A little Wii music

by Alisha Karabinus { Jan 3rd 2007 at 3:30PM }

Who needs dongles when you have an entire series of tubes at your fingers? Finetune, a social streaming service, has created a Wii-friendly interface complete with big search boxes that can easily be seen from across the room. A few clicks and we were happily streaming tunage in the living room. It took nearly as long just to load the internet channel as it did to get in and start listening. We do, however, crave some sort of "Wiiboard," because this onscreen typing is about as much fun as tearing off our fingernails and eating them.

Also, we're a little disturbed when Disturbed rolls in as some of the "best rock" of 2006. Perhaps we need to finetune our definitions a little more ... and all apologies to Disturbed fans. We got much better mileage out of entering tags on the "radio" side and rocked out for a while to the Wii. Check it out if you're so inclined.

How many sites will come up with "Wii friendly" interfaces in the next few months, do you think?

[Via WiiNintendo.net]

Tags: Finetune, music, Nintendo, streaming music, StreamingMusic, Wii

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dan @ Jan 3rd 2007 6:52PM

Gah.. this internet radio service really sucks. I type in one of my favorite artists "Amethystium", and I get no results. I go to the tags and search for "ambient", and it plays nothing even close to the ambient genre of music.

Until they improve their music definitions/library, Pandora.com will kick this site's ass any day. Too bad Pandora makes my Wii freeze. =(

Alex Rowland @ Jan 3rd 2007 8:48PM

We're actually building a Wii interface for our video service over at www.CozmoTV.com It should be up in February... Hopefully the results will be a little better than finetune:)

Ken @ Jan 3rd 2007 11:26PM

www.pandora.com had BETTER work when the full version comes out, or I will instinctively destroy man as we know it..

Or I'll just pitch a fit, and live with it...

Chris @ Jan 3rd 2007 11:32PM

pah. Disturbed is awesome. Anyways, I came across this like yesterday...didn't sign up since I have a last.fm subscription anyways.

Alisha Karabinus @ Jan 4th 2007 2:45AM

I got pretty good results with the tag feature, but I guess your mileage varies with what you put in. I even found a band that was new (to me). It's not the best service out there (agreed on the asskickery of Pandora!), but I did find it very Wii friendly to navigate.

Tony MacDonell @ Jan 4th 2007 9:44AM

Hey guys,

My name is Tony MacDonell and I am the lead developer on the Finetune Wii interface. I am glad many of you are having an awesome experience with the new player on the Wii!

I just wanted to chime in here, and make sure you guys don't miss the best part of the service. If you go to Finetune.com you can create a profile and build all your own playlists of music. It is totally free to do so. You can make as many playlists as you like, the only limitation comes in playlist building:

Finetune abides by real radio rules, meaning that every playlist must have 45 tracks, and no more than 3 songs by the same artist. Other than that though, you can feel free to add whatever you like. For example here's my profile:

http://www.finetune.com/user/teknision

As for certain artists missing, well I assure you the database of musicians is enormous. It is actually licensed from the record labels, and yes the artists are getting paid when you play the music.

Certain music may not be on there, but that can be due to the fact that the label has not licensed it to Finetune, or due to the fact that the artist may not be distributed by a major label.

Will indie music ever be available on Finetune??? maybe, who knows...?