cover, a small description of the artist, related tags and artists and top listeners. The Last.fm Scrobbler menu bar on the left includes your recently played tracks, recently loved and recently banned, although to listen to these you’ll need to upgrade your Last.fm account.

With the Last.fm Scrobbler, you can connect to neighbors' stations and listen to their tunes. The lists of the friends you made on Last.fm will also appear on your player. If you have the Audioscrobbler plug-in installed, Last.fm Scrobbler can also track all the songs you play in your favorite desktop music app (like iTunes) and connect you with even more neighbors.

Most of us here at Softonic have Last.fm connected all day, simply because it doesn’t require you to have your own music library, it’s free and provides an endless flow of new tunes. In line with modern evolutions in online music, Last.fm Scrobbler mixes streaming and social tools to give you an exciting music player.

The Last.fm Scrobbler - no music fan should be caught dead without it.

Download Last.fm Scrobbler 1.5.4.27091 in Softonic

This means that with Replay Music you can literally save a copy of all your favorite songs on your hard drive, whether you listen to them on Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify or MySpace, to name a few. Besides downloading the songs, Replay Music also includes automated tools to detect silence between songs and identify the track you’re recording.

Replay Music is really simple to use: all you need to do is make sure the program is already active when you start the music source you want to record. Then, press the Start recording button and let Replay Music do the rest: recording the song, converting it to MP3, identifying if possible and adding the corresponding ID3 tags.

You’ll find a few configuration options in Replay Music to tweak the recording quality, select folders to store converted files, change the recording volume or set up the file’s naming template, among other possibilities.

Replay Music is an easy, quick way to save your favorite music from online streaming services as MP3 files on your hard drive.

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The slick interface is packed full of features and options, while the stations themselves are easy to negotiate. Nexus Radio's selection of broadcasters is arranged by musical style, station name, bitrate and format. Although we hadn’t heard of lots of the stations on offer, there is a great variety in all genres and you’ll have no problem finding music to listen to.

When you get bored of listening to streamed radio, Nexus Radio also lets you search for artists and songs. You can mark songs and artists as favorites, for easy access later, tag them, and even directly record audio to your computer. If all that that wasn't enough, the program comes with some cool visualizations, as well as Facebook integration.

Despite the great selection of radio stations and extensive options, Nexus Radio has a few issues that make listening slightly less comfortable than it could be. Adding favorites is not very intuitive, something that complicates the playing of results found via the search. In addition to this, many of the additional features must be managed via the Nexus Radio webpage, which doesn't make the experience entirely self-contained.

Nonetheless, Nexus Radio is a great little streaming application, and if a few fiddly problems don't bother you, you're sure to be grooving away as soon as you download.

Nexus Radio's great selection of stations means there's something for everyone.

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Setting up Audiogalaxy is really easy. All you need to do is create a user account on the website and download the Audiogalaxy client to your PC. This client is what makes streaming possible between the computer and your portable device. So far Audiogalaxy works with iOS- and Android-based devices.

The Audiogalaxy web app is clean and intuitive. It automatically imports music from your hard drive – provided you store it in the system’s default music folders – and lets you create custom playlists just by dragging and dropping files.

The mobile apps are Audiogalaxy’s greatest assets. With them you’ll be able to listen to your favorite music anytime, no matter where you are. The only requirement is that your computer must be switched on.

Audiogalaxy offers an interesting way of enjoying your music collection at all times.

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Antenna lets you browse thousands of online radio stations worldwide. The program combines a huge list of radio stations with a world map, enabling you to use either interface to search for, find, discover and listen to different radio stations every day.

To tune in to any station via Antenna, simply browse the list and double click, or move around the map and double click any dot. The selected radio station will be shown in a separate window over the map, where you'll be able to control volume and rate it.

You can sort the station list in Antenna by country or genre, and also see the most recent entries and top rated. The program also includes a built-in search tool. The only drawback to Antenna, as with any other similar online radio tools, is that you may find the odd broken station.

Antenna is an original online radio tuner that helps you discover thousands of new radio stations from all over the world.

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Quite some time back, MyTunes suffered one of those cruel twists of fate that rear their head from time to time, effectively bringing development on this popular utility to an abrupt halt, CNET News.com reports"the popular software has all but vanished from the Net, and its programmer's sites have gone dark. But this time, it's not the doing of an angry record industry or a conflict-averse Apple. Trinity College sophomore Bill Zeller, who wrote the program in less than two weeks of off-time coding last year, says he simply lost the source code in a catastrophic computer crash." Zeller said: "I was about to release the second version, when I lost everything. I may put it back online, but there won't be any updates. I don't want to rewrite it."

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With Phonostar you can now tune in to more than 7,000 radio stations that stream their contents on the Internet for free. What's more, you can also use it to subscribe to your favorite podcasts. The program features a nice-easy-to-use interface, similar to any other music player, from which you can listen to your favorite online radio stations. The interface also displays an extra window where you can search for any radio station according to different parameters (language, genre, quality, etc.) though its reduced size makes search a bit uncomfortable.

But that's not all. Phonostar still keeps an ace up its sleeve with its built-in recording tool, which enables you to record your favorite songs right to your hard drive – in WAV or MP3 - with just a single mouse click.

Phonostar is a great online radio player and recorder. A bit of improvement in the way it displays search results and it'll be nearly perfect!

Download phonostar-Player 2.01.4 in Softonic