Things I Use Part I: Goombah Music Discovery

Well, this first one isn’t actually an app I use all that frequently, but, I have grown to love it and as it is still in Beta hope to use it only more frequently. The app I refer to is Goombah. When I talk about Goombah I am, of course, not referring to those annoying little fuckers from Mario:

Nor am I referring to one of Tony Soprano’s many bitches, and he had many mind you. No, Goombah, in this case, is a new website and free app (both on Windows and Mac) that claims to help one discover new music. In this respect, the Goombah service really shines through and delivers. I have tried using websites like Last.Fm and iLike, but I think, overall, I prefer Goombah. Now, I must admit that I have only used iLike through the facebook app and the iLike sidebar for iTunes and so perhaps have not judged it fairly (I still haven’t found any new music.) I can though speak from my own positive experience with Goombah.Goombah is, if one likes a clean easy-to-use interface, certainly preferable to Last.fm, which didn’t seem to give me much more than what Foxy Tunes did. It is quite obvious that Goombah took some inspiration from the Apple as the program has a similar look and feel. Just take a look at this screen shot:

As you can see it has a very clean look to it and as one would expect, very easy to navigate. This is something that I really have started to demand from the websites and software I use. If it ain’t pretty to look at I probably won’t use it. I firmly believe that a good clean GUI leads to a better experience and more productive (or I guess unproductive in Goombah’s case, I should be studying) the user can be.

All that being said, it is incredibly easy, and fun, to interact with Goombah, both the website and the program. I didn’t read any sort of how-to guide or instructions on how to best use Goombah, I have just been wingin’ it for the most part, and, it has been incredibly easy to use so far.

Upon opening the program one can see their on profile which supplies a bevy of information: Brief info on you (which you can change), a list of users with similar interests, your Top 25 played artists, Top 25 played tracks, and album reviews from Popmatters.com about artists you may enjoy or learn to enjoy.

As of writing I have only one friend on Goombah, but, it was very simple to track him down and befriend him. Here is another feature that really makes Goombah stand out above the others. The program allows you to check out your friend’s profile, which is pretty cool and I will go into in a second, but also allows you to explore their music. Now, you can’t just start streaming music from their iTunes or whatever they use, rather, Goombah finds the music in your friend’s library that you can already listen to for free on Napster. This is a neat feature and works pretty well.

My absolute favorite thing about Goombah was a bit of musical discovery, or musical self discovery I guess.  When Goombah installs it will immediately analyze your iTunes play counts to determine what kind of music would be best to recommended to you. This results in a lot of what makes Goombah really great (ya know, suggesting new music to you,) but, it also gives you something totally bad ass too.  A list of your Top 25 played artists. Now, there very may well be an easier way to get such a list from your iTunes, but, I had never heard of it. Seeing your Top 25 can be a little surprising; if you do it I can almost guarantee you that you will at least have one surprise in there.

Now, everything with Goombah’s standalone program isn’t as cool as it could be, but, it is still in Beta. I have really high hopes for this program, mostly because I use the website so much and know that if that experience could be moved to a program rather than a website it would only get better. My biggest complaint with the Goombah program is that the ‘Show Reccomendations’ button on the homepage doesn’t seem to work (sometimes it causes the whole program to crash.) My friend using the same program on a Windows computer (I run Mac) doesn’t seem to have this problem, but it is quite annoying for me and really hampers the whole experience. It is very, VERY, important to remember that this program is still in BETA which means it isn’t fully ready, so let us bear with them.

Goombah’s website is, in many respects, much better than similar sites. Again, I think a lot of this has to do with Goombah’s clean easy to navigate interface.  The best part about the site is that it allows for you to create custom ‘artist clouds’ and then on the fly gives you recommendations based on those specific artists. How cool is that? What is more is that you can download songs from the website and add recommendations you really enjoy to a custom play list, which it intelligently saves for you.

But wait, there’s more!

To my knowledge there is no limit on how many artist clouds you can make. Want to find some good new hard rock, make an artist cloud with bands like Metallica, RATM, AC/DC, Tool, and really whoever else you enjoy (those are just some of my favorites.) Essentially what you can have here is a custom internet radio tailored to your intrests/moods/whatever….Also, remember you can download most of these tunes. Did I mention that if you don’t like one of the reccomendations you can give it a thumbs down and Goombah won’t give you it again?

So, how does Goombah stack up as a music discovery service/program? From my experience it is #1. This is the one program of the aforementioned three that actually introduced me to some new music I really enjoy, and isn’t that what it is all about? All the artists that I have been introduced to have songs available for free download through Goombah which is just fantastic. A few of my favorite finds include: Funky Nashville, Watermelon Slim, The Billy Rubin Trio (They do the strangest/best cover of Gorilliaz I have ever heard,) and Gunnar Madsen.

There is a lot of really nifty stuff here in Goombah and a lot of cool ways to manipulate play with the system. Right now I tend to use the website a bit more often because the program can kind of be a hit or miss at times, but, it is still in Beta, so like I said, things should improve as time goes by.

Feel free to befriend me on Last.Fm or Goombah.

Last.Fm: Wibur2

Goombah: Wibur

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Now playing: The Who – You Better You Bet
via FoxyTunes